Though not technically officially confirmed yet, it looks like a remake of The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion is nonetheless set to launch imminently, with all rumours pointing to a Virtuos-developed Unreal Engine 5 recreation of the 2006 classic being simultaneously revealed and released at some point in the final days of the month. Given the stature of both The Elder Scrolls as a franchise and of Oblivion as a game, there’s obviously palpable excitement surrounding the remake, even in the absence of an official announcement, and you can bet we count ourselves in that excited group as well. In particular, it’s the prospect of an enhanced and improved version of the open world action RPG masterpiece that has turned heads. The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion has admittedly aged poorly in some regards, even though it overall remains a great game to this day, so the idea of a remake that sands out those rough edges and helps bring the entire game up the modern standards while not deviating from its biggest core strengths is an exciting one, to say the very least. Here, we’re going to talk about a few such improvements that we’re hoping to see in the purported remake. VISUALS AND TECH Let’s start things off with the obvious pick. Any remake of a 20 year old title is going to make visual and technical improvements, and what we have already seen and heard of the Oblivion remake suggests that that is very much the case here as well. The question, of course, is just how significant of an uplift the game will have received in this area, because arguably, this is where Oblivion is at its weakest. That’s not just true in terms of what the passage of time has done to the original title, but also in the sense that, really, Oblivion was a pretty janky and rough-around-the-edges experience even back when it first came out (as is so often the case with Bethesda Game Studios titles). By all accounts, it sounds like the allegedly upcoming remake has made some major visual changes, at the very least, which is pretty much exactly what most would have hoped for. From dated visuals (with excessive bloom effects, which we couldn’t not mention) to, in typical Bethesda Game Studios fashion, a laundry list of bugs and glitches (including some outright game-breaking ones), there is a lot that holds the original title back in the technical department, so hopefully that’s something that is addressed by the remake to the fullest extent possible. Of course, it would probably be silly to expect a cutting edge visual masterpiece even by 2025 standards, but we’d be surprised if the remake didn’t tout noticeable upgrades nonetheless. SEAMLESS MAP Speaking of technical upgrades that Oblivion needs to make, a seamless map would go down rather well with the Elder Scrolls fanbase (to put it mildly), though it does seem like a somewhat unrealistic dream, simply given the history of the developer. Back when it launched in 2006, Cyrodil not being a completely seamless open world wasn’t that big of a deal, because totally seamless maps were something of a rarity at the time. The fact that the map was broken up into multiple separate instances that had been stitched together with loading screens was, as such, not something that stood out to anyone in any meaningful way. That is conclusively no longer the case, of course, and hasn’t been for years at this point. Seamless open worlds are very much the norm- and yet, Bethesda Game Studios RPGs haven’t got that memo, it seems, because they continue to do things their way (frustratingly enough). This supposed Oblivion remake, however, isn’t being made by Bethesda Game Studios. Allegedly, Virtuos has remade the title in Unreal Engine 5 while bringing over a lot of the original assets, and while it remains to be seen how much of that is accurate, if it is accurate, that may well have been the perfect opportunity to finally make that change and turn Oblivion’s map into what it always should have been. BETTER DUNGEONS There’s more in Oblivion’s open world that a potential remake could try and improve with smart improvements, beyond attempting to stitch it together into a single, contiguous whole. Take, for instance, the original game’s dungeons, which were probably among its biggest weaknesses. From the dungeons being procedurally generated to even the Oblivion Gates randomly selected between a limited number of layout templates that quickly became repetitive, there were some pretty notable issues with the game in this department. Now, we are obviously not expecting the Oblivion remake to completely redo the dungeons from head to toe – we’re actually not even sure if it is going to be that significant of an overhaul – but at the very least, targeted improvements are in order. Just as an example, getting rid of procedural generation and instead delivering actual, designed dungeons would help make exploration significantly more compelling. It’d be a real shame to see that opportunity passed up. IMPROVED COMBAT Combat has never really been Bethesda Game Studios’ strong suit, to say the least, which stands doubly true for The Elder Scrolls games in particular. Typically, Oblivion’s combat was something of a jankfest- floaty movements and animations, shoddy hit detection, spotty AI, and more issues combined to make the whole affair feel disappointingly weightless and lackluster. Ideally, that should be one of the first things any hypothetical remake looks at when considering which areas of the original game are most in need of improvement. Thankfully, it does seem like rumured developer Virtuos is making some much needed changes. If reports are to be believed, the Oblivion remake will feature a new stamina system that will take cues from the Souls series, as well as overhauled blocking and archery mechanics, among other things. Our hope is that those are actual, major improvements, because put together, such changes could have a big impact on how the combat fares on a moment to moment basis. No, we don’t expect the combat to suddenly turn into one of the game’s highlights, but it would be disappointing to see it brought over as is, flaws and all. FINETUNED PROGRESSION The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion is counted to this day as one of the finest RPGs ever made, and a game truly deserving of that moniker (as Oblivion obviously is) is obviously not going to have any major deficiencies where its progression and customization systems are concerned. There is still room for improvement, however, and we fully expect to see some tweaking here and there, should the remake actually prove to be real. Specifically, it’s likely that the remake will make it less easy for players to break the progression curve in the manner that the original allowed players to, especially if you had spent enough time paying the game. We don’t expect – or hell, even want – that side of the experience to completely go away – there’s something undeniably appealing about RPGs that let you do that, after all – but this remake is a great chance for Virtuos and Bethesda to root out the more prominent balancing issues that do hold the progression systems back, and we’d fully expect them to take that chance.