Yesterday Bethesda confirmed the dozens of leaks and rumours by announcing and releasing a remaster of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, the 2006 RPG which stole more hours of my life than my coke-cola addiction has. And if the Steam numbers are anything to go by, it’s already a massive success.
Because saving the world can wait until you’e solved a murder mystery or gotten trapped in a crazy magical painting.
According to SteamDB, which tracks all sorts of lovely Steam data, the remaster managed a very impressive peak concurrent player count of 182,298 just 13 hours ago. Considering the game was shadowdropped with no warning (unless you’re terminally online, like me) that’s not too shabby, and it also means that the peak player count will probably grow over the next few days, too.
Keep in mind, that’s also just one small fraction of the players. The remaster – which uses Unreal Engine 5 for the graphics and the game’s original engine for everything else – was also released on Xbox and PlayStation, and is also available on Game Pass. In other words, the actual total number of players and copies sold must be far higher.
Bethesda, though, haven’t announced any official numbers as of yet. Mind you, it hasn’t even been 24 hours yet since the game was released.
I’ve only managed to get an hour or two into the game, but even from that limited experience, I’m impressed with what developer Virtous has achieved. It looks terrific but retains the feel of the original game, right down to the goofy NPCs and general jankiness. There’s been so major improvements, too, like a reworked levelling system that mixes Oblivion and Skyrim.
Honestly, though, what hit me hardest was the music. It was like being kicked in the nostalgia-balls so hard that I travelled back in time to 2006 and felt like a kid again.