Bethesda’s long-rumoured, recently-leaked remaster of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is likely real, as the publisher has teased a livestream simply titled “All will be revealed” (at the time of writing) set for April 22, 11 AM ET (11 PM Malaysia Time, +8 GMT).
That is, assuming the artwork, with the “IV” written a familiar font to the logo of Oblivion and the reddish background of a zoom-up shot of a person in armour with one eye visible that looks reminiscent to the artwork of the original game’s cover art, is supposed to be hinting at it, that is.
Rumours of a remaster or remake of Oblivion has been making the rounds for a while, but it wasn’t until screenshots of found on developer Virtuous’ website (reported by Eurogamer, PC Gamer among others) that has made people truly believe it being real. Though, the purported screenshots, now pulled but not before enough people have shared it around socials and news outlets reported on them, do look, unreal.
Whatever it is, all will be revealed later today.
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion first released in 2006, introduces players of the long-running open-world RPG series to the verdant region that lies at the heart of Tamriel: Cyrodiil. The follow-up to Morrowind greatly overhauled its RPG mechanics, introduces the Radiant AI system and fully-voiced dialogue.
The game was notoriously remembered for the Horse Armour DLC controversy, where the game includes cosmetic microtransactions. The idea of paying extra money for cosmetics was not widely accepted by PC and console gamers back then. With the rise of mobile gaming and online multiplayer titles, the practice of selling Horse Armour DLC, or any appearance-changing items, is more accepted, favoured even, by the current gaming community today. A lot can happen in 19 years.
The graphics hasn’t aged well, it looks odd even back in the day. But its charm of having so many interacting systems that makes moments like this happen is what makes this game so memorable. And memes aside, it has a great open world that’s fun to explore.
Oblivion was later followed-up in 2011 with The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, the most successful title in the series. Supposedly the sixth entry to the series is in the works, hopefully so now that developer Bethesda Game Studios has shipped its open-world space game Starfield.