Temporarily stopped after 2 hours. Fucking hell. Almost 20 years ago, the OG Oblivion was the reason behind the family PC hardware upgrade. In 2025, the remaster will probably do the same. I don't meet even the minimum specs, but the game runs at 40-50 fps with everything set to low and 50% resolution scale. Still looks great, but that's just my graficks bias. After exiting the sewers and going to the Market District I switched some stuff to medium which made no difference in performance, however 100% res scale tanks to 20-25 fps. Settled for 75% for the time being. The loading time for the outdoors was a bit silly and I really hope I won't have to compile shaders on every launch. It was the case with Doom 2016 and some other release I can't even remember the name of.
Historic image. Save it for later, when some people don't even make it out of the tutorial.
Also somewhat historic, at least for me. In every single OG playthrough he was completely off mark, even if I was using nothing but sword& board - in my very first, he called me an acrobat.
So far I'm maybe not blown away, but very, very pleasantly surprised. Mostly. The guards no longer being Wes Johnson startled me a little, and after seeing Baurus I realized how many characters are going to be unrecognizable due to facial hair. Thoronir, the first merchant I visited, looks completely different.
Combat is definitely tweaked and has more weight to it, but veterans are going to be puzzled for a moment, as for instance you can't hold block and M1 to attack and immediately raise your shield afterwards anymore. Sprint will take some time getting used to. Definitely not a fan of automatic HP regeneration, wish it could be turned off. I didn't have to use the basic healing spell at all until I was done with the "starter" section, only during the goblin berserker encounter did I have to back off since he was taking like 25% of my HP per hit (started on Expert).
It seems that they fixed Glenroy's katana being magically lost during the tutorial after the Emperor gets assassinated. In the original, you pretty much had to be there and grab it out of his hand immediately after he gets cut down.
Visually it's faithful to the original models, obviously. Plumage on the Imperial Guard helmets looks a bit silly and I hate that helmets
still fucking hide horns on Argonians (poison immunity and water breathing are invaluable), and character creation doesn't let you choose body weight, so everyone is on the same level of fitness. Just hoping I don't run into buff beggars. It was there in Skyrim, why remove it?
OG weapon hit/clank/unsheathe etc sounds are gone, unfortunately, as are most of the inventory sounds. No more of that glassy "clonk" upon picking up potions, it was replaced by something far less distinct. Heavy armor sounds different when you move, very much like the first Dark Souls. When opening containers you a very loud "take all" sound from the original which drowns out the cue of the container being opened. It's a little annoying.
There's a mix between original and new voices it seems, and the difference in quality is... noticeable. Varnado for example retained his original voice, while Thoronir is now voiced by someone completely different. Audens Avidius, the guard captain, has old Wes Johnson voice, while the generic guards are new as I mentioned earlier. The only beggar I spoke to is different. A pair of NPCs were having a chat and I heard familiar lines spoken by the same people... but this time with emotion. They dusted off the VAs that were still alive (rip Breton dude) and dragged them back into the recording booth, apparently.
Music is too quiet. Wanted to tune it up, turns out all sliders were maxed. The "Soule" is still there, scandal or no, it's the same tunes.
The UI is fine, people are blowing it out of proportion as always - a fine mix between OG Oblivion and Skyrim, taking only the good things from both. I'm only a bit miffed by HP/magicka/stamina bars disappearing when the resource is full. Otherwise, it's nowhere near the garbage you'd get, say, in the latest Suicide Squad game. Having just come off a playthrough of the original I could find my way around pretty much without issues. The main menu however is just soulless. Nothing will beat the main theme and the Cyrodiil map scrolling past.
I'm home, and I'm going back there soon.
edit: for the record my specs are i7 4690k, 16 gigs of RAM, and rx 580 armor 8GB. It runs okay, so the people complaining must be using absolute dogshit toasters.
