Oblivion Remaster: What Do People Expect?

[Tingz0r]

With the leak of a remaster of Oblivion being worked on, I got to thinking, what do people actually expect?

Do you think there's a possibility that it'll be everything you've dreamed of? Or will it most likely be as low-effort as Dark Souls Remastered?

I'm not sure what to expect at this point, but here are a few things I hope to see:

1. Graphics rebuilt from the ground up, not just lazily upscaled.
2. Entirely new character models and animations that allow for more diversity and flavor, such as weight, height, posture, and musculature differences. However, most NPCs should still be recognizable.
3. No low-effort beast races. Clothing and armor should account for head shapes and features, and tails.
4. More in-depth character customization with body sliders.
5. I want the voices left intact, but if they recorded new ones, I'd want different voices for different characters of the same race, but still befitting the character and delivered with similar inflections. No Nolanbot.
6. Remastered soundtrack. Dynamic battle music that escalates based on the threat level (sorry, mudcrabs.)
7. More clear-cut difficulty settings.
8. (Unlikely, but) new skill and level-up system, with the option to use the original.
9. Bugs SQUASHED!
10. Still just as mod-able as the original.
11. No. Micro. Transactions. Ever.

[Lord Timster]

tbh I'm not really sure I see the point.

The last couple of months I have been replaying the Xbox 360 version of Oblivion. atm I am 100+ hours in and still have loads to see and do. The game shows its age for sure but it's still a great game as-is.

The only things that have bothered me so far are:

Limited Clothing - Would like some more varied headgear, like Skyrim circlets. And a black skirt.
Spell List Spam - Would like to be able to delete spells from my spell-lists, and/or to have more than 8 quick-select slots

And... that's about it.

If we were talking about a Morrowind remake then I'd be ready to slap down a pre-order, but Oblivion? Dunno, I think I'll pass. Or wait for the 50%-off sales.

Anyway, I just really really hope they don't make the Imperial Legion soldiers wear historical Roman Empire armour (eg Lorica Segmentata) or something...

Blessings of Azura

[Tingz0r]

Spell List Spam - Would like to be able to delete spells from my spell-lists, and/or to have more than 8 quick-select slots

That reminds me. The inventory screen could use some quality-of-life changes, like the keyring mod. Just better sorting in general, and less ambiguous icons.

[SeaGtGruff]

I hadn't heard about this yet. I'm off to search the web for information.

[CaptainNeapolitan]

I imagine they will throw all of the DLCs (including the dreaded horse armor) into the base game and give it a solid graphical rehaul from the ground up. Though I expect everything else, besides visuals and some bug/QOL fixes, to remain the same. Hopefully they'd try to change how your character's level scales with the world so you aren't getting insanely OP bandits simply because you are a higher level. I think there should be some level scaling in some areas of the game but only to maintain difficulty and a semblance of progression; early-game enemies should not still be as hard as they are in the early-game in the late-game, and late-game enemies should not be easy to defeat in the early-game. Other than that particular absurdity of the level scaling system I don't mind it.

The way that skills work is fine too. There's not a huge need to change that, besides maybe giving each skill/attribute you choose to level up a fixed bonus instead of basing the level-up bonus on how many times you leveled that attribute up, because it's very easy for a new player to not understand that gimmick and screw themselves over later on. I think part of the reason why skilling and leveling is so disliked in Oblivion is because it's hard if your mistakes in leveling catch up to you in higher levels; with how the game's level scaling works it can make your character feel inadequate despite the progress you've made over the (likely many) hours you've been playing. In fact the UESP has an entire section dedicated to this issue in the leveling page for Oblivion: https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Leveling

The soundtrack actually holds up really well, but a remaster for higher quality audio along with some new tracks to add variety wouldn't be bad.

[legoless]

I would be happy with a more stable version for 64-bit machines. I would be delighted if it included new or overhauled content, even if that came in the form of Creation Club-esque microtransactions.

