The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered is still very much a Bethesda game. While the remaster of the 2006 Bethesda classic was beautifully received on launch, the veil has fallen as players still wait for key improvements months after launch.
Following the game’s release four months ago, Oblivion Remastered has been plagued with performance issues, not just due to its Unreal Engine 5 graphics, but also the ageing original Oblivion code running underneath.
Across PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series machines, the Elder Scrolls facelift still has issues with poor framerates, crashes and performance degradation with the game running worse the longer you play it. “Traversal between the different “cells” in the original game world (the skeletal framework of the game, over which Unreal Engine 5 runs) still cause significant frame-rate hitches on the new patch,” explained performance analysts at Digital Foundry.
In the months since, Steam reviews for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered have only continued to fall with the game now resting at a “Mixed” reception as Bethesda and remaster studio Virtuos fails to remedy the core issues plaguing the RPG. Maybe these are impossible fixes, but the lack of transparency from the developers has also rubbed fans the wrong way.
“I really want to recommend this game, but I can’t due to technical issues and performance,” one player wrote on Steam. “This game, on the highest settings, is the heaviest game I have ever played and my system is very good. It needs some help on the performance side, but patches are very few and far in between.”
While fans praise the “faithful remaster” of the game even now, the slow release of patches for the game and near silence over the game’s future is proving to be a major sore point for fans. Without even a promise for future performance fixes, a lot of players have lost faith that the game’s issues will ever actually be solved.
“As a mod creator I had to mod-fix this game back in 2006, and now in 2025 this chore continues,” another Steam user explained. “A real pity the bad destiny of this ARPG Masterpiece is in the hands of usual Bethesda (+ Virtuos).”
Alongside The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered, Virtous also worked on the recently-released Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater, another Unreal Engine 5 game with major performance issues on all platforms. Despite sticking to the small, gated areas of the original PS2 game, the new remaster has some glaring issues similar to those of Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls game.
Reportedly, Virtuos is also working on another Bethesda remaster also using Unreal Engine 5: Fallout 3 Remastered. Allegedly set to release sometime in the next few years, this upcoming redux will reportedly modernise the original gameplay with massively improved visuals, but will it run well? (Probably not, let’s be honest.)
