TES Oblivion Remastered

[Roguey]

The remake apparently uses UE5 for graphics and Creation/Gamebryo for everything else. Wouldn't be surprised if this was a testbed for doing the same with TESVI, since it eases up the graphical workload while maintaining the advantages of their in-house engine.

This is all very eyebrow raising. Bethesda has been rewriting/improving their renderer with each major release, what's the value in stapling Unreal's renderer to their code and having to pay Epic from now on as well after they freed themselves from Gamebryo which is now dead?

[maidenhaver]

More devs use Unreal, so familiarity.

[rusty_shackleford]

More devs use Unreal, so familiarity.

That would imply they're still using Creation Engine tooling. I'm not sure if I believe the claim made, however. Seems like something from someone who does not understand the technology.

[Statesman]

More devs use Unreal, so familiarity.

That would imply they're still using Creation Engine tooling. I'm not sure if I believe the claim made, however. Seems like something from someone who does not understand the technology.

If it is limited to the graphics renderer, as the rumors seem to imply, why wouldn't it be workable?

[rusty_shackleford]

More devs use Unreal, so familiarity.

That would imply they're still using Creation Engine tooling. I'm not sure if I believe the claim made, however. Seems like something from someone who does not understand the technology.

If it is limited to the graphics renderer, as the rumors seem to imply, why wouldn't it be workable?

Because it would be a lot of effort for both very little gain and having to pay a % of all sales to uncle timmy

[maidenhaver]

Maybe the remake devs were paid to make it work, so Todd could work on Indiana Jonestein and the Big Kikel?

[Statesman]

Because it would be a lot of effort for both very little gain and having to pay a % of all sales to uncle timmy

Having access to a cheap, disposable workforce is very likely to be considered a major asset by any profit-minded corporation. As is allowing easy collaboration with third-party-studios and eliminating the effort required to keep their graphical core up-to-date with current industry standards.

Considering the sheer scale of Bethesdasoft, I doubt they'll be paying the generic flat 5% royalties. If Microsoft considered switching their flagship title (Halo) to UE5 justifiable, handling Uncle Timmy is not much of an issue. Most of the actual workload should have been handled by Virtuos, thus the remake (if successful) could arguably pay for the whole ordeal.

[rusty_shackleford]

Because it would be a lot of effort for both very little gain and having to pay a % of all sales to uncle timmy

Having access to a cheap, disposable workforce is very likely to be considered a major asset by any profit-minded corporation. As is allowing easy collaboration with third-party-studios and eliminating the effort required to keep their graphical core up-to-date with current industry standards.

Considering the sheer scale of Bethesdasoft, I doubt they'll be paying the generic flat 5% royalties. If Microsoft considered switching their flagship title (Halo) to UE5 justifiable, handling Uncle Timmy is not much of an issue. Most of the actual workload should have been handled by Virtuos, thus the remake (if successful) could arguably pay for the whole ordeal.

Just using the renderer would get you none of that. Which is what I meant by it seeming like a claim by someone who doesn't understand it.

[Demonic Fate]

Perhaps they just wanted to see if it was possible to get UE5's newer graphics technology to work with their TES tooling. While Starfield had a ton of much, much bigger problems, the fact that it looked like *** probably didn't help.

It would explain why a remaster, and why the secrecy. They just wanted to run a tech experiment without involving their designers/writers/artists, and they thought there was a real chance that UE5 couldn't do what they wanted and that they'd need to scrap the entire project.

t. Lots Of Speculation®

[Breathe]

Gross. The whole vibe is ruined.

[rusty_shackleford]

Soule vs souleless

[Breathe]

It makes me think not one of the devs working on this played Oblivion during its time.

[rusty_shackleford]

To be entirely fair I think it's possible they hooked it up to UE5 and mostly just used it for rendering.
That is, used oblivion non-art assets as is. Some code to glue the oblivion code to it.

But I'd assume it would be easier to merely port it to the newest version of the creation engine. Also I don't think the guys doing the remake are all that technically proficient to begin with.

Seems more likely it was just remade in UE5.

[Vergil]

Tbf brown is a very sacred color to indians

[loregamer]

Wait wtf it's real?

[Vergil]

Wait wtf it's real?

BAD END - MAD WORLD

[maidenhaver]

Wait wtf it's real?

No.

