The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion remaster is real after all, and it could be out next week

We could probably all do with an excuse to dive back into 2006’s finest pop culture at the moment, couldn’t we? A nice break from the doomscrolling. Perhaps that’s what Elder Scrolls publisher Bethesda and developer Virtuos were thinking when they embarked on a remaster of the legendary open-world RPG Oblivion. Which, by the way, turns out to be a real thing after years of unconfirmed rumours.

Screenshots and details have emerged from Virtuos’ own website which detail the remaster, and these assets have now been corroborated by several press outlets including Eurogamer, who also states that “Bethesda's current plan is to shadow drop the game next week on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S, including via Xbox Game Pass". Which would be quite the turn up for the books.

You can view the collection of screenshots scraped from the website via this Imgur gallery - it’s looking extremely handsome. Earlier reports claimed the remaster was being constructed in Unreal Engine 5 and while this leak doesn’t confirm that, the imagery is certainly befitting of Epic’s latest graphics engine.

If you missed it the first time round because you were too busy writing the custom HTML code on your MySpace page or following Britney Spears’ divorce from Kevin Federline, here’s your refresher: Oblivion is the seminal open-world RPG of the 21st century. The first time that a developer really imbued a large world map which you could explore freely with a sense of place, emergent events, engrossing distractions and a deep and consistent cultural identity.

The original release earned a Metacritic rating of 94 on PC and Xbox, and 93 on PS3.

You play a common nobody who’s entrusted by the Emperor to sort out the gates to Oblivion, an evil Daedric plane, that keep opening up across Cyrodiil. Quite an important job, then, but not so pressing that you can’t also find the time to spend 20 hours collecting Nirnroot, stealing horses, sorting out NPCs’ petty squabbles or crafting slightly better ebony armour for yourself.

It was originally developed by Bethesda Game Studios, whose most recent release Starfield had some of that original open-world RPG magic when mapped to an intergalactic future setting, but also had a sense of diminishing returns.

“You’ve got to sift through some filler to see the best that Starfield has to offer, but when you find it, that best’s worthy of the Bethesda Game Studios name,” we noted at the time in our Starfield review.