Shortly following the unveiling and release of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered, the legion of Elder Scrolls modders jumped on it to see what could be done. There seems to be good news: since the game logic still runs on the original Gamebryo engine, several of the mods made for the original game are being ported and appear to be working. The usual Bethesda plugin structure based on .esp files is also intact, so users can simply add new mods (.esps) to the data folder and then make sure to also add the .esp name to the plugins.txt file.
In the span of mere hours, there are already around ninety mods on Nexus. Some of these are simple, run-of-the-mill skip-the-intro mods, but others are far more interesting. For example, modder sammilucia has already uploaded a version of their Ultra + mod, which was previously released for many PC games (Hogwarts Legacy, RoboCop: Rogue City, Silent Hill 2 Remake, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl, Star Wars: Jedi Survivor, Ghostrunner 2, Cyberpunk 2077, Avowed, Runescape: Dragonwilds, Black Myth: Wukong). Interestingly, this mod adds NVIDIA DLSS Ray Reconstruction to Oblivion Remastered, which is not supported by default (DLSS Super Resolution and Frame Generation are natively available, though). The game offers hardware-accelerated ray traced Lumen global illumination, and Ray Reconstruction can boost its quality. Ultra + also makes other tweaks:
- Improved fog quality
- Fix fog ghosting
- Fix fog artifacting against the sky
- Include fog in Lumen tracing for GI and reflections
- Increase lighting quality in general via modifying the game's PostProcessVolumes
- Add several lighting quality levels, allowing maximum theoretical lighting quality
- Improved reflection quality
- Fix screenspace reflection issue when Hardware Lumen is enabled
- Performance tuning
But there are already many more mods on Nexus. Some attempt to restore the original game's colors through ReShade presets. Others ensure that quest rewards are unleveled so that they are always received by the player at their maximum quality.
There are also tweaks to game mechanics, such as equipment degradation, which can either be removed or significantly slowed down; carry weight can be boosted to infinity; spell restrictions to spellcrafting or enchanting can be removed; the HUD can be made sleeker and less intrusive. But, as mentioned earlier, arguably the most promising aspect is that Oblivion Remastered appears to be compatible with some original mods, such as NPCs Catch Fire and Horse Whistle - Summon and Follow. It remains to be seen if the same will hold true for more complex mods, but if that were to be true, the game's modding potential could be enormous. We'll keep a close eye on the modding scene's development, that's for sure.
