The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remake/Remaster.
- Thread starter TheKingofVault14
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Jogre
So Old I'm Losing Radiation Signs
See, I feel this video sums it up nicely: There's a lot of nice eye candy, but it also just kills a lot.
I was having this conversation with my partner earlier today actually: About this sort of technofetishist tendency to think "New = Better" that just doesn't really hold up.
Oblivion looks like a game from 2006, and that's fine - It has the graphical styles and decisions of it's time - The Opening Cutscene starts and the Emperor has a special face modeled for the cutscenes like in most games of the time, you get blurry glimpses of Oblivion but it kinda looks like an area you'll see later in the game and gets you hyped up for it - You enter the world and there are some goofy textures and too much bloom - And all that's fine - That's what graphics looked like at the time, and looking at them hyped you up to play the game even if they were a bit goofy.
IDK, I feel kinda the same with movies - Like they're clearly made with the technical limitations and stylistic decisions of the time period they were made in - And some people see that and think "Well this is outdated" - But to me, I just think - This is an aesthetic - It has the right to look that way - And the world kinda becomes a bland samey place if you take all different aesthetics from across different time periods, decide arbritrarily that later always looks better - And then just draw over how things used to look because you can do something more technically impressive and just assume that's better without thinking.
Norzan
Half-way Through My Half-life
No, they didn't. That's an insult to the games that at the time had far better graphics, even in the previous console generation.
Oblivion has been since release memed for its bad textures, really bad pop-in and potato faces. What Bethesda has done with the remaster is make the game look dead.
Big No
Watch as I open and close this door
I assume Oblivion's scale was a big reason for why it looks the way it does. Hundreds of named NPC's with their own schedules and hundreds of dungeons (as copy and pasted as they may be) combined with it being Bethesda's first outing with the new 360/PS3 hardware probably contributed to its cartoony look. Kinda hard to get the detail of, for example, Bioshock in a wide open environment like Cyrodill. I still think Oblivion's graphics have their charm in a way. This remake kinda looks like they just smashed Oblivion and Skyrim together with some texture mods for good measure. Silly really.
Norzan
Half-way Through My Half-life
I'll agree that the graphics in Oblivion were probably done with limitations of being open world in mind plus hardware limitations, but it's still wrong to say that's what the graphics looked like at the time when they didn't.
But this time they had no excuse and still managed to make it look dead and somehow have worse faces.
But this time they had no excuse and still managed to make it look dead and somehow have worse faces.
Jogre
So Old I'm Losing Radiation Signs
My point wasn't that it was high-end or that there weren't much more technically advanced looking games at the time.
The point is games are allowed to look a little old - Games are allowed to have technical limitations to their graphics - Not every game has to look 100% the most technically impressive it could.
And my point was remaking games in a new graphical format feels like a crime against art - Because rather than embracing the aesthetic that the technical limitations created - It's saying that this is just bad and not allowed to exist.
It'd be like if we decided "The Mona Lisa looks too old fashioned because it doesn't work in more advanced perspective techniques" and then just pretended that an updated version looks better.
Norzan
Half-way Through My Half-life
Graphics are the least of Oblivion's problems anyway. I'd rather they had fixed the level scaling, combat, factions, and put back all the stuff they removed from Morrowind.
Mr Fish
Slippy sloppy, The
Resardiv
Herr Nordic Lost in Amerikat
A 2025 remake of a 2006 game can't rival 1997 claymation
Gizmojunk
Antediluvian as Feck
My initial hope after playing Oblivion was that for FO3 there was at least the option of rendering the regular game & gameplay at the quality level of the talking heads and the cutscenes. That turned out to be disappointment #1.
Fallout wasn't claymation; not like Clayfighter, or Neverhood. They used a digitizer stylus to import the clay head sculptures into Lightwave, and animated the models from there.
10/10 game right there
Resardiv
Herr Nordic Lost in Amerikat
Right, I couldn't be bothered to look up the proppa name for the technique they used.
