Despite Bethesda’s latest patch, Oblivion Remastered is still plagued by frame rate issues and classic jank. Digital Foundry says don’t expect a performance miracle.
Oblivion Remastered Is Pretty, But Still Pretty Broken
Look, we love Oblivion. The memes, the guards yelling “STOP RIGHT THERE, CRIMINAL SCUM,” the cheese-wheel climbing physics — it’s all peak Bethesda chaos. So when the Remastered edition showed up with updated visuals, we dared to hope… just a little.
But dreams are fragile. And thanks to the gang at Digital Foundry, we now know that Oblivion Remastered still runs like a vintage toaster trying to play Skyrim on max settings.
Patch 1.2 Promised Performance Gains — Reality Said “Nah”
Bethesda’s July patch notes read like a hopeful checklist of fixes:
- Frame rate drops? “Addressed.”
- Hitches in the open world? “Reduced.”
- General frame time improvements? “Delivered.”
But according to DF’s deep-dive testing across PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, none of that really panned out. In fact, the game still stutters, lags, and straight-up confuses your GPU like it’s having a midlife crisis.
Digital Foundry’s verdict?
“Baffling and sad at the same time.”
Oof.
The Ghosts of 2006 Still Haunt This Game
One of the weirdest things DF reported: load the same save, from a clean boot, and get totally different frame rate behavior every time. That’s not just jank — that’s haunted code.
And these issues aren’t exclusive to consoles. The PC version? Same story. The performance bugs seem baked into Oblivion’s DNA, and no amount of high-res textures can save it from itself.
So if you were hoping the remaster would smooth out the chaos of the original? Nope. It’s the same old spaghetti code with fancier lighting.
Not All Doom and Gloom: The Doors Work Now
Credit where it’s due — if you’re a Dark Brotherhood fan, you’ll be thrilled to know Bethesda fixed some door-related bugs in the latest patch. Because when the frame rate tanks and your game crashes, at least the murder entrances function properly.
Small victories, people.
Can This Be Fixed? Spoiler: Probably Not
DF’s Alex Battaglia says the problems feel too deep-rooted to patch away. And honestly? He’s probably right. Bethesda’s been dragging this Frankenstein engine around for decades, duct-taping it together with every release. At some point, it stops being “charmingly broken” and just becomes… broken.
Modders have done heroic work over the years, but even they seem stumped by Oblivion Remastered’s weird performance hiccups.
Final Verdict: Beautiful Garbage Fire
Oblivion Remastered is like putting new rims on a busted old cart: it looks better, sure, but the wheels still fall off. If you’re here for the nostalgia and can tolerate some aggressive jank, fine. But if you were hoping for smooth 60fps RPG magic — well, maybe just go replay Skyrim for the 38th time.
Or better yet? Wait for The Elder Scrolls VI. It might be another decade, but hey, at least it’ll be broken in new ways.
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