Oblivion Remastered hero returns to the game's golden age by spending 7 hours arranging books just to topple them like dominoes

A surprised looking person wearing armor in Oblivion Remastered — (Image credit: Bethesda)

Oblivion players of a certain vintage will recall that, after the original game's release, there were various community trends based around what you could do with the game's physics system: specifically, just how elaborate of a domino run could you make?

This has of course been repeated across Bethesda's games up through Starfield, because something about that jank-ass physics system is just irresistible. I used to love piling up skulls in Fallout 3, for some reason, and just seeing how high I could possibly get things (on one memorable occasion, a skull at the bottom began vibrating faster and faster until it shot up and caused a skullplosion).

Someone stole my video and uploaded it, without credit or permission, blurred the video enough so my watermark wouldn't be visible. So please enjoy the video in higher quality and from the creator. from r/ElderScrolls

"I spent the first 1-2 hours trying to learn how to place them good, after that the stairs took 2-3 hours because every time I tested it, it gave me different results, every time I loaded the save something broke," said Muaxh03. Sure sounds like Oblivion, god love it.

"Took about 6-7 hours, almost every time I loaded the save something broke, it was not reliable so yes I had to deal with books falling or glitching most of the time, that's why you can see some desynchronizing on the books, some fall slower or faster,” added Muaxh03.

This process is a proper pain in Oblivion Remastered because, unlike later Bethesda games, you can't rotate and place objects in the same way: you have to carefully drop them and pray to the Creation engine. But if you want a sense of what players achieved in the OG, the below shows the kind of ludicrously impressive setups I'm talking about.

Oblivion Remastered has only been out for a few weeks, but already the modders are going hard on it. Yes, the gooners were on it immediately. But for the more high-minded among us, why not be a stealthy murder king? They've also fixed things like the awful loot levelling system and, my favourite one yet, a kind of contracts mode that makes the Dark Brotherhood stuff last forever.

TOPICS

Rich is a games journalist with 15 years' experience, beginning his career on Edge magazine before working for a wide range of outlets, including Ars Technica, Eurogamer, GamesRadar+, Gamespot, the Guardian, IGN, the New Statesman, Polygon, and Vice. He was the editor of Kotaku UK, the UK arm of Kotaku, for three years before joining PC Gamer. He is the author of a Brief History of Video Games, a full history of the medium, which the Midwest Book Review described as "[a] must-read for serious minded game historians and curious video game connoisseurs alike."

You must confirm your public display name before commenting

Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.