The Oblivion Remaster is being called a love letter to fans — but is it actually worth $50, or are we just paying a nostalgia tax on a 19-year-old game?

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  Taylor3w ago

  I put 47 hours into it in the first week. FORTY. SEVEN. I have a job and two kids. This game is a menace and I mean that as the highest possible compliment.

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  Marco3w ago

  My father and I used to play the original Oblivion together when I was a kid. He passed in 2021. I bought this remaster the second it was available and sat in front of the character creator just... crying for about ten minutes. Some things are worth more than their price tag.

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  Quinn R.3w ago

  The Adoring Fan is back and I would die for him. Review: 10/10.

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  Nina3w ago

  I've never played the original and I think this might be one of the best RPGs I've ever touched. The main quest, the guild quests, the sheer density of things to do — modern open world games feel hollow by comparison. Maybe nostalgia isn't the point. Maybe the game is just actually good.

  154Reply
• M2

  Maya 213w ago

  It's $50 for a game that came out when I was in middle school. The original is literally free if you have Game Pass. The 'remaster' is just Unreal Engine 5 lipstick on a pig and people are eating it up because they miss being 13.

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  Reese3w ago

  just spent three hours doing the Thieves Guild questline and honestly forgot I was supposed to be writing a thesis. Oblivion remains the greatest procrastination tool ever invented.

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  Quinn3w ago

  Nostalgia tax or not, it's on Game Pass. This entire argument collapses if you have a subscription. Just... get Game Pass? Why are we debating the $50 price point when you can play it for free right now?

  131Reply
• R

  Riley3w ago

  My final position: it's a good remaster of a great game at a fair price that you can also play essentially for free via subscription. The discourse around it is the most annoying part. Just let people be happy about the Adoring Fan.

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• J2

  Jamie 213w ago

  The Shivering Isles expansion alone is worth the price of admission. It has better writing than most AAA games released in the last five years and that's a genuinely depressing thing to say about a 2007 DLC.

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• NK

  Noah K.3w ago

  The real question is why Elder Scrolls 6 isn't out yet and we're celebrating breadcrumbs. Bethesda has not released a new mainline entry in this franchise in nearly 15 years. A remaster is a distraction from the fact that they have not been able to deliver the actual next chapter.

  119Reply
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  Leo3w ago

  The fact that this launched with essentially no marketing, no leaks, and available same-day on Game Pass tells me Microsoft genuinely wanted people to PLAY it, not just buy it. That's actually kind of refreshing in an era of $70 games and day-one DLC.

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• JT

  Jordan T.3w ago

  Nostalgia is the most powerful drug in the entertainment industry and gaming companies are pharmaceutical executives. This is a fact.

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  Theo3w ago

  The level scaling issue has not been fixed and I cannot stress this enough. Your enemies scale with you meaning there's no real sense of progression. You never feel powerful. This was the original game's biggest flaw and it is still there. In 2025. After a full remaster. I'm going to lie down.

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• D

  Diego3w ago

  Reply to the 19 year old: You have to understand, in 2006 there was nothing like this. The sheer scale of it. The fact that every NPC had a daily schedule. That you could join any faction. For its time it was mind-blowing. Context matters.

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• A

  Avery3w ago

  I genuinely believe the people saying 'just nostalgia' have never actually sat down and played it. The Dark Brotherhood questline, the Shivering Isles, the Thieves Guild — this content would be celebrated if it released today for the first time. Nostalgia is a red herring.

  101Reply
• N

  Nina3w ago

  As someone who works in game development — the amount of work that goes into an engine port while preserving all original functionality is genuinely enormous. $50 is not an unreasonable ask. People spend $15 on a cocktail without thinking twice.

  99Reply
• YR

  Yuki R.3w ago

  ok but the potato faces are FIXED. do you understand how important that is. the original NPCs looked like they were sculpted from sadness and anxiety. this alone justifies the price point for me personally

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• M

  Maya3w ago

  you know what i think is underrated in this whole conversation: the OST. Jeremy Soule's score is one of the greatest video game soundtracks ever made and hearing it in full quality in 2025 with modern surround sound almost made me religious

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• L

  Leo3w ago

  I set my graphics to look as much like the original as possible and I'm having the time of my life. Some of us just want the old game to run on modern hardware without a dozen compatibility patches. This delivers that. Mission accomplished.