Ediros
Water Chip? Been There, Done That
Currently sitting at 82% positive reviews out of 13k. Wtf?
Seriously, just... why? It's a 60$ graphical mod pack for a game from almost 20 years ago. Instead of buying it, you could just use oblivion + wabbajack and get similar experience.
For fucks sake, Skyoblivion is coming out and will probably be free! Why would you pay real life money for an outdated, poorly written mess which is also woke now (genders removed and replaced with bodytypes)?
Either nostalgia goggles are real or people are that stupid. My guess it's a bit of both. You could get Baldur's Gate 3 instead or Solasta or Persona 5 Royal instead of it. Fucking hell...
Seriously, just... why? It's a 60$ graphical mod pack for a game from almost 20 years ago. Instead of buying it, you could just use oblivion + wabbajack and get similar experience.
For fucks sake, Skyoblivion is coming out and will probably be free! Why would you pay real life money for an outdated, poorly written mess which is also woke now (genders removed and replaced with bodytypes)?
Either nostalgia goggles are real or people are that stupid. My guess it's a bit of both. You could get Baldur's Gate 3 instead or Solasta or Persona 5 Royal instead of it. Fucking hell...
Norzan
Half-way Through My Half-life
Nostalgia goggles are real, people feel the need to get the remaster because it's for a game they played when they were kids.
I'll say that 82% is kind of low, for a game that people sucked its dick back in 2006 with 10 out 10s. But let's not forget that a lot of the remaster's positive reviews were made literally like five minutes after it was put up for sale, which is completely ridiculous because those people had barely played the thing to see if it was good or not.
Gizmojunk
Antediluvian as Feck
This is Harry alongside the Bethesda supermutant:
The model from Fallout (what we see of it) actually seems more dense, and complex than the one from FO3.
Along the right side is a full supermutant mesh model, seen used in the first frames of the VATS dip scene from Fallout.
It should go without saying that obviously the cutscenes are pre-rendered, and FO3 models were used in realtime rendering.
Also a bit of further information on them:
The captions are pure golden.
Also a bit of further information on them:
The captions are pure golden.
*As an aside [for the record] I believe that the leather strap on the mutants holds up their teeth (specifically the maxilla bone), and not just their upper lip, as some have postulated.
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Mr Fish
Slippy sloppy, The
Yep, there is a post on RPG codex that I'm just gonna rip as I feel a similar sentiment to it:
"I have to be honest, since yesterday I've been in a sort of cognitive dissociation state: first of all, I'm astonished by Bethesda's audacity (I don't know how else to put it), who, after 14 years of re-releasing Skyrim in every possible way and that abortion of Starfield (let's just keep quiet about Fallout 76), decides that to make a leap forward, they’ll re-release this hybrid abomination of Oblivion remastered, when, of all the games they've created, this is certainly the last one that should be remembered, as it represents the beginning of the end of everything good they'd achieved until then from a role-playing perspective. But the thing that confuses me the most is the apparent sales success, despite the absurd hardware requirements, the technical execution that appears at least inconsistent, the characters that look like puppets (an improvement over the previous potato-like models? Who knows?) and the crazy price, not to mention the "deluxe" edition with the troll move of the horse armor? And the audience? Soon, let's hurry and get screwed properly for the umpteenth time, and once again show, if it were needed, that they can rip us off every time they want and we’re perfectly happy about it, in fact, we thank them and sing praises for the good Todd."
- Shog-goth
See, we've had criticisms of Fallout 4, and we've had people reflect upon Skyrim and even Fallout 3. Had a resurgence of love for FNV when back in the day it was shat upon by a ton of people for just being a glorified expansion pack. We've had the massive failure that is Fallout 76 and the following disaster that is Starfield.
The planets were aligning for people to become more critical of Bethesda and actually start holding their feet to the fire.
Then this happens. Now, Starfield also started really positive but started to climb down the further it got because people as they played it realized "wait, this is actually shit". Can that happen to Oblviomastered? Sure.
