Skyblivion shows off some gorgeous Oblivion locations and some boring Oblivion quests in its latest trailer

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If things go according to schedule, we'll be playing Oblivion remade in Skyrim next year. The latest trailer for the Skyblivion project shows it looking pretty smooth (apart from one discolored face and a horse walking while going nowhere), highlighting two quests in and around the town of Chorrol. Chorrol itself looks lush and colorful, with some real pretty windmills on the outskirts and an impressive fountain outside the Mages Guild. Everything is so nice to look at that it makes the blandness of the actual quests in this quest showcase stand out.

First up is Fingers of the Mountain, one of way too many quests you have to complete to earn commendations so you can begin the Mages Guild storyline, which is even more boring than the main questline of Oblivion. This is a game where there are famously a heap of sidequests more interesting than the central one, like the Dark Brotherhoood, Thieves Guild, Fighters Guild, and Daedric Shrine questlines, so to demo dud sidequests like this seems an odd choice. In this first mission you're sent to retrieve a spellbook, then given the choice to return it to one of two competing wizards. Whoever you give it to, the other demands you steal it back, and either way the quest ends with you earning your commendation. Yawn.

The other sidequest highlighted here is The Killing Field, in which you help two brothers defend their farm from goblins. Watching the fight play out makes me wonder how many reloads it took to get a clean battle where neither brother took a single hit from the player, even when they're tossing lightning magic around. I remember this quest being a chaotic melee where they were constantly running in front just as I attacked, but then I also remember my horse joining the fight. That probably didn't help.

You earn different rewards from the boys' father depending on whether you protected one, both, or neither of them, with the subsequent state of the farm also changing to reflect this. Which is nice, I guess, not that I ever hung around a random farm to pay attention to things like that.

Still, this video is impressive as a showcase of Skyblivion's visuals. The ruins of Cloud Top have been remade, and Chorrol's been gussied up as well. As we saw previously, the Skyblivion team is refreshing Oblivion's dungeons by giving them unique appearances suited to each region, and it's those kinds of changes that interest me most about this project. I can't wait to see how The Shivering Isles looks when Skyblivion releases in 2025.

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.