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• TS

  Taylor S.3w ago

  The combat still feels clunky, the level scaling is still broken, and Bethesda still hasn't fixed things modders solved for free in 2008. You are paying $50 for better textures. That is all.

  89Reply
• D

  Diego3w ago

  Counter-point: remasters employ hundreds of developers, preserve games for new hardware, and introduce classics to younger audiences. Calling it a 'nostalgia tax' ignores the actual labor that went into rebuilding this from the ground up in a new engine. It's not a port, it's a rebuild.

  88Reply
• DT

  Diego T.3w ago

  the $15 cocktail comparison drives me insane every time. a cocktail is an experience i have with friends in real time. a remaster is a product i can wait three months to buy for $20 during a sale. completely different calculus

  83Reply
• LL

  Leo L.3w ago

  Whether it's worth it is completely personal and I'm tired of both sides acting like their take is objective truth. Some people have deep sentimental attachment to this game. Some people don't. Both are allowed to exist. Buy it or don't. This is not a moral issue.

  83Reply
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  Theo3w ago

  Game Pass is not free. It costs money monthly. This is another thing people need to stop saying.

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  Ravi3w ago

  Oblivion's world-building genuinely holds up though. The lore, the factions, the way Cyrodiil feels like a lived-in place. That's not nostalgia talking, that's just good design that aged better than most of its contemporaries.

  74Reply
• C_

  Casey _x3w ago

  It was not rebuilt from the ground up. The quest data, dialogue, and systems are all the original. The UE5 overlay is impressive but let's not pretend this is a remake. It's a remaster. An expensive one.

  73Reply
• HS

  Hana S.3w ago

  The performance on PC is embarrassing. Unreal Engine 5 eating 12GB of VRAM to render a medieval town is not optimization, it's laziness dressed up as spectacle. The modding community will fix it in six months but it shouldn't need fixing.

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  Nina3w ago

  y'all really out here defending a billion dollar company charging full price for old content. this is why the industry is the way it is. they see your nostalgia and they monetize it. wake up

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  Leo3w ago

  Counterpoint: it IS a moral issue when gaming companies know they can repackage old content at full price because nostalgia bypasses our rational consumer brain. We should hold the industry accountable even for things we personally enjoy.

  66Reply
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  Drew3w ago

  Modders also didn't get paid. And now everyone's buying a remaster instead of supporting indie developers making genuinely innovative RPGs right now. Just something to think about with your wallet.

  61Reply
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  Liam3w ago

  I think we need to be honest that a significant portion of 'game is amazing' reviews are just people who are happy to be back in a world they loved as teenagers. That's valid! Emotional responses are valid! But let's not pretend it's objective quality analysis.

  59Reply
• NM

  Nina M.3w ago

  Hot take: Oblivion was always the weakest of the modern Elder Scrolls games and Morrowind fans and Skyrim fans have both been telling you this for years. A remaster of a mid-tier entry in the franchise is not the cultural event Twitter is making it out to be.

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  Riley3w ago

  Level scaling was actually partially addressed in the remaster? They tweaked some of the formulas. It's not perfect but calling it unchanged is inaccurate.

  54Reply
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  Noah L.3w ago

  every elder scrolls game is just bethesda coasting on 'here is large world, go walk around in it' and people act like it's profound storytelling. the writing is fine at best. modders made these games what they are.

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  Morgan3w ago

  Bought it. Refunded it after 3 hours. The charm of Oblivion was always kind of... janky? The new visuals made it feel like a different game and not necessarily a better one. Some things are better left imperfect.

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  Morgan3w ago

  Played it on console, performance is totally smooth for me. Maybe the PC complaints are somewhat hardware-dependent? Not defending the optimization but acting like it's unplayable everywhere seems like an overstatement.

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  Kofi3w ago

  I'm 19 and had never played any Elder Scrolls game. Picked this up based on the hype and I genuinely do not understand what all the fuss is about. The AI is braindead, the story is generic, and half the mechanics feel outdated. Is this really the peak of gaming history people keep claiming?

  37Reply

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