The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remaster

PS5 Review

The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion Remaster is a Fantasy RPG game that serves as the 2025 remaster of the 2006 original game on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

This game sees the player create an Avatar and journey through the Imperial kingdom of Cyrodiil after the assassination of the late Emperor, as the player finds his heir and tries to stop a looming apocalypse from an extra-dimensional invasion of demonic creatures.

Now available for modern consoles and PC, my playthrough was entirely on the PlayStation 5 version of the game and finished all achievements to get the Platinum Trophy.

Pro:

Graphical overhaul.

The most obvious change to the remaster is the complete graphical change from the original game, because now the remaster uses Unreal Engine 5 to run the graphics for the game.

This allows the game to have improved textures, lighting and new assets compared to the original game, which used the custom Gamebryo engine before the invention of the Creation Engine.

While the game has the new graphical engine, it still allows players to create absolute abominations in the character creator, but now they look even worse in all the best ways because the game runs at potentially 4K resolution to make them look photorealistic and nightmare-inducing.

Attribute rework.

New to the Remaster, the attribute system has received a rework with some buffs but also nerfs.

Unfortunately, the game does not do a good job of explaining how exactly the attributes got reworked compared to the original game for returning players, so players may be increasing attributes based on how they worked in the original game, not the remaster.

Overall, they added a lot more benefits per attribute compared to what they took away and these mostly help players have an easier time in the remaster since enemies’ scale with the player’s level, so if the player isn’t expecting it then the endgame will be a lot harder with subpar equipment and weaponry.

So, I would recommend players look at what the different attributes boost now compared to the original game, like Strength, for instance, now increasing the player’s Health instead of only damage.

Out of combat Health.

A new feature for this remaster is that when the player is out of combat then their health will automatically regenerate.

This is very useful, so players aren’t skipping time by using the wait function or using potions during traversal.

The amount of regeneration is also boosted by the player’s Endurance attribute, so players can spend points during a level up to not get extra health from the Endurance attribute but also increase the speed at which health regenerates out of combat, increasing the pace of the game but reducing the amount of time waiting.

New voice lines.

In the original game, Oblivion suffered from a limited number of voice actors for NPCs and other background roles, so it wasn’t uncommon to hear the same voice actor have a conversation with themselves through two separate NPCs.

Now in the Remaster, more voice actors were brought on board, so this becomes less of an issue, and they rerecorded over a lot of poor audio quality versions in the original game, while some of the original dialogue lines were left in and not replaced.

Best side quests.

This is the aspect of the game that I still think trumps Skyrim due to its side quests and Guild Storylines, with just the Dark Brotherhood for the Guilds and all the Daedric Prince quests like with Sheogorath, the Daedric Prince of Madness.

As for the Dark Brotherhood, it is not just in their usual assassin contracts but also gives the players bonuses if they can fulfil certain objectives, like killing a person by dropping a stuffed deer head on them. It reminds me of the Hitman games with their optional objectives for completion.

The player also spends more time with the NPCs for the side quests, and that’s why it makes the end of the Cheydinhal missions that much more sorrowful after the player can undertake side quests for the characters, too.

The weakest Guild Storyline was probably the Fighters Guild, where the player feels more like a police officer than a member of a Guild with a specific storyline until the very end, when the plot starts to unfold. However, even then, it is still enjoyable since it ties into the older games, especially Arena, but later games like Elder Scrolls Online, due to how their storyline ends, so fans of other games in the franchise will get more out of it compared to the later Skyrim storylines.

Value for money.

Carrying on from the DLC inclusion, this Remaster is fantastic value for money since the player gets the base game, both expansions and all the new home bases.

Both expansions alone add several hours of content, with the Knights of the Nine and Shivering Isles expansions with Shivering Isles making a big difference in gameplay. This is due to the inclusion of Earil and his store, as he sells the best enchanted rings and jewellery, making the player a lot more powerful as soon as they arrive at New Sheoth in Shivering Isles. This is in addition to Cutter the Blacksmith, who creates the best defence and decency enchantments on the armour for Madness Ore.

While the Knights of the Nine doesn’t give as good weapons or armour as Shivering Isles it does give great buffs that are great for any build but unfortunately can only have one at a time, so players choose the best for their current build, but they are free to switch whenever they revisit the tombs.

