Original Elder Scrolls Oblivion designer was floored by Bethesda’s new release – “I’m not sure ‘remaster’ does it justice”

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered is out now after months of leaks turned the RPG into the game’s industry’s worst-kept secret. Following the proper reveal of the return to Cyrodil, we sat down with Oblivion’s original senior game designer Bruce Nesmith to discuss the game’s revival 20 years after its initial release.

Nesmith, who left Bethesda during the development of Starfield, only heard about the remaster a week before its reveal when leaked gameplay images circulated online.

“I spent a lot of years working on that game,” Nesmith said. “A lot of blood, sweat and tears went into it along with everybody else on the team. And I intimately knew every single scene that they were showing. And they looked amazing.”

Nesmith, who has released a number of LitRPG books such as Glory Seeker since his departure from Bethesda, explained that he assumed the rumblings of an Oblivion Remastered release would be a simple asset update, similar to Skyrim: Special Edition. However, with changes to the levelling system, revised animations, the use of Unreal Engine and more, it was surprising to see just how far the team went.

“[It’s] a staggering amount of remastering. It almost needs its own word, quite frankly. I’m not sure remaster actually does it justice.”

ORIGINAL OBLIVION LEAD GAMEPLAY DESIGNER BRUCE NESMITH

“I was assuming this was going to be a texture update,” he said. “I didn’t really think it was going to be the complete overhaul that they’ve announced it to be… I would not have batted an eye at that. But to completely redo the animations, the animation system, put in the Unreal Engine, change the leveling system, change the user interface. I mean, that’s, you’re touching every part of the game. That’s a staggering amount of remastering. It almost needs its own word, quite frankly. I’m not sure remaster actually does it justice.”

The release of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered immediately jumped the game into Steam’s best sellers list. At the time of the interview, the new version of the 20-year-old RPG had over 160,000 concurrent players on Steam alone, a figure that showed Nesmith just how much gamers still cared about the game they helped design two decades ago.

“Pride is the number one thing [I feel],” the game designer told us. “A game that I worked on has the longevity to still generate interest 20 years later and to be worth the effort—it sounds like considerable effort—and time that Bethesda put into remastering it. I mean, there’s precious few people in our industry who can say that they’ve been part of something like that.”

When it comes to just what the new version of Oblivion is, Nesmith doesn’t know how to categorise it. It’s more than a remaster, not quite a remake: “the closest that could come [to categorising it] is Oblivion 2.0”.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is one of two leaked remasters said to be in the works at Bethesda and Virtuos. Alongside the return to The Elder Scrolls, the studios are allegedly working on a new remaster of Fallout 3, which will reportedly take a while to release.

For more Elder Scrolls coverage, read about why the series probably won’t return to “fiddly character sheets” for Elder Scrolls VI, if that even releases during our lifetime. Additionally, read about what the Skyblivion mod team thinks about the new remastered version of Oblivion.