By Azura, by Azura, by Azura – the rumors had been true. Yesterday, Bethesda set the web on fireplace by lastly pulling back the curtain on Virtuos’ remaster (or is it actually a remake?) of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. An ‘Elder Scrolls Direct’ of types culminated within the shock shadow-drop, which near-immediately remodeled into a whole lot of hundreds of concurrent gamers. This second of world hype and celebration seems like a much-needed port within the present storm Bethesda Game Studios has been dealing with lately. From conducting years-long injury control to rectify Fallout 76’s misfire launch, to the lackluster reception of its new sci-fi universe, Starfield, the studio’s most up-to-date output has had many followers asking the identical query: Has Bethesda misplaced the magic? There’s fiercer competitors within the RPG space today, with Larian Studios’ Baldur’s Gate 3 and Obsidian’s The Outer Worlds franchise each garnering essential acclaim as Elder Scrolls and Fallout non secular successors. But whereas Elder Scrolls 6 and Fallout 5 could also be years away from reclaiming their crowns, this re-release of Oblivion could also be a step in the appropriate course – simply not within the course you’d anticipate.
At its peak, Bethesda Game Studios was an RPG juggernaut. In 2020, Microsoft’s leaked FTC documents revealed that Fallout 4 had offered 25 million units-to-date. The game shifted over 5 million items in its first week alone in accordance to VGChartz. Likewise, in 2023 Todd Howard introduced Skyrim had crossed 60 million sales (although it’s price noting rereleasing it 50 instances seemingly helped). So what about Starfield? Estimates put it at simply over three million units a year-and-a-half publish launch. While bearing in mind Game Pass subscribers (which might enhance gamers if not gross sales) and Starfield’s lack of a PlayStation presence, this should nonetheless be one thing of a disappointment for Bethesda. And whereas there is a Starfield fanbase, it’s far smaller than that loved by The Elder Scrolls or Fallout, and even it has voiced displeasure with the game’s first enlargement, Shattered Space.
This all leaves the developer with a huge downside. With The Elder Scrolls 6 “years away” and Fallout 5 simply a whisper within the hallowed halls of the studio’s corridors, how can this once-iconic RPG developer enchant their fanbase as soon as more? The reply lies in its previous.
Rumours of the Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion remaster started back in September 2023, when leaked Microsoft documents revealed a quantity of unannounced Bethesda titles, together with a remaster of 2006’s landmark journey to Tamriel (it additionally consists of one other fascinating remaster – we’ll get to that quickly). All was quiet till January 2025, when a former worker of Virtuos let slip more details, dividing Elder Scrolls followers as to their authenticity just like the Stormcloaks vs. the Imperials. Finally, final week the dam broke (albeit early), setting the web ablaze – there have been over 6.4 million Google searches for ‘The Elder Scrolls VI: Oblivion’, rising by 713% within the final week alone. At its peak, Bethesda’s reveal livestream had over half a million viewers watching. Despite the leaks (or maybe as a result of of them), over 600,000 people tuned in to see a 19-year-old game re-revealed to them. The intense fervent demand to play the remaster precipitated low cost game key web sites like CDKeys to crash, and slowed Fanatical and Green Man Gaming to a crawl. As of yesterday, Steam’s concurrent gamers stood at 125,000 and the game is firmly the #1 greatest vendor. The enthusiasm Bethesda followers have for Oblivion burns as shiny because the flames that spill from the Oblivion gates themselves.
The message from gamers is obvious: in the event you (re)build it, they’ll come. What higher method to maintain followers engaged and invested during these long improvement intervals than to invite them to take a journey back to the mysterious isles of Morrowind or the hollowed-out husk of the East Coast? From a business standpoint, it makes clear sense. While Bethesda’s foremost improvement employees toils away on long-gestating new initiatives, trusted companions like Virtuos can use historic blueprints to craft remasters in shorter time frames. Such remasters are primarily based on video games with built-in audiences, and for a lot of they’re the primary actual RPGs players could have sunk their tooth into during their respective generations. Restoring these works additionally invitations a entire new era to grow to be obsessive about the internal workings of the land of Tamriel or crawl out from the post-apocalyptic fallout into Las Vegas and D.C.
