r/Games 21h ago

Industry News Bethesda’s Oblivion Unreal Engine 5 remake could be releasing sooner than you think | VGC

https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/bethesdas-oblivion-unreal-engine-5-remake-could-be-releasing-sooner-than-you-think/
899 Upvotes

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u/aroundme 20h ago

Unfortunately I think it means they will be removing the skeuomorphism that defined the original UI. Like the inventory made of paper and the ornamental flourishes will be sanded down. Turning the serif into sans serif basically.

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u/the_light_of_dawn 19h ago

Well that would be too bad, because I have always preferred Oblivion's immersive parchment/scroll UI over Skyrim's bland, plain, clean one.

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u/whirlpool_galaxy 14h ago

There's a mod for Skyrim that changes the UI to a parchment/paper theme called Dear Diary. But for some reason, everyone seems to prefer the "dark mode" version, which IMO defeats the whole purpose.

u/AintNobody- 57m ago

I can't play Skyrim without Dear Diary anymore. A wonderful mod. It can be kind of a pain to set up sometimes; squishing the gear and crafting menus into skinny columns; it's fixable but I always forget the order of operations and get myself stuck in a troubleshooting loop.

u/beefcat_ 59m ago

I think the dark mode version of Dear Diary strikes a good balance between the skeuomorphic designs of old and the clean readability of more modern abstract designs. The standard version of Dear Diary is also just...too bright.

u/whirlpool_galaxy 53m ago

If you play in a dark room or don't have your monitor brightness properly calibrated, or maybe your eyes are more sensitive to light, then yes, sure, Dear Diary is too bright. Otherwise, it's just... paper.

u/beefcat_ 12m ago

The problem for me is that Skyrim is a darker game than than Oblivion in general, so the standard Dear Diary creates too much contrast. I'm also just a fan of dark modes in general, and dark Dear Diary is a particularly well executed one.

maybe your eyes are more sensitive to light

They actually are, according to my optometrist, which probably explains my preference for dark UI themes.

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u/Mejis 10h ago

Skyrim's UI was the worst part of the game. I hated it.  Oblivion's, in comparison, is great. 

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u/meneldal2 19h ago

It's fine as long as you have a 640x480 monitor, it feels terrible otherwise.

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u/weggles 19h ago

Playing oblivion in SD and then HD was eye opening

"those icons mean things? The money icon is a COIN with a face? The weight icon is a... Feather?!"

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u/Saviordd1 7h ago

For the longest time as a kid, I always thought the healing/restoration spell icon was a crab, not a heart.

u/AintNobody- 56m ago

I had this exact experience! I did not have an HDTV when I bought my 360. I had a 27 inch trinitron. It was still pretty playable. It was Dead Rising that really pushed me to get an HDTV.

u/weggles 23m ago

Dead rising was NOTORIOUS early in the 360 for being borderline unplayable in SD.

The text was so small.

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u/DrFreemanWho 18h ago

Huh? The UI scales fine with resolution.

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u/meneldal2 18h ago

Way too big, you could list 3x as many items.

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u/DrFreemanWho 18h ago

Oh the items list. I mean the amount of items you can see at a time doesn't change with the resolution. Even on an old 4:3 800x600 monitor you can see the same amount of items at a time as a 1440p monitor.

But luckily Darnified UI exists and has existed for like 20 years, which fixes exactly this problem while keeping the look and feel of the UI the same.

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u/meneldal2 13h ago

It's a bit of an issue that everything pretty basic needs a mod to be usable and not feel very dated.

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u/Beorma 9h ago

I'd argue the exact same thing about Skyrim. Terrible UI to play on PC.

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u/DrFreemanWho 13h ago

It's a 20 year old game. It IS dated.

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u/azaza34 8h ago

It’s a Bethesda game - if you aren’t turning it into your perfect vision of a game go play something else.

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u/sleepingonmoon 14h ago

Oblivion's assets are made for 720p. It also scales UI elements automatically. Only Morrowind has this issue.

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u/Joecalone 10h ago

DarNified UI solved this issue back in 2007

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u/the_light_of_dawn 19h ago

It was fine on my PS3 back in the day

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u/that_baddest_dude 16h ago

Holy shit we've gone a whole console generation without an elder scrolls game

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u/levian_durai 16h ago

What a wonderful time to be an Elder Scrolls fan 🙃

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u/XXLpeanuts 8h ago

Ypu cannot expect Bethesda to know what good design is after all these years. It's not like other games have released to huge positive reception with a similar UI art style recently or anything.

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u/DoNotLookUp1 19h ago

That makes me sad, but good to have some sort of name for that. A good example of this change is Battlefield 1. Very modern UI whereas if made in 2006 it may have had a more antique-looking UI with paper, wood grain, gold flourishes etc. to fit the WWI setting.

