Well, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered is now out in the world, and it doesn’t have any official mod support. Not that the latter’s made any difference, though, because as of writing over 80 mods have already arrived for it in less than 24 hours, including at least seven attempts to recreate those classic 2006 visuals.
Oh, and what looks like an early script extender that might help facilitate more advanced mods than your usual reshades and minor gameplay tweaks. Yeah, I think we should be occupied for a while longer as we all wait for The Elder Scrolls 6 to release some time this century.
In its official FAQ about Oblivion Remastered published after the game shadow-dropped, Bethesda confirmed that “Mods are not supported for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered”. It added the usual sentiment you’d expect, encouraging folks having issues playing with mods to try getting rid of them as a fix.
VG247 has reached out to the publisher to see if we can get 100% confirmation that this definitely means there’s no chance of the game potentially getting some official modding tools further down the line. It certainly doesn’t have any as of writing, though.
No matter, though. We’re less than a day on from release, and there are already 90 mods available for the Oblivion remaster via Nexus Mods – a number that’s still steadily growing by the hour. Among those which’ve been released so far are at least six different reshades designed to make the remaster’s visuals more closely resemble the original’s technicolour fever dream, just in case the nostalgia ain’t powerful enough as is – seriously, look at all of these 2006-inspired reshades, dude.
Outside of those, you’ll find the usual performance tweaks and slight gameplay changes, but a couple of things have caught my eye. First of all, there’s ‘UE4SS for OblivionRemastered‘, which is an early script extender, and so might help facilitate more advanced stuff like quest mods once modders really get the hang of the game.
Then, there’s ‘The Player Random Conversation System – Remastered‘, an OG Oblivion mod that expands the game’s dialogue a bit by giving the player a bunch more random options in conversations. In the comments its creator thejazzcat117 revealed that aside from fixing some bugs, the porting process was straightforward, writing: “I used the original creation kit. Mods that are script-focused should be low-effort to port. Mods that use assets or require a script extender however? Those are not supported (I hope it changes!!)”.
We’ll have to see how things evolve mod-wise with the Oblivion remaster, but I’d certainly bet on modders continuing to find ways to do what they want, and make it easier for others to follow suit.