"Baffling and sad at the same time": The latest Oblivion Remastered patch was supposed to improve performance, but testing finds reality doesn't match the patch notes

The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered gave Bethesda's venerable RPG a gorgeous new coat of paint, but it hasn't gotten rid of that old jank. Your nostalgia for random crashes and frame rate rollercoasters may vary, but Bethesda has made a point of noting its work on performance improvements in the game's latest patch notes. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem that work has done much to improve the state of things.

That's according to testing from the folks at Digital Foundry, who report that all the fundamental issues with Oblivion Remastered – including inconsistent frame rates, constant frame time shifts, and much weirder visual bugs – are all still intact even after the 1.2 update dropped earlier this month. The issues all still apply across PS5 and Xbox Series X/S.

Bethesda said in its official rundown of the patch that it had fixed several frame rate drops in specific areas, "reduced the frequency of hitches in the open world," and made "general improvements to frame time in many locations." But testing does not bear that out.

Precise frame rates were wildly inconsistent across Digital Foundry's testing – there's still some inexplicable issue where the frame rates can vary even after loading the same save off of a fresh boot every time – but they're almost exactly in line with how the game ran pre-patch.

Running down these results in a recent episode of the DF Weekly podcast, Alex Battaglia, who previously analyzed the PC version – spoilers: it's also got all the same issues – called the results "baffling and sad at the same time." He notes that the "promises of the patch notes, they're not borne out," and worries that the problems here, many of which go back to the original 2006 game, may not be fixable at all.

This patch did, at least, make some important door-related corrections for Dark Brotherhood fans, but if you've been holding out for a patch to fix the performance issues, you might wanna stop holding your breath. Neither Bethesda itself nor community mods seem equipped to deal with whatever's hurting the frame rate in Oblivion Remastered.

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