I lost a bet that The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered wouldn't launch this year—and I couldn't be happier

There were rumors and speculation aplenty leading up to the current "worst-kept secret in gaming." That worst-kept secret, at least this time, was that The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered would be shadow dropping Soon (TM). Well, after weeks of false starts, the remastered edition of 2006's Oblivion did indeed hit online store shelves today, April 22, 2025.

I didn't lose money on a bet, but I definitely lost a bet stating that Oblivion Remastered wouldn't launch this year. I figured that the game is only 19 years old. Surely Bethesda would wait until 2026—on Oblivion's 20th anniversary—before launching. I was so confident that I even made it my #1 counterpick during this year's Fantasy Critic draft.

You wholeheartedly win this round, Gaming Nexus Staff Writer Jason Dailey. And I couldn't be happier. Even if I'm going to be sacked with -20 points on the season for being so naive as to disbelieve the rumors that it would, indeed, launch this year.

Oblivion's story is intact. But the Remaster, handled by Virtuous Studios, has approximately 120 GB of Unreal Engine 5 pushing the pixels around the screen now. The video and screenshots already prove that they're gigabytes well spent. Oblivion is gorgeous once again, even if it wholly resurrected the Oblivion Abominations subreddit, in which people push the character creation sliders to their horrifying limits.

If you haven't already forked over $50 on Steam for Oblivion Remastered, or if you aren't subscribed to Game Pass, then you can wait for our review, out in two weeks. Why is it two weeks away? All of us at Gaming Nexus have day jobs. Oblivion is between 60 and 10,000 hours long. And it really did shadow drop today out of seemingly nowhere—at least as far as official channels were concerned.

Check out our review of the 2006 OG Oblivion if you want a taste of a game that extracted a rare 9.1 review out of former GN Editor-in-Chief Chuck Husemann.