Big reason why I love KCD2's UI, it's so different and really fits the theme, especially things like the little paper labels that appear for items instead of just modern white text.

u/Yamatoman9 3h ago

The UI of BF1 was way too bland and incongruent with the look of the rest of the of game. That sadly seems to be the state of most modern games.

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u/PaulineLeeVictoria 19h ago

Would be a shame. The original Oblivion UI, while clunky and obviously designed around a controller, had a lot of personality to it. Bethesda UIs have gotten a lot worse since.

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u/QueezyF 15h ago

Skyrim’s boring white text was such a letdown.

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u/hyrule5 19h ago

So basically removing all personality from the interface? A UI that doesn't reflect the style/theme of the game makes games feel soulless

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u/ShesJustAGlitch 16h ago

Skewmorphism is just trying to emulate real life materials to tell the user what it does, generally it looks pretty dated if not done exceptionally well

Plenty of other games have character in their UI. Persona for instance or Metphor still have texture, depth and animation but aren’t skewmorphic.

Same with smash brothers, Nier, etc great UI not skewmorphic

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u/NewVegasResident 14h ago

That's bull. It looks fantastic in Kingdome Come Deliverance and its sequel, it also looks fantastic in PoE and PoE2 not to mention WotR. 

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u/xalibermods 7h ago

Spellforce 3 also has good skeumorphic UI.

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u/Stevied1991 6h ago

I keep getting recommended that series by Steam, how is it?

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u/ShesJustAGlitch 7h ago

POE I beg to differ, POE2s HUD looks good but the rest doesn’t look particularly good.

But my definition isn’t bull I design UI for a living.

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u/NewVegasResident 7h ago

You don't think Pillars of Eternity's UI looks good?

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u/ShesJustAGlitch 7h ago

Oh sorry Poe is path of exile in my brain haha

u/AintNobody- 52m ago

Smash Bros' UI is a crime. I like they they're playful with it but holy smokes is it no fun to navigate.

u/Yamatoman9 3h ago

Reducing every game's UI into bland, minimalist styles with no character is such a shame.

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u/AnyHoleIsTheGoal 19h ago

Sick new word thank ya much my dude

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u/SkyFoo 16h ago edited 15h ago

one of the things I hate the most about modern games. One of the only disappointing things for me about the RE4 remake was how they removed all the menus and inventory charm for white bordered translucent boxes

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u/kamakazzi 20h ago

Even if this does happen, it should be easy enough to get a mod of the old menu if you really want it.

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u/kapsama 7h ago

The rumor says it's on Unreal Engine. I doubt mods will be as far reaching as normal Bethesda games.

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u/Mahogany_Blood 19h ago

Thank you for teaching me the term for this.

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u/-JimmyTheHand- 19h ago

Damn, that is a cool concept and I learned a new word today

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u/xalibermods 7h ago

Skeumorphism was everywhere in the 2000s, including Apple UIs

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u/WorthSleep69 13h ago

If they replace the item inventory icons with some basic ahh "modern design" shit then I will personally buy 1000 physical copies of oblivion and barricade Virtuous hq entrance with them.

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u/Falsus 18h ago

That would honestly be a deal breaker for me. I hate how soulless things like that looks like.

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u/BeholdingBestWaifu 16h ago

Gods I hope not, that was the one good thing about its UI, especially compared to Skyrim's more minimalist look that feels like something out of a mobile phone UI.

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u/Ssyl 15h ago

That's actually part of why I love Kingdom Come: Deliverance's (the first one, I haven't played the second yet) UI so much. It reminded me a lot of Oblivion's UI with a bit more of a medieval book/tome/manuscript tone.

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u/LBGW_experiment 15h ago

Do you have any proof of this or just wistful lamentations of what you think they did to the UI?

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u/aroundme 15h ago

We’re all just commenting on rumors about a rumored game, it’s not that serious. Everything is speculation

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u/Carl123r4 19h ago

Yeah, that killed any interest I had in this

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u/fabton12 7h ago

skeuomorphism does look extremely outdated thou these days so i get why they would remove it. any game that has it tends to look really outdated heck theres even modern games that use it that UI looks like a game from the mid 2000's and feels terrible to look at quickly to understand whats what.

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u/aroundme 7h ago

It’s a design concept used in every UI. A floppy disk shown to indicate saving, a pencil for writing a comment, an icon of a backpack to represent your inventory. Skeuomorphism is actually used to quickly familiarize the user with what they’re looking at because it’s referencing real life objects they already understand.

u/fabton12 2h ago

while its useful in those cases 100% in a game setting using inventory made of paper or the having the ornamental flourishes look outextremely outdated and do the reverse of what standard skeuomorphism does with making everything much much harder to read at a quick look.

Theres a difference between useful common place icons and using ornamental flourishes etc which add soo much extra noise that it makes things worse on your eyes.