Bethesda Confirms Big Oblivion News Is Coming, Here’s What We Expect
Whatever your feelings are on the Elder Scrolls game franchise, it's impossible to deny that the series has had a massive lasting impact on the gaming market as a whole. The beloved franchise had been immune to the plague of reboots, remakes, and remasters afflicting the industry so far, but it turns out that was more out of the amount of effort required to create such a remake rather than any ideological reason, as Bethesda has just confirmed that the long-rumored remake of The Elder Scrolls Part IV Oblivion is definitely real, via a tweet.
Posted about 3 hours ago as of this posting, Bethesda's tweet technically doesn't confirm anything other than that there will be some sort Oblivion-related news tomorrow at 11AM Eastern US time. In the background of the image is the familiar face of an Imperial Guard, though, and he certainly looks a lot more "HD" than the original game ever did. It's a pretty safe bet that Bethesda is going to announce—if not release—the TES 4 remake.
Indeed, one of the most persistent rumors regarding the TES 4: Oblivion remake is that it would release immediately after being announced. So why do we continue to couch this message in uncertainty? Well, because game studios simply don't really do this with major titles. It's not unprecedented, though, and particularly from this publisher; Hi-Fi Rush, developed by Tango Gameworks and published by Bethesda, was stealth dropped—announced and released on the same day—at the Xbox and Bethesda Developer Direct showcase on January 25th 2023. So saying, it's entirely possible we could be playing the TES 4 Oblivion remake tomorrow night.
Despite that this isn't a new game, we're quite interested to see what Bethesda, Virtuos, and potentially others have cooked up. The rumor is that this is a full remake of TES 4: Oblivion in the latest Unreal Engine technology from Epic Games. So saying, we're expecting ludicrously-detailed Nanite terrain and buildings, gorgeous Lumen ray-traced lighting, lush Niagara VFX and Chaos physics, and perhaps even the use of UE5's World Partition and Virtual Texturing systems for truly incredible draw distance and distant detail.
In fact, these Unreal Engine features are so potent that we're fully expecting to see a game that realizes the promise of a truly open-world RPG—no more distinction between "interiors" or "exteriors" like in games made on Bethesda's own engine technology. On Creation engine games, the game world is divided into cells which are considered 'Interior' or 'Exterior' cells; 'Interior' cells are their own separate and divided worldspace.
With Nanite, World Partition, and UE 5.5's virtual texturing, it would be entirely possible to build the game such that it no longer has these loading seams when entering and exiting buildings and dungeons. This specific problem was one of the biggest complaints with 2023's Starfield, and resolving it would make the game feel so much more immersive and enjoyable. We're not going to hold our breath—though even if we were, we wouldn't have to hold it for long; there's less than 24 hours until we find out what's up with the Oblivion remake.