Bethesda has already strategically uplifted its own catalogue as soon as earlier than. Fallout 4 was discounted by up to 75% during the Fallout TV show’s first season on Prime Video, alongside a cleverly scheduled next-gen replace which introduced over sure homages from the show. As a outcome, Fallout 4 sales jumped over 7,500% in Europe alone regardless of being practically a decade previous.
Looking back to Microsoft’s leaked Bethesda roadmap, many famous that a Fallout 3 remaster was listed to observe Oblivion two years later. It’s important to word the timelines from this authentic presentation have shifted – Oblivion was initially cited as fiscal yr 2022. However, assuming these authentic gaps stay true, it seems a Fallout 3 remake might be on the playing cards for 2026 – simply in time for Fallout Season 2, coincidentally. While a Fallout remaster appears inevitable now, given the second collection’ shift to New Vegas, may it’s potential that Bethesda’s early conversations with showrunners Graham Wagner and Geneva Robertson-Dworet imply that a shock New Vegas remake might be in retailer? Given the synchronicity of the show’s first season to Fallout 4’s vibe and aesthetic, may Bethesda level-up its craftiness even more for the upcoming New Vegas-centric second season? It shadow-dropped Oblivion – it’s not out of the realm of risk that a New Vegas Remastered trailer is mendacity in watch for us on the finish of Fallout Season 2’s finale.
However, if there’s one game in Bethesda’s back catalogue that deserves to be remade essentially the most, it’s undeniably The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. Many Elder Scrolls followers have spent years fus-ro-dahing on the mountaintop for this, with one group of superfans going so far as to remake Morrowind using Skyrim’s tools, ala Skyblivion. However, Morrowind isn’t as simple a game to remake as Oblivion. It sits on the precipice between Bethesda’s evolutions as a studio – it’s actually constructed in a different way to our trendy understanding of an Elder Scrolls game. It’s solely partially voiced, most of the story is instructed by way of textual content, there are no quest markers (gamers should actually write down instructions given by NPCs, save for these with excellent recollections), and fight physics are non-existent. Whereas Virtuos was in a position to overhaul some of the more finicky methods of Oblivion, everything of Morrowind is a finicky system. It’s why many love the game, however it’s additionally why it’s tough to remake. To remake Morrowind is a harmful tightrope. Modernize it an excessive amount of and also you risk dropping the magic it was initially imbued with. Leave too many antiquated methods in place, and it’ll really feel worse than an almighty skooma hangover.
When a studio turns into the icon of a gaming sub-genre, the problem is that this: how do you innovate and evolve while holding onto your viewers? Rockstar Games has saved Grand Theft Auto gamers happy for over a decade by way of the ever-expanding multiplayer world of GTA Online, which in flip fuels the eye-wateringly costly rumored finances for GTA 6. Bethesda’s bread-and-butter is richly detailed, expansive worlds which might be resolutely single-player – Elder Scrolls Online and Fallout 76 simply don’t hit in the identical method. However, what’s clear by way of the overwhelming response to Virtuos’ Oblivion remaster is that players are more than on-board to dive back into the historic annals of Elder Scrolls of years-gone-by. That’s not to say any remaster is a slam dunk – this explicit one is a clear product of cautious consideration and expert improvement, and a lesser game might have garnered a very totally different response, ala Rockstar’s own GTA Definitive Editions – however what higher method for the previous king of the trendy RPG to get back on monitor than to breathe new life into some previous classics?
Sab Astley is a freelance author who has written for IGN, Polygon, TotalFilm, Rolling Stone, Radio Times, and Metro UK.