An The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion remake has been doing the rounds on the rumour mill for a while now, and according to an an apparent leak, we now might have learned some details about some gameplay systems which’ve been reworked for it.
This as of yet unannanounced remake – that’s supposedly being developed in Unreal Engine 5 – has been the subject of alleged leaks and online chatter for a couple of years now, having first popped up in 2023, when someone claiming to be an ex-Virtuos Games employee popped up on Reddit, and was subsequently mentioned in some Microsoft documents which leaked during the company’s ActiBlizz deal court proceedings against the FTC.
Now, MP1st reports that an ex-Virtuos employee – it’s not clear whether it’s the same one – has leaked some alleged details about the remake via their website. The site claims this employee worked on the game between 2023 and 2024, having seemingly mentioned that it’s being developed using Unreal 5 and will be “fully remade”.
They’ve also allegedly provided details about six gameplay systems or elements which have been or will be reworked as part of the remake – these being stamina, sneak, blocking, archery, hit reaction, and the HUD. According to MP1st, the employee claimed that a lot of these systems have been reworked due to the original versions ben considered to be some combination of too “boring”, “frustrating”, or not modern enough.
The new blocking’s apparently taken some inspiration from Souls-likes, sneaking will feature more prominent icons as well as reworked damage, stamina changes will make hilarious knockdowns tougher to achieve, archery’s been tweaked to make it “more playable” in first and third person, the HUD’ll be easier for kids to grasp, and, finally, “hit reactions” have allegedly been added in to “improve the response to damage inflicted on the player and NPCs”.
Assuming it’s accurate, it’s all the kinds of things people have been doing with mods for Oblivion and Skyrim for years, but as someone who tries not to get rid of all of the loveable Bethesda jank Oblivion’s full of when I mod it, a couple of the tweaks this report claims have been made do worry me a little for the remake’s buggy soul.
Will those alleged changes to knockdowns and how NPCs react to taking damage make it impossible for first-time players to enjoy experiencing stuff like the guard/lava hijinks shown in the clip above – which is one of my many favourite YouTube things that revolve around Oblivion often being unintentionally hilarious?
We’ll just have to see if this Oblivion remake turns outto be real and as suggested here, but I think we can all agree you can’t really have an Oblivion remake that’s not full of stuff like this. Hopefully between this and Skyblivion, I’ll just about be able to get plenty of my jank fix while also enjoying a revamped Cyrodiil.
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