Former Blizzard president Mike Ybarra has some capital-T ideas on the reveal and launch of The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered.
Sure, for the three or 4 of us studying this and listening to about Oblivion Remastered for the primary time: it is right here, it is out there proper now on consoles, PC, and Recreation Go, and it seems to be nice. Nonetheless, the notoriously outspoken Ybarra is not so positive it will maintain up towards fashionable RPG classics like Elden Ring.
“I am skeptical about 20 yr previous remasters,” he stated in a tweet. “What was as soon as implausible, now remastered, won’t ever maintain up towards fashionable masterpieces like Elden Ring. The bar has merely moved from protected open world RPGs to what Elden Ring introduced us all.
“I’d like to be confirmed fallacious. However I am not,” he added.
I hear you, however I believe we have had so many “remasters” that nostalgia is proscribed. I could possibly be fallacious. However I believe the gaming group needs contemporary and new greater than ever.April 22, 2025
I am nonetheless downloading the 125GB Oblivion Remastered, and thus cannot provide any significant commentary right here, however I can take a look at opinions from individuals who have performed it, and, nicely, early information says Ybarra’s useless fallacious on this one. The sport very, in a short time shot to the highest of Steam’s world top-selling video games regardless of its $50 price ticket, and with virtually 4,000 person opinions already posted on the time of writing, there is a clear consensus forming already: Oblivion’s nonetheless acquired it, child.
Proper now, 82% of Steam opinions are optimistic, and the overwhelming majority of detrimental opinions appear to be performance-related. Not that these aren’t legitimate issues, however neither do they actually assist Ybarra’s argument that the core recreation hasn’t aged nicely.
In response to at least one remark concerning the worth of nostalgia, Ybarra stated, “I hear you, however I believe we have had so many ‘remasters’ that nostalgia is proscribed. I could possibly be fallacious. However I believe the gaming group needs contemporary and new greater than ever.”
I believe one issue Ybarra is perhaps lacking right here is the large market of gamers that had been launched to the Elder Scrolls world by way of Skyrim in 2011 and thus missed out on Oblivion’s authentic run. That is the case for me, and I do know I have been holding out for a modernized model of Oblivion to expertise what many devotees nonetheless name the most effective recreation within the sequence, and I am psyched about what Elder Scrolls veteran voice actor Wes Johnson stated could possibly be a “revelation” of a gaming expertise.