[Relevant]

Honestly I love this game as is so much I'd be happy with an engine/graphics upgrade and everything else staying the same. The only thing I would not be okay with is essentially an "HD" port as the game is available to fully mod on the PC as is. I guess it wouldn't be so much I would not be okay with it, more like I wouldn't pay it any mind in that case.

[SeaGtGruff]

Aside from fixing any serious known bugs that were never officially patched, I'd hope that any remastered edition would have all official DLCs and other content, such as content that wasn't in the "Game of the Year" edition but was in the "Game of the Year Deluxe" edition.

[Tingz0r]

Another one. The third-person camera in Oblivion is one of mankind's greatest sins. I hope the remake fixes that. I also hope they include a photo mode.

[SeaGtGruff]

Another one. The third-person camera in Oblivion is one of mankind's greatest sins. I hope the remake fixes that. I also hope they include a photo mode.

What's wrong with it? I've been using it a lot lately, also in Morrowind and Skyrim, since using it in ESO.

[Tingz0r]

Another one. The third-person camera in Oblivion is one of mankind's greatest sins. I hope the remake fixes that. I also hope they include a photo mode.

What's wrong with it? I've been using it a lot lately, also in Morrowind and Skyrim, since using it in ESO.

I'm confused. You must have a mod installed or something, because the third-person camera in Oblivion has acceleration and deceleration, automatically rotates to your character's facing, is awkwardly positioned and has no crosshair.

In other words, it's doodoo feces. The person who put it in the game was actually two chimps in a trench coat.

[SeaGtGruff]

No mods or addons or unofficial patches here, just plain vanilla.

I don't particularly like crosshairs, so I don't miss them. (And I don't remember seeing any crosshairs in Morrowind or Skyrim in third-person view, unless there's an option to toggle them on/off).

As for the camera swinging about, I don't think it does that any more than in Skyrim. I normally zoom out as far as possible, and switch to first-person if I need to look at something close up. It seems okay to me, or maybe I just got used to it after the first several minutes. And if the mouse is what we use to have our character turn and look in different directions, what is the camera supposed to do when we do that? Are you wanting to swing the camera around so you can look at your character from the front or something like that?

[SeaGtGruff]

I played some Oblivion this afternoon to refresh my memory about the third-person camera. I last played a night or two ago, and have been working on a slow playthrough for a while now, so it isn't like I hadn't played in a long time, but I wanted to make sure it was fresh in my mind.

Crosshairs: Don't really need them, don't particularly want them (in third-person view). As long as I'm close enough to get the "prompt" (description) of whatever I want to interact with, having crosshairs or not doesn't really add anything, since you could have something in your crosshairs yet not be near enough to interact with it.

Camera swinging wildly: The only time this bugs the heck out of me is when I go through a doorway, because the camera does swing about wildly after that. Aside from that, I'm okay with it.

Range of camera movement: It seems like the one time we can swing the camera around without changing the way we're facing is when we sit down. It would be nice to be able to swing the camera so it's facing our character head-on, but it won't go any further than a profile side view. That is definitely something I'd like to see improved.

[legoless]

I can't play Oblivion in third person for long. Watching new players coming from ESO, they also seem to struggle with it. It's simply a game that is meant to be played in first person.

[SeaGtGruff]

I used to always play in the first-person view, and switching to the third-person view for ESO took a little getting used to.

But now I mostly prefer to play in the third-person view except for temporarily switching to the first-person view to look at something close up.

[Tingz0r]

Some final little predictions before the reveal:

1. Horrible performance on launch. The massive size of the game almost guarantees this.
2. Absurd load times.
3. Slower gameplay overall, similar to Skyrim.
4. More controversial Creation Club horse crap.
5. All new voices and music, possibly uncompressed.
6. Extremely simplified character creator, again similar to Skyrim.
7. $60 price tag.
8. Bugs, bugs, bugs.