Last year's The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered did a lot more than slap a fresh coat of paint on the 2006 RPG, with environments (but not necessarily character models) that look straight out of a 2026 AAA release, but as anyone who's played the original game knows, it's still very much Oblivion, lovable jank and all. While there was a lot of deliberation about what and what not to modernize during development, Todd Howard and co. drew a hard line between remaster and full-blown remake, opting to market the game as a polished-up version of the original rather than something all new.
That's because, in the words of associate art director Dan Lee, it shares the same "bones" as the original Oblivion. "Obviously the art is remake territory, it was all remade," Lee tells Nintendo Life. "But it really came down to Todd's perception of - well, the core bones are still the original game. So it's disingenuous to call it a remake. We're taking the core engine and then laying all this other stuff on top. We did some other little tweaks and things like that. But the core is still mostly there."
You might think the distinction between remaster and remake is fairly straightforward, and to some degree it is, but since there's such a wide spectrum between straight-up ports and ground-up remakes, the lines can be a little fuzzy and lead to all sorts of controversy when it comes to pricing and availability alongside the originals. On the other hand, there are remakes that are so different from their original counterparts as to be virtually considered separate games, leaving zero ambiguity about how to label them.
"There are all kinds of games that fit on the scale where it's just high resolution and then maybe they upgrade some of the textures or update some character models," adds Lee. "But then you can go all the way over to Resident Evil 2 and Final Fantasy 7 Remake, which are clearly remakes. They're taking the original vision and then just making completely new games based on that vision. Whereas here, we have lots of elements of the original game intact."
I think Bethesda made the right call sticking to remastering Oblivion rather than remaking it. Both Oblivion and Oblivion Remastered are gorgeous games and, with a remake, the studio would've likely had to reallocate resources from The Elder Scrolls 6, which was announced eight long years ago. No distractions, is what I'm saying.
