Oblivion Remastered Resurrects a Time When RPGs Let You Be…

Summary

Oblivion Remastered restores the days of complete character customization in RPGs without class restrictions.
The game allows players to experiment freely with skills and appearance, fostering personal expression.
By emphasizing freedom and weirdness, Oblivion Remastered preserves the spirit of classic RPGs often missed in modern games.

The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered is one of the most successful games of 2025, but not necessarily due to its nostalgia factor. Firstly, The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered is an extensive upgrade of the original game — now almost 20 years old — as not only have its visuals been vastly enhanced using Unreal Engine 5, but many of its most crucial gameplay elements have been improved as well. However, one of Oblivion Remastered's best qualities is not how much of an improvement it is over its predecessor but how revealing it is of where RPGs once were, how far they have come, and how far they have fallen.

One thing that The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered really highlights about classic RPGs is how weird they allowed players to be with nearly every aspect of their character. In most modern RPGs, customization is not only highly valued but also generally present to some degree. Even so, that customization usually doesn't take things quite as far as games like Oblivion once did, and instead tends to guide players along a path toward specialization and optimization. Oblivion Remastered effectively resurrects those days of freedom, as it places almost no limits on what players can do.

The Elder Scrolls 4 Oblivion Remastered Personality System Ahead of Its Time

Oblivion Remastered's Personality System Proves the Original's Was Always Ahead of Its Time

Oblivion Remastered’s revamped Persuasion and Personality systems show how the original was already innovating RPG mechanics years ahead of others.

Posts

By Josh Cotts

Oblivion Remastered Is a Reminder of Weirder Days

Oblivion Remastered Hearkens Back to Days of Experimentation and Personal Expression

Role-playing games have almost always included classes for players to pick from, and The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered, like the original game, is no different. However, even though Oblivion Remastered has several classes for players to choose from, it does its best to ensure they never feel tied down to a specific playstyle. Even though players pick a class, they can still level up and use any skill at any time, no matter what class they've chosen. Their class really only defines the following:

Which skills level players up faster (Major Skills)
Starting skill bonuses (Major Skills start higher)
Attribute boosts (depending on specialization)

Ultimately, this means players can essentially do whatever they want, regardless of the class they've chosen. Not only can they suddenly decide halfway through the game that they want to be a sword-wielding warrior instead of a fireball-slinging mage, they could even be a stealthy mage who specializes in hand-to-hand combat if they want to be. In that way, it's not so much just the ability to be weird that Oblivion Remastered hearkens back to, but days when RPGs were less about specialized classes and more about experimentation and personal expression.

Oblivion Remastered's Character Creator Is Robust Enough for Bizarre Creations

Another way The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered lets players be weird with their characters is through its robust character creator. There are countless ways players can customize their character, to the point that players have made some of the most grotesque and odd-looking characters ever seen in a video game. One player even went out of their way to make a character that looks identical to Taylor Swift, and even though that doesn't necessarily qualify as "weird" in and of itself, the thought of Taylor Swift wandering around Cyrodiil is abundantly strange.

One thing that The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered really highlights about classic RPGs is how weird they allowed players to be with nearly every aspect of their character.

In short, The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered taps into a spirit that modern RPGs often leave behind, where being strange, experimental, or downright ridiculous was part of the experience. It reminds players that role-playing was once less about sticking to an archetype and more about chasing whatever odd idea came to mind, no matter how impractical. In doing so, Oblivion Remastered not only polishes a classic but also preserves a forgotten kind of freedom, one where being weird was not just allowed, but strongly encouraged.

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