Oblivion Remastered Wishlist: How Bethesda Can Get It Right (or Horribly Wrong)

So Bethesda has finally confirmed it: Oblivion Remastered is real, and it’s getting announced tomorrow at 11AM EST. That’s right — the game that gave us potato-faced NPCs, accidental crimes, and more “STOP RIGHT THERE, CRIMINAL SCUM!” than a medieval courtroom drama is making a comeback.

But before we load up on skooma and dive headfirst through an Oblivion gate, let’s take a moment to dream — and worry — about how Bethesda could either bless us with a masterpiece or accidentally punt the Amulet of Kings into the fires of Mount Disappointment.

Here’s our wishlist. And also… our fear list.

What Bethesda Needs to Nail:

Combat That Doesn’t Feel Like Slapping Someone With a Wet Sock

Oblivion’s combat was charming in the way a drunk man fighting a coat rack is charming — but we’d like a little more oomph this time around. Give us weighty melee, spell combos, and arrows that don’t feel like Nerf darts.

Also: maybe less slow-motion death groans that sound like someone stepping on a kazoo.

Modern AI That Doesn’t Try to Rob or Murder You Randomly

We love Radiant AI. It’s what gave Oblivion its soul (and occasional chaos). But it needs to be smart-chaos, not “accidentally steal an apple and now every guard in the province is on your ass” chaos.

Keep the quirks, but add some actual intelligence. And please—no beggars sprinting across town to talk to you with Harvard vocabularies.

Inventory That Doesn’t Make Us Miss Morrowind

You know what’s better than scrolling through 87 rings named “Ring of Slightly Increased Doing Stuff”? Search bars. Sorting. Tabs. Bethesda, you know how UI works now. Give us modern inventory, or we’re modding in SkyUI before you can even equip your pants.

Oblivion Gates That Don’t All Feel Like Copy-Pasted IKEA Dungeons

Ah yes, the hellish lava-filled towers of Oblivion. So metal. So demonic. So… copy-pasted. We want diversity in level design. Make us fear going in — not because we’re bored, but because we don’t know what’s on the other side.

More Than 8 Voice Actors, Please

We adore Wes Johnson, but if every single elf, orc, and noblewoman sounds like your uncle doing a Skyrim impression, it kinda kills immersion. We need diverse voices, maybe some actual lip sync, and less whiplash from listening to someone change accents mid-sentence.

Keep the Weird

Whatever you do: don’t polish out the charm. Oblivion is beloved because it’s unhinged in the best way.

Let us jump over entire cities with Acrobatics 100. Keep the guy who yells about mudcrabs. Let the guards still yell “STOP RIGHT THERE, CRIMINAL SCUM!” while sprinting barefoot through an active Oblivion gate.

Just give it polish without removing the soul.

How They Could Completely Screw It Up

• Turning it into a live-service game: Don’t you dare, Todd.
• No mod support: The modding community made Oblivion immortal. Locking them out would be the real Oblivion crisis.
• Over-monetization: Horse Armor was funny once. If it returns unironically, we’re uninstalling.
• Over-explaining everything: Part of Oblivion’s magic was not knowing why that one guy lived in a cave with six pairs of pants and a single spoon. Don’t ruin that.

The Bottom Line

There’s a perfect middle path here—between nostalgia and modernization, between chaos and clarity. If Bethesda walks it right, Oblivion Remastered could be the best re-release since Skyrim (again).

If not? Well… at least we’ll always have that one guard who told us we were “the hero of Kvatch” before arresting us for trespassing in our own house.