I tried Oblivion Remastered and it has highlighted a big issue. I’ve talked about what makes a good remake. But, we need to discuss a certain aspect of it.

I was never into the Elder Scrolls games. I understand why people like it, but Im not a fan of fantasy. I find the stories and tropes get overused, and stories feel samey. I remember when Oblivion first came out and how much people loved it. 

I played it for the first time as a remaster and I don’t know why people like it. They left in many of the bugs and glitches that people thought were funny, which is fine. They also left in ones that were just annoying, like in the beginning when you’re talking to one of the kings guards and you just fall through the floor and textures are colliding. Now I’m wondering did they leave these bugs in because they didn’t want to fix them? I also felt the setup for the story was just anticlimactic and contrived, someone’s coming for the king, he escape passage is on your cell and he’s seen you in his dreams. The combat was very basic and uninspired.

The biggest issue with the game is the loss of art direction from the original game. It went from being colorful to this realistic looking world. The new color palette works for the dungeons. Outside it looks like every other fantasy game. New lighting can be an issue when you don’t customize it to recreate the feel of the old game. Camera wise they changed some angles and removed  the quick zoom in from certain character interactions.

The character models, like in a lot of remakes and remastered have but many don’t really look like them. In a remake, the characters should look like them with just next gen graphics. A lot of these dev teams my are taking creative liberties with characters. They act like since the gap between games was so big, they can evolve the character or make it how they want it to look.

One of the reasons for this is Unreal. Theres been many remasters and remakes done in it that have not come out that well. Its now becoming an even bigger standard than it was. This is because studios can now let go and bring in more contractors. They can continue where the previous ones left off without any issues of getting used to a new engine. The reason they bring in new contractors and let the old ones go after a certain amount of time, is it allows them to not have to pay benefits for them.

Im guessing when you’re remaking something in Unreal, theres a framework or utility that pulls in and maybe uses algorithms to update textures. lStrangely when you see fans remake certain games and cinematics this isn’t an issue. There re-creation looks like the game but with updated graphics. 

I understand there are ways games can be improved by remaking them, but devs aren’t going down that route. They want to just take the old game put modern graphics and lighting into it, and for the art direction of the original game. I’m concerned for a Fallout 3 remake, if that is getting done in Unreal. It should be done in the Creation engine use Fallout 4’s assets and gameplay. There was a mod project already doing this, they did a perfect re-creation of Fallout 3s Point Lookout DLC.