The home bases are fun additions while not offering that much aside from the Mage Tower which allows you free access to an enchanting and spell making alters when active with candles along with being able to summon one of the three Atronachs (Fire, Storm and Ice) and keep one as a follower for as long as it’s alive, this makes it much more useful than the Adoring fan from the Arena or the free fighters from Castle Battle horn since they are relatively weak and get killed very quickly in the endgame compared to Atronachs.

Con:

Inconsistent Frame rate.

Whether playing in Performance at 60fps or Quality mode at 30fps I always have frame rate drops during my play through from small dips to some prominent slowdown in combat.

This wasn’t just limited to areas with a lot of particle effects like with Oblivion Gate locations, but also just in random fights using enchanted items with their glowing effects or fights against mages slinging spells.

I was playing on a base PS5 rather than a PS5 Pro, so that may have been part of the problem, but the console still runs more graphically intensive and mechanically complex games without issue, like the Horizon games, for instance, this late in the console’s life cycle.

Crashes.

Unfortunately, just like the original game, I experienced several hard crashes and some frozen screens.

Most of the time, it happened, it was either from opening and closing the menu or exiting a building or dungeon into Cyrodiil. This was most irritating when exiting the Great Oblivion Gate outside Bruma, thankfully, the game had auto saved while I was inside the Gate, the room before getting the great Sigil Stone, so not much progress was lost.

That’s one of the biggest improvements for this Remaster is how reliable the auto saves are, since the game always has 5 that normally update when entering a new area. As all these crashes would have been a lot worse without those improvements, since I was never the best at remembering to do a manual save, apart from finishing quests.

Glitches.

It wouldn’t be a Bethesda Elder Scrolls game without glitches, and I experienced my fair share during my play through from scene triggers not loading forcing a reset to even visual glitches where my character’s POV went about 2 meters above their model forcing every NPC to break their neck looking straight up when interacted with. This glitch was fixed, strangely enough, by my character getting paralysed in 3^rd person, losing camera control to an endgame bandit.

Other glitches involved critical quest NPCs falling through the floor, requiring a reload of a prior save, since exiting and re-entering the area didn’t work, and this happened in the Dark Brotherhood quest line with Ocheeva at Cheyeinhal.

A minor glitch that occurred during my entire playthrough was that the subtitles barely worked, as for some conversations they worked as normal, but a lot of other times they just wouldn’t display at all or have subtitles, but the audio voice line cut out.

Abridged main story still.

I just feel that since the Remaster improved so much of the game through quality of life and other fixes, they could have expanded upon the main story more, since it’s still the shortest aspect of the game. I went back after I had finished everything else in the game, and the main story only took 3 hours to finish from first getting to find Martin at level 30 without skipping dialogue.

As all the Guild storylines last way longer than the main story that I feel a couple of extra missions could have been added to help flesh out the characters since the player doesn’t interact with Martin much during his transition between Priest and new Emperor, so his character feels as shallow as it did back in the original.

As the original ending is still extremely abrupt and not that satisfying to play since Martin doesn’t scale to the player’s level compared to the enemies, if the player isn’t directly sprinting to the temple, then he will get killed, forcing to reload a save file. Aside from that, all of Martin’s character growth still takes place mostly off-screen due to being voiced by Sean Bean, meaning his time was limited.

Selling in Shops.

A major annoyance during the whole play through was how limited each shopkeeper’s money was, with it usually being 2,000 Gold with the option to invest another 500.

This became a problem when trying to sell items since they would regularly be worth more than the shopkeeper’s entire budget, and you must resort to haggling to make sure the shopkeeper gives the player less money just to sell endgame equipment.

This was also an issue when trying to sell multiples of items since the game doesn’t tell the player how much a stack of an item is, while on the amount screen, only when they’ve chosen the quantity to sell. So, this makes levelling alchemy difficult when loaded up with potions, so that the shopkeeper can only afford to buy a couple at a time instead of a large stack.

Conclusion:

A great visual overhaul for my personal favourite Elder Scrolls game, and I would recommend it to fans of the original game and the Elder Scrolls in general.

However, overall, it’s still a great Remaster of the game that includes all prior DLC for free, which is more than enough to recommend it on as a player will be getting one of the best RPGs ever made with all its content for a very affordable price.

Score: 8.7