Oblivion’s renowned meme king, the YouTuber Bacon_, has recently regaled us with tales of rescuing Emperor Uriel Septim, secret agent-style, and why the original’s chaotic Radiant AI system remains the gold standard for Bethesda NPCs. Bacon unsurprisingly has a lot of love for the recent remaster and believes that it makes “lots of good changes while also remaining faithful to the original”.
Bacon is enjoying the addition of new voices, the upscaled visuals, and the ability to sprint—so he doesn’t have to get the zoomies (or 'skoomies') by duping “a lot of Skooma and [binding] it to a hotkey to run around.” Either way, he’s still chugging the stuff. However, it’s the streamlined levelling system that takes the gold medal —which no longer has you at the mercy of level scaling if you didn’t focus on ‘efficiently’ levelling and allows for greater build diversity.
“[It’s] so much better and exactly what I have wanted for years," says Bacon. "They said it was a mix of Oblivion and Skyrim but I would say it's like a mix of Fallout 3 and Oblivion, [because] you get a set amount of points that you get to distribute over different attributes.
“I always liked Oblivion's Attributes over Skyrim's Health, Stamina and Magic because I like stats and numbers in my RPGs but I really hated the way Oblivion went about doing it. So that was a massive improvement. I really hope that we'll see Fallout 3 get the same treatment and New Vegas.”
When it comes to ‘remastering’ his own content, it hasn’t been smooth sailing for Bacon with Oblivion Remastered presenting roadblocks in certain scenarios. This includes the Dive Rock skit, which sees the Adoring Fan quite literally go over the edge after being dismissed back to the Arena. “[This] isn't possible anymore because they have improved the pathfinding so he doesn't see running off the cliff as the fastest path back to the Arena.” Well, that’s a real shame if you ask me.
Bacon also tried to remake the immensely popular Farewell video, featuring battlemage Fithragaer’s crushing demise, but—sadly—Fithragaer now emerges unscathed. “I think there is a bug causing those traps to not do any damage so Fithragaer survives (which also breaks the quest unless you kill him or know where to go next) and since the last half of the video happened entirely by chance I am not sure I'll be able to make it happen again on purpose.”
When it comes to the janky comedy Elder Scrolls bounteously provides, not being able to revisit these specific moments may be disappointing, but there’s no denying that there will be plenty more Elder Scrolls hijinks to come.
Bacon hasn’t previously used many mods as he prefers to “stick to vanilla” versions of games. However, he is excited for the upcoming Skyblivion mod and experiencing Oblivion “with Skyrim mechanics and AI behaviour. It honestly looks more like a brand new game than just a mod.” Between Oblivion Remastered and Skyblivion, fans of the classic game have quite the feast this year. “[These are] all great ways to experience this game and I am glad a lot of new people will get to experience one of my favourite games for the first time.”
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