[Statesman]

Because it would be a lot of effort for both very little gain and having to pay a % of all sales to uncle timmy

Having access to a cheap, disposable workforce is very likely to be considered a major asset by any profit-minded corporation. As is allowing easy collaboration with third-party-studios and eliminating the effort required to keep their graphical core up-to-date with current industry standards.

Considering the sheer scale of Bethesdasoft, I doubt they'll be paying the generic flat 5% royalties. If Microsoft considered switching their flagship title (Halo) to UE5 justifiable, handling Uncle Timmy is not much of an issue. Most of the actual workload should have been handled by Virtuos, thus the remake (if successful) could arguably pay for the whole ordeal.

Just using the renderer would get you none of that. Which is what I meant by it seeming like a claim by someone who doesn't understand it.

It would, but just from the graphical asset side of development. To be fair, considering all the conflicting rumors (just the renderer, UE5 layered on top, full UE5), I don't see why Bethesda wouldn't have gone all in by allowing a full UE5 remake (at least after UE5 added cel-based loading). Use the new engine to excuse the lack of applicable mod tools and then shove paid mods as the "only" option for the average console peasant, I mean consumer. If it flops, they can blame Virtuos, if it works they get a cheap remake pipeline.

[maidenhaver]

By the way, I screencapped and doxxed every youtube commentor who has ever once said "this game needs a remake!" and if you're one of those people, then I'm sorry, but there's no stopping the storm I'm unleashing on your moms.

[Vergil]

You're gonna be having an argument with a person who has only played the demake one day. Think about that. Scary stuff. They don't even talk about that in the Bible.

[Roguey]

Perhaps they just wanted to see if it was possible to get UE5's newer graphics technology to work with their TES tooling. While Starfield had a ton of much, much bigger problems, the fact that it looked like *** probably didn't help.

It looks fine though. It wouldn't look significantly better if you took the assets and plugged them into Unreal.

[maidenhaver]

This remake is for tardos and people who never played Oblivion the first time. To convince those people, all you meed to do is say new engine, and they gobble it down. Time will tell if its still creation kit.

[Demonic Fate]

Perhaps they just wanted to see if it was possible to get UE5's newer graphics technology to work with their TES tooling. While Starfield had a ton of much, much bigger problems, the fact that it looked like *** probably didn't help.

It looks fine though. It wouldn't look significantly better if you took the assets and plugged them into Unreal.

First: it doesn't look fine. Not for an AAA big-budget first person game from 2023; it's not an indie game, it needs to impress or at least charm.

Second: If you took the exact same assets? No. But I suspect that the Creation Engine's limitations are why those assets look like they came from 2012, with almost flat trees and a "capital city" with no infrastructure and a population of 62:

► Show Spoiler

For the peanut crowd, let me restate the obvious: if Starfield had had the best graphics in the world, it would just have been a shinier turd.

But Skyrim's nature and dragons made casual buyers go "woah, have my $60 Todd" long before they could discover the joy of shallow quests and grinding iron daggers, while I doubt anyone went "woah" at Starfield at all.

[rusty_shackleford]

starfield still ran better than 99.9% of unreal turds 5 games

also didn't look the devs smeared vaseline on my monitor

[maidenhaver]

BGS had the impossible task of making a game that looks and plays better than Skyrim with mods, but if they can just wait ten more years, I'm sure nobody will remember them, and they can sell tes6 as an indy game.

[rusty_shackleford]

Just realized they did the thing

5cgbrrob9m5e1.png

[Lord of Riva]

Are they going to scrap the level scaling?

If not, **** them.

[Roguey]

First: it doesn't look fine. Not for an AAA big-budget first person game from 2023; it's not an indie game, it needs to impress or at least charm.

Second: If you took the exact same assets? No. But I suspect that the Creation Engine's limitations are why those assets look like they came from 2012, with almost flat trees and a "capital city" with no infrastructure and a population of 62:

Here's The Outer Worlds 2, a 2025 Unreal Engine 5 space RPG.

This does not completely blow Starfield away. Quality of the renderer doesn't have too much of an affect on engine-agnostic art style/assets. UE5 is definitely not going to help with crowd sizes, just the opposite more than likely. Unreal Engine sucks for open world games, even now. Vavra dunked on CDP for going with UE for the next Witcher https://www.windowscentral.com/gaming/k ... l-engine-5

"I talked with guys who are making The Witcher or from studios that are just trying to make some open-world games on Unreal because there aren't really any open-world games on Unreal. Assassin's Creed, everything like that, is on their own engine."

