As pretty much everyone expected, the long-awaited Oblivion Remaster launched today, and boy is it something. It’s a complete reskin of the entire game with a hefty helping of changes meant to modernize the 20 year old RPG, including updates to leveling, combat, and character animations. Bethesda and Virtuos even went as far as re-recording dialogue and adding brand new voice lines to previously silent characters. This is a remaster teetering on the edge of remake, and it looks incredible.
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Oblivion Remastered Proves That Some Games Are Perfect Just The Way They Are
If it ain’t broken, don’t fix it. Especially if it’s Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion.
Oblivion fans wasted no time jumping on it. At the time of writing, there are currently 156,000 people playing on Steam, making it the third-most popular game on the platform. That’s before you factor in the number of players on Xbox, PlayStation, and Game Pass – where subscribers can play it for free – so you can imagine just how massive this random Tuesday afternoon shadow drop is.
The Stiffest Competition Imaginable For The Weekend Ahead
Unfortunately, this isn’t actually a random Tuesday. Oblivion Remastered launched just two days ahead of one of the year’s most anticipated new RPGs, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, which also debuts on Game Pass. The review embargo lifted today, and the reaction is overwhelmingly positive. I’ve been playing it myself, and it’s one of the most beautiful, inventive, and compelling RPGs I’ve ever played.
Expedition 33 offers a fascinating blend of genres, fantastic world-building and storytelling, and an unbelievably cool combat system, but it’s not exactly an easy sell. It’s a turn-based RPG from an unknown French studio with a goofy title that isn’t linked to any kind of established IP. Word of mouth is going to have to carry this one to glory, but this weekend, all anyone is going to be talking about is Oblivion.
So here’s the question: When you fire up Game Pass this weekend to sink into a new fantasy RPG, which game are you going to choose? The one with a weird title from a French studio you’ve never heard of, or a remake of one of the most beloved games of all time?
The David Vs. Goliath Of 2025 RPGs
For what it’s worth, Oblivion and Expedition 33 are very different. Oblivion, as everyone surely knows at this point, is the fourth Elder Scrolls title and the game that directly preceded Skyrim. It’s an open-world RPG set in a high fantasy world that you’ll want to lose yourself in for hundreds of hours.
Expedition 33 doesn’t have much in common with Oblivion. It’s a turn-based RPG with an Age of Beauty-inspired setting that’s all about building up a party of characters to take on increasingly more complex battles. Exploration is limited to small linear levels with optional side paths, and the 30-hour campaign is heavily narrative driven. If you like Oblivion you may not necessarily like Expedition 33, and vice-versa.
But at the very least, the Oblivion Remastered launch certainly won’t help Expedition 33 find success. The hundreds of thousands of people playing Oblivion this weekend won’t be playing Expedition 33. That doesn’t mean all of them would have if not for Oblivion, but before the remasters’ shadow drop, Expedition 33 had a clear runway on the release calendar for the next few weeks. Now it seems like it’ll be fighting to pull people away from a game everyone already knows they love.
Publisher Kepler Interactive seems good natured about the situation. The company tweeted a mashup of key art from Oblivion and Expedition 33 with the caption “omg it’s like barbenheimer.” It’s cute, and I wish this could be this summer’s video game double feature, but it only takes five hours to watch both Barbie and Oppenheimer. Five hours in Oblivion won’t even get you out of Imperial City.
Bethesda and Microsoft have no obligation to make way for Expedition 33, of course. But if Oblivion Remastered was always going to be shadow dropped, why did it need to come out this week? Why not last week, or next week, or any of the other gaps in the release schedule back in March and throughout the summer? This is the week that a new studio has a chance to make a big splash in the industry and introduce RPG fans to a brand new world, but instead, everyone’s now foaming at the mouth for Bethesda’s warmed-over hit from 20 years ago.
If you want new voices, bold storytelling, and fresh new ideas in your games, play Expedition 33 this weekend. If you want endless remasters and remakes that have nothing new to offer, well, I guess there’s a good reason it’s called Oblivion.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
- Released
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April 24, 2025
- ESRB
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Mature 17+ // Blood and Gore, Strong Language, Suggestive Themes, Violence
- Developer(s)
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Sandfall Interactive
- Publisher(s)
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Kepler Interactive
- Engine
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Unreal Engine 5
- Cross-Platform Play
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No
- Cross Save
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No
- Number of Players
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Single-player
