Bethesda’s Oblivion Remastered Nails What To Modernize — And What To Leave Alone
Bethesda's studio director says the game’s built-to-last design gives it real sticking power, keeping players hooked.
Skyrim is the one folks always wander back to, but Oblivion has been quietly pulling people in for years too. And now that The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered is here, Bethesda itself is doing the same thing: revisiting, poking around, and remembering why this oddball 2006 RPG still hits.
Why Oblivion keeps calling you back
At The Golden Joystick Awards 2025, I asked Bethesda Game Studios studio director Tom Mustaine what gives Oblivion that weird staying power. His answer was refreshingly simple: the game genuinely changes based on how you approach it, even when you know it inside-out.
'Every time I play the game, I end up doing something completely different, and I experience new things even after I have played it so many times.'
He says that even with the tricks burned into his brain, the game still manages to surprise him. That right there is the secret sauce: the systems collide in ways that keep creating new stories, long after most RPGs run dry.
Opening the vault without dusting away the magic
Mustaine described returning to the project as popping the lid on a time capsule: a lot of cool ideas built almost 20 years ago, made as well as they could be at the time, still sitting there waiting to be polished. Emphasis on polished — not replaced. The team didn’t want to sand down the game’s personality. You know the stuff I mean: peasants starting random fistfights because the AI got spicy, quests going sideways in hilarious ways — the jank that became part of the charm.
What the remaster team actually changed (and didn’t)
- Gave visuals and select systems a fresh coat of paint
- Made deliberate calls on what to modernize and what to leave untouched
- Preserved the emergent chaos that makes Oblivion feel alive (yes, the occasional village brawl stays)
- Kept a hard line on not breaking the legacy or the game’s delicate ecosystem
The tough call behind the scenes
According to Mustaine, there were real debates about whether to remaster Oblivion at all. The question wasn’t just 'can we?' but 'should we?' The team only moved forward once it felt obvious that they could refresh it without trampling what makes it special. In other words: make it cleaner, not safer.
One more thing: surprise releases are on the menu
After pulling off Oblivion Remastered and seeing how Hi-Fi Rush landed, Mustaine says he is into the idea of more shadowdrops from Bethesda Game Studios. His reasoning: 'we all have short attention spans now.' He isn’t wrong. And for a game like Oblivion — which thrives when people just jump in and mess around — a surprise launch fits the vibe.