Following numerous rumours fuelled by insiders, the alleged remake/remaster of The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion has now been all but officially confirmed to be real as screenshots begin appearing online.
The remake/remaster has been known about behind the scenes for quite some time now, and is even reportedly going to be shadow dropped by the end of this month, something which these screenshots seem to confirm.
So, how did these screenshots come about? Rather simply, as it turns out. Fans have begun poking around Virtous’ (the company that appears to be handling development) website for a while now in the hopes of turning up something. Their diligence has paid off, because several people uncovered screenshots that have been uploaded to the developer’s website which show off the game.
It turns out many images were simply sitting in the website’s upload folder which hadn’t been made private. Virtous has quickly rectified that problem, and begun locking down other screenshots as well, but the damage is already done.
“I checked the website, inspected a random image element in hope I could find something,” Taurnil told one user who asked how they found the images. “Turns out they’re using wordpress and the uploads-folder contains these images. Didn’t really expect to find this though!”
Another user by the name of GhostofPuffers also found comparison screenshots which show off what the remake/remaster looks like compared to the original game. It’s a significant overhaul, owing to the fact that this remaster/remake is alleged to be running on Unreal Engine 5.
These images could theoretically be faked in an elaborate hoax, but they do seem to have been genuinely hosted on Virtous’ own website, making that very unlikely.
Considering the amount of work that seems to have been put into this new version of the game, though, I do find myself questioning the reasoning behind shadow dropping Oblivion. Sure, I imagine it will have no trouble finding a ready and willing audience, myself included, but it seems crazy to me that Microsoft wouldn’t want to spend at least a little marketing budget on it prior to launch.
We will find out soon enough though, because if the reports are accurate the game will be dropped onto our laps in the coming weeks.
