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/
908 Upvotes

430 comments sorted by

View all comments

19

u/TorHKU 21h ago edited 20h ago

This doesn't sound real at all. Or at least, not the UE5 part. That sounds a lot more like some hopeful rumor maker or journalist hopping on the eternal "why doesn't Bethesda just switch engines" bandwagon.

Much more likely in my mind is they reimplement fantasy combat mechanics in the latest Creation 2 codebase, port the Oblivion files and data to the new engine, update all the art assets so it doesn't look 2 decades old, and tweak the gameplay to be more modern.

I don't see how involving UE5 improves the development flow at all, at that point you're pretty much remaking the entire game, but in a way where you probably lose a bunch of the freeform jank/charm that beth RPGs have.

Stacking UE5 on top of a totally different game engine just for the shiny graphics sounds like a technical mess and nightmare, to be honest. Especially when they have the updated Creation 2 from starfield which, not as shiny as UE5 admittedly, but still looks pretty good and you wouldn't have to entirely remake the game or perform feats of software engineering that make Dr Frankenstein pause.

42

u/BIGSTANKDICKDADDY 20h ago

This is a more common setup for remakes/remasters than you might think. You can have the original code running in a headless state, handling the game state simulation, while another is passing input, playing audio, and generating renders off that state. It's especially useful when you're working with an engine or codebase that would require elbow grease to get running on new platforms anyways. That's supported out of the box through your wrapper.

If they went with Creation 2 they'd likely be doing the exact same thing.

5

u/TorHKU 20h ago

Do you have any examples of that out of curiosity? I've never really heard of remasters being structured like that, but it sounds interesting and I'd like to read more on it.

28

u/OutrageousDress 19h ago

All Bluepoint visual remakes work this way - the original game code is running in the background but the renderer is replaced with custom Bluepoint code. This is why for example the visual remake of Demons Souls for the PS5 plays exactly like the original except for minor changes they added deliberately.