Bethesda is yet to officially announce its highly-anticipated The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remake, but we all know it’s real. Along with those screenshots on developer Virtuos’ website, references to the project have also been spotted on Bethesda’s own website. It is safe to say with this remake it’s just a case of when, not if.
So, where does that leave the team working Skyblivion, the volunteer-based project by TESRenewal seeking to remake Oblivion in the Skyrim engine? Has news of an official remake caused the bounce to go from their collective bungee? (To paraphrase Wallace and Gromit, there.)
Well, no, this is not the case at all. Writing on social media, project lead Rebelzize said Bethesda’s impending announcement “changes nothing” as far as the team working on Skyblivion are concerned.
Rebelzize said the “real remake is the friends we made along the way”, before stating the Skyblivion mod was and remains “a passion project”.
In fact, Rebelzize sees it as a “win-win” for the Oblivion community which will get “twice the amount of Oblivion this year”.
“All love and no hate towards the people who made the official remaster,” Rebelzize wrote.
In a subsequent post, Rebelzize added: “Since this got a lot more attention [than] I expected, let me just say I hope you will enjoy either the official or our remake. Either way thanks for the support and be kind to one another.”
Team Folon – the group behind the ambitious Fallout London mod for Fallout 4 – shared Rebelzize’s post, writing: “We stand by you. All our love Skyblivion team.”
As mentioned, Skyblivion is a voluntary project that fans of The Elder Scrolls games have been working on quite some time. The Skyblivion team has been steadily documenting its progress for over a decade now, and I think I just felt myself age as rapidly as that chap in The Last Crusade.
Earlier this year, a Skyblivion blog post shared a roadmap for the mod’s release, affirming it will “close shut the jaws of Oblivion in 2025”.
Earlier this month our Jim called upon Bethesda to remake Morrowind rather than Oblivion. “You cowards,” Jim wrote, calling Morrowind a “special game, where a beautifully unique fantasy setting is locked away behind technology and interface design that has aged particularly badly”.
Think he’s on to something?
