It seems that people are evenly divided over the leaked images of the long-awaited Oblivion remaster, which is due out next week. Some people think it looks great while others are quite upset with its new art style.
While I personally do not have much love for the art style of the original Oblivion, I still understand why a select few are disappointed that the remaster ditches the vibrant saturated green color scheme for something more grounded and realistic.
The Trouble with Remaking Beloved Classics
Remake games is a tough job. Ideally, a good remake reflects the feeling of playing the game when it originally launched, but improves on some areas where the outdated design clashes with modern sensibilities and expectations. What makes this so difficult is that different people will have different preferences about what they want to keep from the original.
Take Resident Evil 4. for example. In the original game, Leon wasn't able to move and shoot at the same time, but in the remake, Capcom made him control much closer to modern third-person action games. This is a controversial change, as many felt that keeping your feet on the ground and using a gun increased the sense of tension, which ended up being lost due to Leon being more agile.
When it comes to Oblivion, there are many ways to modernize it but that doesn't mean everything has to change. A lot of the Xbox 360-junk associated with this game adds to its charm. Oblivion wouldn't be Oblivion if the guards didn't awkwardly barge into the room and turn everything upside down, stand in the middle of the mess they just made, and sternly tell you that they are taking you away in handcuffs.
Technically this is not what well-made modern games should be running on, but this roughness is key to the Oblivion experience. On the other hand, new players playing Oblivion for the first time might find the Oblivion-jank absurd and turn away from the game, because this kind of thing feels so dated.
So what do you do? It's an impossible task to please everyone, so Bethesda and Virtuoso had to make choices that they thought would fit the experience best. It's unfortunate that Oblivion's visual identity got lost along the way, but I can not blame the studio for making a creative choice and sticking to it.
Thank the Daedra A Win for Game Preservation
While some fans are disappointed. there is a silver lining in all of this. Fortunately the original Oblivion is still playable on modern Xbox consoles and PC so anyone unhappy with the remaster still has the option to explore the original version of Cyrodiil.
This is the ideal situation when a remake or remaster is launched. It's very frustrating when the re-release is the only way to play a game on modern hardware, as it means the re-release becomes the final version of that game by default.
For example, as much as I loved the Silent Hill 2 remake, I would really appreciate the ability to play the original game on my PS5 and compare the two. Oblivion is able to overcome this problem, as despite its age, if you don't like the changes made in the remaster, you can still try out the original game at any time.
I hope the Oblivion Remaster brings back the strange and fun feeling of the original. Even if it doesn't have bright colors. I am curious if they kept the part where the voice actor messes up and starts over. If not I will just stick with the original game.
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