Digital Foundry: The Elder Scrolls 4 Oblivion Remastered vs Original 2006 Release on Retro PC Time Capsule

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Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?



The Retro PC Time Capsule format returns once more - but this time in the context of a brand-new game. Oblivion Remastered on PC running maxed out on a 12900K/RTX 5090 system is stacked up against the 2006 original, running on period appropriate hardware - a Pentium D 3.0GHz processor paired with the (then) almighty Radeon X1800 XT. Just how much of a remastering effort is this? John and Alex assess the remastering work, and fret about stuttering ahead of Alex's upcoming performance review.
 
The stuttering goes away in my experience. Took maybe 3-5 hours of gameplay and I stopped noticing it.

It's similar to how Fortnite works on PC… where your first match after a driver or game update is a mess.. several rounds later mostly gone.

I agree that it's absolutely ridiculous that Unreal Engine 5 does this at all and that it goes without saying… but this is Gaf so I'll say it just in case.
 
Glad I didn't buy it, it runs like dog shit.

The stutters do make it very unpleasant. But even more than that, Oblivion just didn't age well. Only its soundtrack did.

I'm sad you guys aren't enjoying (or won't buy), I'm having a blast with it.

SX version has notable traversal stutters too and every time the autosave prompt comes up, there's a notable hitch, but otherwise most traversal seems to fall within the VRR range pretty comfortably.
 
Glad I didn't buy it, it runs like dog shit.
Game is def not ok… but fuck i am enjoying every second of it.

Also it's not as shit as the latest stalker game.
On the ps5 pro.. it's alright most of the time.
Not unplayable. But also we should not be ok with it.

Anyway… back i go hahaha
 
Glad I didn't buy it, it runs like dog shit.

Season 5 Nbc GIF by The Office


GP4life
 
I'm sad you guys aren't enjoying (or won't buy), I'm having a blast with it.

SX version has notable traversal stutters too and every time the autosave prompt comes up, there's a notable hitch, but otherwise most traversal seems to fall within the VRR range pretty comfortably.
Was going to pick it up on PC but my 3600 would die with it, watched a few vids with similar PCs to mine and this DF vid just confirmed it. Not even sure what's so taxing about it.
I've been playing Skyrim again and that runs well (even at 4K ultra). Guess I'll just stick to that or wait and see if any patches help.
 
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Glad I didn't buy it, it runs like dog shit.
Was going to pick it up on PC but my 3600 would die with it, watched a few vids with similar PCs to mine and this DF vid just confirmed it. Not even sure what's so taxing about it.
I've been playing Skyrim again and that runs well (even at 4K ultra). Guess I'll just stick to that or wait and see if any patches help.
Yeah, refunded it on Steam and waiting for patches, probably to jump on the pro version (assuming they even plan on fixing it) as my CPU is not that much better than yours and it was a nightmare.
 
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Yeah, refunded it on Steam and waiting for patches, probably to jump on the pro version (assuming they even plan on fixing it) as my CPU is not that much better than yours and it was a nightmare.
Go get the pro version.
Actually current state of pc gaming is so fucked on day one.. i actually prefer console gaming again.

The last cod had no issues. Pc version was a big mess
 
I manage to run it ~90-120 fps on a 5070 Ti with frame gen but for reference, Cyberpunk 2077 PATH TRACING runs a lot smoother than this.
 
I manage to run it ~90-120 fps on a 5070 Ti with frame gen but for reference, Cyberpunk 2077 PATH TRACING runs a lot smoother than this.
That's what's wild. Between Bethesda's Gamebryo spaghetti code and the new Unreal 5 spaghetti code, Remaster seems to run like shit.

You shouldn't need a $800-900 GPU WITH Framegen to run this at acceptable levels.
 
I mean I've put in a good few hours on a Series S and aside from a weird glitch where the water in the distance was casuing some screen tearing when I looked at it, its been fine
 
The old graphics are good to me. I didn't see the drawback of the old except for the out of control flickering on the npc's face in one clip. I watched a few minutes of video.

Rather have had them improve/fix various bugs/tedium/mechanics/etc. And have the game (run) smooth as butter. And just fix some obvious graphics issue such as the one I mentioned above.
 
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Random question, does this new remaster still keep spell crafting?

That was the one absolute downgrade from Skyrim that modders had to fix.
 
Yea, not happy about that

Vavra on a podcast says his internal sources at CDPR are saying that UE5 is a nightmare for Witcher 4 btw.
Yep, they probably decided to move due to ease of finding devs familiar with UE. The problem is that UE is kind of shit to optimize and GOOD devs who can do that are rare.

Random question, does this new remaster still keep spell crafting?

That was the one absolute downgrade from Skyrim that modders had to fix.
Yeah, everything is there including original bugs and some new ones.
 
Runs a nice 150-200 fps depending on the area I'm at. Graphics on ultra.

Update: Annoyingly I just had a game update and it's tanked performance for some reason.
 
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Yep the hitching is Unreal (5). Also every fresh boot my cpu went into max utilisation because of shader compilation which does what exactly. Still its such a nostagic game I just deal with it.
 
I am positively addicted to to this remake. Had to download an Engine.ini for the Unreal Engine stutters (AMD 7600 XT w/ i5-11400KF do not run it smoothly otherwise) and install a custom reshade to make the image pop but it was well worth it. Having a blast as a Briton battle mage with conjuring focus. I am also slightly obsessed with persuasion and selling my loot for the highest price.
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P.S. I had tried getting into the original Oblivion on multiple occasions but it never clicked like this remaster. Also Nvidia needs to update their drivers because it looks worse than FSR on my other computer with RTX 2060. XeSS is kicking ass in this release.
 
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I'm sad you guys aren't enjoying (or won't buy), I'm having a blast with it.

SX version has notable traversal stutters too and every time the autosave prompt comes up, there's a notable hitch, but otherwise most traversal seems to fall within the VRR range pretty comfortably.
It's far from perfect, but I'm having a great time with it too.
 
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