But... Prior to Fallout 76 I'd say that Bethesdafans are fucking cultish. There is something weird with these people. There is some serious dissonance between their ability to enjoy Bethesda games, having a standard for gaming conventions and critical thinking. For some reason Bethesda games just turns peoples brains off. You can point at the shit on the wall and scream at them to look but when they do they just don't see it. They won't see it. They'll never see it.
It's not normal. I love certain older games but my god can I criticize the shit out of them for their bad design choices. But they still have redeemable qualities to them. I'd argue that Skyrim at least has the world and some semifunctional combat and Morrowind has a great world, atmosphere and lore to it that makes you tolerate the dogshit gameplay. But Oblivion? Oblivion has a handful of good quests that are marred with the same dozen voice actors that have keyboard smash names and appearances that make them all bleed together into a grey slur. That's it. Every facet of Oblivion is terrible. "Oh but back in the day" yeah but we're not back in the day anymore. Games have to hold up on their own no matter how old they are. There has to be some redeemable quality to them.
It's not that you cannot enjoy Oblivion but to flood Bethesda with 180 million supposed sales on launch week because you are desperate to play a game you already own just with UE shit filter over it does not make any sense.
It's annoying. The reason for why some companies don't improve is because their fanbases clap wildly like retarded seals at mediocrity. The reason for why we don't get good stuff is because that mediocrity is hailed as some sort of a gift from god. It's holding the industry back and has been for the longest time. But we've seen a shift in peoples response to this. We've seen more backlash at bullshit. We've seen more feet getting cooked. We've seen people start to hold games that actually aspire to move gaming forward up as exemplary and a new standard to follow.
And then this happens.
Absolute wank.
Cultists. The lot of them. "Oh but I enjoyed this game from my childhood" Yeah I enjoyed The Sims 1 as well and it is on Steam right now for 20 euro. Yknow why I haven't bought it? Because it is the sims fucking 1 and while it is a part of my childhood it is not that good of a game that I'm going to waste 20 smackaroonies on it. And even if I do buy it at 10 euro (which is far more appropriate considering its age) then I'm not gonna glaze EA for it. If they remastered it and just updated the graphical fidelity but left in every single bad design decision that they improved upon or outright remove in Sims 2 and 3 then I'd have myself a cookout, cause it ain't just their feet that would go on the fire.
But they glaze, oh boy do they love to glaze. 56 bucks for bloatware with a shitfilter and 10 dollar horse armor dlc? SIGN ME THE FUCK UP!!!!1!
Oblivion is a game that starts off fine enough but gets worse the longer you play it because you start to realize just how hollow the world is, how repetitive the dungeons become, how samey the combat is and never evolves, how unrewarding loot is, how dogshit the NPC's are, how clunky the UI is. The only hope for these zombies is that they snap awake later and go "wait... this is shit actually" just like they did with Starfield.
I wouldn't hold my breath though.
/end rant
"let people enjoy things!"
yeah yeah go back to your trough of shit and consume yourself swollen.
Jogre
So Old I'm Losing Radiation Signs
I think I'm just against graphical remasters on principle. They kinda seem disrespectful to me.
Just play the original, y'know.
Just play the original, y'know.
Norzan
Half-way Through My Half-life
Nah, depends on how you do it. Remake of Resident Evil 1 looks miles better than the original, and not just in the polygons department. Much better atmosphere, better lighting, better sense of dread.
The difference is that Capcom gave a shit when Bethesda didn't.
The difference is that Capcom gave a shit when Bethesda didn't.
Resardiv
Herr Nordic Lost in Amerikat
It took Bethesda 4 years to make the remaster, FOUR FUCKING YEARS!
I would be surprised if we even get a TESVI as Bethesda is incapable of producing something new. There's nothing left to dumb down and scale back.
I would be surprised if we even get a TESVI as Bethesda is incapable of producing something new. There's nothing left to dumb down and scale back.
Mr Fish
Slippy sloppy, The