"CD Projekt just switched to Unreal. Even though, in my opinion, they had a good proprietary engine. I talked to someone whose name I obviously can't say, and I said to him, 'So how about Unreal?' 'Great, we already have pieces done, like some landscapes.' And I said, well, what about the open world? 'Not yet.' When did they announce it? A year or two ago, and it still doesn't work?"

Daniel later mentioned that Unreal Engine simply wasn't made for open-world games, nor terrain generation, "If you wanted to make a game on Unreal from some rocks, that's great, but it couldn't do trees for a long time. Their nanite couldn't generate vegetation until now. Now it can." Looking at you, Satisfactory.

He goes on to detail the amazing videos of trees and the life-like nature of the vegetation that's produced in Unreal Engine 5 but hammers it for performance. "Until you look at some demo and realize that while it looks absolutely divine. Photos, just like a movie. Then you need a computer that costs two hundred grands (8000 Euro), and a maximum of four people can walk there because otherwise, even the **** computer that costs two hundred grand will not be able to run it."

I imagine there are good reasons why devs aren't flocking to Cryengine ("too hard" most likely)

[rusty_shackleford]

I imagine there are good reasons why devs aren't flocking to Cryengine ("too hard" most likely)

"Too dead" is more like it.
KCD2 was grandfathered in, KCD began development as a prototype back when cryengine was actually seeing development.

[Demonic Fate]

First: it doesn't look fine. Not for an AAA big-budget first person game from 2023; it's not an indie game, it needs to impress or at least charm.

Second: If you took the exact same assets? No. But I suspect that the Creation Engine's limitations are why those assets look like they came from 2012, with almost flat trees and a "capital city" with no infrastructure and a population of 62:

Here's The Outer Worlds 2, a 2025 Unreal Engine 5 space RPG.

This does not completely blow Starfield away. Quality of the renderer doesn't have too much of an affect on engine-agnostic art style/assets. UE5 is definitely not going to help with crowd sizes, just the opposite more than likely. Unreal Engine sucks for open world games, even now. Vavra dunked on CDP for going with UE for the next Witcher https://www.windowscentral.com/gaming/k ... l-engine-5

"I talked with guys who are making The Witcher or from studios that are just trying to make some open-world games on Unreal because there aren't really any open-world games on Unreal. Assassin's Creed, everything like that, is on their own engine."

"CD Projekt just switched to Unreal. Even though, in my opinion, they had a good proprietary engine. I talked to someone whose name I obviously can't say, and I said to him, 'So how about Unreal?' 'Great, we already have pieces done, like some landscapes.' And I said, well, what about the open world? 'Not yet.' When did they announce it? A year or two ago, and it still doesn't work?"

Daniel later mentioned that Unreal Engine simply wasn't made for open-world games, nor terrain generation, "If you wanted to make a game on Unreal from some rocks, that's great, but it couldn't do trees for a long time. Their nanite couldn't generate vegetation until now. Now it can." Looking at you, Satisfactory.

He goes on to detail the amazing videos of trees and the life-like nature of the vegetation that's produced in Unreal Engine 5 but hammers it for performance. "Until you look at some demo and realize that while it looks absolutely divine. Photos, just like a movie. Then you need a computer that costs two hundred grands (8000 Euro), and a maximum of four people can walk there because otherwise, even the **** computer that costs two hundred grand will not be able to run it."

I imagine there are good reasons why devs aren't flocking to Cryengine ("too hard" most likely)

Starfield had a budget of $400M. I can't find a budget figure for TOW2, but TOW1 was around $30-40M.

I agree that moving from REDEngine to UE5 is a weird choice. RED did amazing things for Night City: besides the crowds and lightning, there are quests where you need to take the elevator up to like the 80th floor, which in any other game would be a disguised area transition; in Cyberpunk it's seamless, you can jump off the balcony and see yourself splash on top of the same NPCs you walked past when entering the building. Getting UE5 to do the same looks like a crazy challenge (though CDProjekt has more resources than Bohemia Interactive).

But Bethesda doesn't have REDEngine. They have CE, and if they are unable to make their 2023 flagship game look better than Skyrim, what happens if their 2035 flagship still looks like that? Doing some experiments with different engines before committing to a big project makes sense.