Bethesda Softworks today officially revealed and launched The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered, after days of leaks. And from what they've revealed, I'm very excited to give it a go. It's even Steam Deck Verified right from the get-go.
I agree the remaster looks good, but it’s very vanilla like naturalism and a bit boring IMO.
The original had a distinct style, which you may like or not.
Although the remaster can be argued to be objectively better, in that it is more accurate and detailed, the original however was more artistic, I think which you prefer is a matter of taste.
This is my main complaint with the remake so far. Original Oblivion was bright and vibrant, which stood out due to the obsession with brown-filtered “realism” in games at that time. Trees almost looked like they were painted with pastels.
The colors in the remake are noticeably toned down. It still looks great, but it lost that dreamlike quality that sold Oblivion as a fantasy world.
I haven’t seen how they handled the Shivering Isles yet, but if they managed to make the Plane of Madness boring then I’ll be more than a little annoyed.
You underestimate the amount of effort people put into shaders, models and texture packs.
Also, that the creation engine, as justifiably maligned as it is, is a magnificient piece of software. It came out during the era of the first unreal engine, but still works to make modern technical masterpieces like Starfield.
Oblivion uses Gamebryo. Creation is Skyrim and later games. That might seem pedantic since it’s a newer version of the same engine, but one of the major reasons for the rename was Bethesda ripping out the Gamebryo rendering code and replacing it with their own, more modern renderer.
The modders have still done amazing things with Oblivion, but they’re limited by the ancient Gamebryo tech. Postprocessing shaders, high-poly meshes and texture upscaling can only do so much, especially on a 32-bit engine that can use at most 4 gigs of RAM (2.5 gigs if Bethesda didn’t set the LAA flag and the end user hasn’t installed a 4GB patch).
Ha. Years counted for more back then. Remember, this was back in the day when graphics technology made a qualitative leap every few years. Nowadays things have stabilized and the focus is on boosting framerate and pixel count, but back then each generation was a monumental leap forward in fundamental rendering tech.
Absolutely, I know I programmed 8 bit graphics in assembly on the C64, and played with the custom chips of the Amiga in assembly too. fun times 😋
I was pissed that you couldn’t write off computers faster than 3 years, because in 3 years a computer was completely obsolete IMO, as in basically useless. Up until at least around when the GeForce 256 came out in 1999. After that 3 years was still old, but not completely useless.
Nowadays things have stabilized
I agree, nowadays it doesn’t matter much (IMO) to have a GPU that is a couple of years old. Admittedly I only use QHD/1440p. To render the same in 4K requires a 2.4 times more powerful GPU.
But oh boy when Voodoo, Voodoo2 came out, and then TNT, TNT2 and GeForce. Those were a lot of major upgrades in just 3 years. (1996-1999)
I’m still on dual 1080p monitors and a machine that’s more than a decade old and was mid-tier at best when brand new. I’ve only upgraded the GPU and doubled the RAM, yet it still runs basically everything at an acceptable framerate. Hearing that would boggle the mind of my younger self, who struggled for days to get Neverwinter Nights (the Bioware one, not AOL - you know you’re old when you feel the need to specify) to run at more than four seconds per frame in outdoor areas on a fairly new machine.
I only played it years later on Linux. Smooth as butter. 😎
I was not aware there was an SSI game with the same name, I suppose that’s what you meant by AOL?
Let’s not get too crazy, there are some graphics mods but Oblivion will still look like a PS3 game at best
I agree the remaster looks good, but it’s very vanilla like naturalism and a bit boring IMO.
The original had a distinct style, which you may like or not.
Although the remaster can be argued to be objectively better, in that it is more accurate and detailed, the original however was more artistic, I think which you prefer is a matter of taste.
This is my main complaint with the remake so far. Original Oblivion was bright and vibrant, which stood out due to the obsession with brown-filtered “realism” in games at that time. Trees almost looked like they were painted with pastels.
The colors in the remake are noticeably toned down. It still looks great, but it lost that dreamlike quality that sold Oblivion as a fantasy world.
I 100% agree, I liked the original graphics, the remake while it is pretty, is also a bit boring IMO.
I haven’t seen how they handled the Shivering Isles yet, but if they managed to make the Plane of Madness boring then I’ll be more than a little annoyed.
You underestimate the amount of effort people put into shaders, models and texture packs.
Also, that the creation engine, as justifiably maligned as it is, is a magnificient piece of software. It came out during the era of the first unreal engine, but still works to make modern technical masterpieces like Starfield.
Oblivion uses Gamebryo. Creation is Skyrim and later games. That might seem pedantic since it’s a newer version of the same engine, but one of the major reasons for the rename was Bethesda ripping out the Gamebryo rendering code and replacing it with their own, more modern renderer.
The modders have still done amazing things with Oblivion, but they’re limited by the ancient Gamebryo tech. Postprocessing shaders, high-poly meshes and texture upscaling can only do so much, especially on a 32-bit engine that can use at most 4 gigs of RAM (2.5 gigs if Bethesda didn’t set the LAA flag and the end user hasn’t installed a 4GB patch).
Oh boy how time flies…
But wouldn’t that mean it’s made by the Elders themselves?
Ha. Years counted for more back then. Remember, this was back in the day when graphics technology made a qualitative leap every few years. Nowadays things have stabilized and the focus is on boosting framerate and pixel count, but back then each generation was a monumental leap forward in fundamental rendering tech.
Absolutely, I know I programmed 8 bit graphics in assembly on the C64, and played with the custom chips of the Amiga in assembly too. fun times 😋
I was pissed that you couldn’t write off computers faster than 3 years, because in 3 years a computer was completely obsolete IMO, as in basically useless. Up until at least around when the GeForce 256 came out in 1999. After that 3 years was still old, but not completely useless.
I agree, nowadays it doesn’t matter much (IMO) to have a GPU that is a couple of years old. Admittedly I only use QHD/1440p. To render the same in 4K requires a 2.4 times more powerful GPU.
But oh boy when Voodoo, Voodoo2 came out, and then TNT, TNT2 and GeForce. Those were a lot of major upgrades in just 3 years. (1996-1999)
I’m still on dual 1080p monitors and a machine that’s more than a decade old and was mid-tier at best when brand new. I’ve only upgraded the GPU and doubled the RAM, yet it still runs basically everything at an acceptable framerate. Hearing that would boggle the mind of my younger self, who struggled for days to get Neverwinter Nights (the Bioware one, not AOL - you know you’re old when you feel the need to specify) to run at more than four seconds per frame in outdoor areas on a fairly new machine.
AOL: Do you mean Amarica On Line?
Yep.
I only played it years later on Linux. Smooth as butter. 😎
I was not aware there was an SSI game with the same name, I suppose that’s what you meant by AOL?
Yeah, it ran on AOL’s platform and was a multiplayer dungeon crawler similar to SSI’s other stuff.