In an age of constant remakes, it’s nice to know that not every game will be forced through the remake grinder. According to former Elder Scrolls, Fallout, and Starfield artist Nate Purkeypile, one series that will never go through an official from-the-ground-up remake is, well, any of the aforementioned games from Bethesda.
Right now, as Bethesda continues work on The Elder Scrolls 6 and commits years of additional dev time to Starfield, the studio is partnering with external teams on remasters of older titles. Last year’s Oblivion Remastered released to great sales and decent reception, and there are reportedly remasters of Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas on the way.
However, in an interview with Kiwi Talkz, Purkeypile explained that remaking a Bethesda game—taking the original and reformatting it in a new engine with new gameplay systems, simply isn’t “viable”. Whereas simpler games like Resident Evil can be remade every few years, remaking an RPG of Bethesda’s scale likely isn’t cost effective.
Purkeypile explained that the current style of remaster Bethesda is aiming for is “very clever”, adding that the “wrapper on top of the base game” is the only real move forward for games not just of this scale, but games that rely on detailed interconnectivity of systems.
“I really, really like the Resident Evil remakes, and those are really cool, where it’s like totally remade, but I don’t think that’s really viable for a Bethesda game to do that,” the artist said. Fallout 4 animator Jeremy Bryant chimed in adding that keeping the systems in tact is the best way to go about bringing these games back for a modern audience. “It preserves the nostalgia, too,” Bryant added.
“And with that many systems interacting, it would hard to get it to feel the same way,” Purkeypile continued. “Ugh, I wouldn’t wish that on anybody.”
On the other hand, other former Bethesda developers have pushed entirely against the idea of a remake simply because the time to create one would take away from the development of something new. In an interview last year, Skyrim lead designer and Starfield systems designer Bruce Nesmith argued against the idea of a Morrowind remake, instead saying Bethesda should return to the area but “make it new” with “a new story”.
While Bethesda may not be able to make remakes of its own games, that hasn’t stopped fans from creating both remakes of their favourite entries. Skyblivion, a full remake of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion into Skyrim’s more complex engine, has been in development for over a decade, and is finally approaching release. Skywind, a remake of Morrowind in Skyrim’s engine, is also still in development.
For more Bethesda content, read about how the new Starfield Free Lanes update was made, and the challenges that the team had to overcome to bring free-form spaceflight into the game.
