Article, Editorials Why I’m Excited to Revisit The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion’s Open World The 2006's open world setting has the potential to win us over all over again. Posted By Shubhankar Parijat | On 21st, Apr. 2025 In the almost 20 years since Bethesda Game Studios unleashed The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion upon the gaming world, open world titles have come to become a mainstay of the medium, the dominant game type for at least most single player releases. At the very least open world elements are now pervasive across multiple genres and most releases, if not open worlds themselves outright. Given this context, the notion of revisiting a nearly two decade old release from the formative days of open world titles may not exactly thrill a whole lot of people. Especially for a genre that is as reliant on immersing players thoroughly as open world games, where lies the appeal of playing an early Xbox 360 era experience, in a world where the likes of Red Dead Redemption 2 or Cyberpunk 2077 exist? It’s a valid question, and to be fair, Oblivion today, even if updated to the extent that the rumoured remake is supposed to be, would not be in the same tier of quality as those games mentioned above. However, comparing only to the very best is also fallacious. Oblivion, when re-released, does not have to be the absolute single best open world game available on the market for it to be worth checking out. In fact, even a straightforward ported Oblivion would hold a lot of merit and appeal in 2025, regardless of whether one finds themselves to be a fan of open worlds, or to be fatigued by them at this point. Arguably the biggest reason for this is that the Bethesda style of open worlds is still very uncommon, even today. While we have had that previously-mentioned explosion of open worlds on the market in the last decade to dedade-and-a-half, those open worlds didn’t really follow the design philosophy of a BGS joint. Rather, most open worlds today follow the style of design popularized by the likes of Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry- modular, broken down into smaller chunks and activities, and clearly demarcated “main” and “side” content. Even some of the most praised open world games today, from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild to Elden Ring, ultimately follow this modular design for the world, to varying degrees. Oblivion, however, like almost all Bethesda games, does not. Instead, it is a vast expanse of a lush, rich, fantasy landscape that is full of secrets and untold amounts of content for the player to stumble upon. You’re fully inhabiting this world, and you’re rarely running up against a gamified checklist of things to do- no towers to fill out your map, or fixed numbers of enemy forts to clear out an area. You’re just going around the world, following what catches your interest, and engaging with the content you happen upon along the way.  Playing Oblivion is akin to living out a fantasy story: you don’t come across content, you come across stories, big and small. That is one area where Oblivion really shines. Future Bethesda releases would see the quality of their writing go down greatly, but The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion has some incredibly well-written quests, both for the main story and, in particular for the guilds. The Dark Brotherhood questline in Oblivion, for example, is truly arresting. It’s a really great story that the game draws you into to incredible effect, and it’s just one of many. Unlike several other Bethesda games, the main draw of exploring Oblivion’s Cyrodil can be not to simply come upon things happening, but to also encounter stories and characters that are actually well-written, to a degree that players who came on board with 2011’s The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim might find themselves surprised by. Oh, and don’t you worry- the smaller, organic, player driven emergent storytelling that Bethesda games are so famous for is all still here, and it’s hilarious (if not in the intended fashion). Oblivion was the first game in the series to utilize Havok physics (this, again, would go on to become a mainstay in Bethesda titles afterwards) and the first one to have Radiant AI (Bethesda’s label for their hyper-detailed NPC scripts that defined their schedules and activities to an at-the-time unprecedented degree). Particularly when those two collide, hilarity of the kind players would expect from an Elder Scrolls release very much ensues. So fret not- this isn’t a game where you are getting better authored content at the expense of emergent, player driven content. Exploring Cyrodil can have its drawbacks, of course. For starters, visually and aesthetically, Cyrodil is probably the most boring of Bethesda’s settings, at least within the Elder Scrolls games. Where Morrowind had inspiring imagination defying landscapes, and where Skyrim showers players with breathtaking natural beauty, Cyrodil is mostly expanses of green grassland and forests. Inherently, there’s nothing wrong with that, particularly since, as mentioned, the world does come full of engaging content. However, it does mean that the line-of-sight-driven exploration that Bethesda games can be so good at begins to fall a little weak in Oblivion. It’s hard to go to wherever seems interesting if nowhere seems that interesting to begin with. This is not a problem anyone will encounter in the first couple dozen hours of playing Oblivion, to be fair, but Bethesda releases are games we spend hundreds, sometimes thousands, of hours with, and over that long a timeframe, Oblivion’s world definitely wears thin a lot more and a lot quicker than Skyrim or Morrowind ever did. This isn’t helped by there being inherent repetition to Oblivion’s design. The 2006 classic was the last game in the series to use procedural generation for its dungeon design, for example, and it shows. While dungeons in Skyrim, for comparison, aren’t particularly amazing either, they are a marked step above the ones in Oblivion, which can be actively off-putting. This extends all the way through to the Oblivion Gates, which, while having fixed layouts, have only a very small selection that they pull from, meaning even the Oblivion Gates begin to feel repetitive very early on in a playthrough. These are both issues – particularly the Oblivion Gates – that can presumably be addressed in a remake, but that depends on how ambitious that remake is setting out to be to begin with. It would be nice if these problems are addressed in this Oblivion release, because that would make its world that much more engaging. Even if they are not, however, Oblivion’s world still has a lot going for it. It’s a game world from an era where having a vast world with multiple settlements within it was the norm. Cyrodil in Oblivion has nine major cities, all dense, all full of NPCs and unique quests, all a joy to explore and dripping with atmosphere. And even within the wilderness, even with the repetition inherent to Oblivion, the game compels exploration, simply because of how broken its progression systems are. That’s not a mistake, that actually is what I wanted to say. Oblivion’s progression is so broken that it can be extremely easy to break the game wide open. Finding the right gear and loot can turn you into an actual unstoppable monster rampaging through the Imperial countryside, regardless of your preferred playing style. Many hours were spent by many back in 2006 when Oblivion first came out trying to create the absolute most hilariously broken build, and that’s something that will be as compelling in 2025 as it was back then. While the degree to which Oblivion will be compelling two decades on from release comes down to how extensive the purported remake ends up being, even without any changes or updates, the core game remains a strong experience, as almost any Bethesda Game Studios game is inherently. What this remake, once it is revealed and released, will decide is how strong it is. If Bethesda and Virtuos have taken the time to iron out the kinks and address some of the more obvious and easily addressable flaws in the game, then this remake could be the definitive form to experience Cyrodil, and could be one of the most unique and engaging open worlds today, in spite of being almost two decades old. But even if that isn’t the case, the simple fact that it is designed so differently from almost any other open world game on the market right now makes it an exciting proposition, and a virtual world I can’t wait to sink countless hours into all over again. Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization. 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