I’ve heard if you look deep enough into the files, you can find a full copy of Skyrim.
I’ve noticed that while playing, actors move exactly the same way that they used to, and the same or very similar bugs will appear.
They even left massively obvious bugs intact, like how the magic store in the Imperial City is permanently locked after getting a certain DLC, because the DLC changes the door’s ownership so the shopkeeper can’t unlock it. The given fix is to stealthily break into the shop with lock picks, (which will get you into trouble with the guards if caught), pickpocket the key from the shopkeeper, (which will get you into trouble with the guards if caught), then use that key to open the front door from now on. Because using the key isn’t considered illegal as long as the store is open. So even though the door is still permanently locked, you can just use the key.
It straight up uses a mix of UE5 and the original GameBryo. Right down to bugs still unfixed in the current version of the OG oblivion. The ESM and ESP files are even 1:1 identical.
It made me wonder if I could load up a mod that just adds a new NPC made with the original editor but in the new game. I just don’t remember how, exactly, to manually load the .esp file via adding a line to one of the files.
That’s because the old game is still there, it’s internally running the same engine under the hood but with Unreal Engine 5 used for its graphics & rendering.
On a scale from 1 to 10, how likely does this make it that old Oblivion mods will eventually become compatible with the remaster?
With a 10 being “they’re already supported”? Like an 8 or a 9. Some of the graphical mods obviously won’t work, but the gameplay mods often just need some minor tweaking to point to updated file names. The biggest gameplay changes are primarily with the leveling system, so anything that deals with that will need to be overhauled.
I read a Steam review that in the EULA it says there’s anticheat and no modding allowed. Not sure how that will play out.
Edit: It looks like ‘no modding’ is a standard cover your own ass policy, for Bethesda. Modding is good to go, they don’t really care.
There are already hundreds of mods for it, and Vortex works fine with it. The manual modding process is slightly different, but that’s only because there’s no launcher to select your active files or load order; You need to manually specify that in a .txt file. But Vortex can already edit that .txt file automatically, so you can just change your load order in that.
I checked, and the stuff about modding is true (you can read the EULA directly on the Steam Store page), however the Skyrim Anniversary EULA says you can only use editors or tools by Bethesda or Zenimax to make mods (if I read that correctly). I don’t think anyone really cares in Skyrim, and I don’t think anybody will care with Oblivion
no modding allowed
Normally Bethesda relies on mods to make their games playable. So this is a big change
That doesn’t make any sense.
Edit: you can downvote me all you want. That’s not how game engines work.
It’s the same thing we saw with Halo CE Anniversary on the Xbox 360.
Edit:
you can downvote me all you want. That’s not how game engines work.
Just so we’re clear, that edit wasn’t there when I made this comment. Bro edited in a double-down even after getting real-world examples that are over thirteen years old. It takes a crazy kind of confidence to stare reality in the face and say, “Nah, I don’t like that, so it doesn’t exist.”
Halo CEA used the original Blam Engine as a backend and Sabre’s engine in the frontend, it just made the new rendering engine toggleable. Sonic Colors Ultimate did the same thing, too: the backend is the Hedgehog engine and the frontend is Godot.
Well that’s not too surprising, when the original game’s installer files are only about 5-6 GB in total, and the remaster requires 120GB of space. They probably have a couple copies of Fallout in there too just for bloat.
I mean I’m pretty sure the massive game sizes we see today are almost exclusively caused by high res textures and assets.
Bethesda was notorious back in the day for using uncompressed textures. Not lossless textures, just fully uncompressed bitmaps. One of the first mods after every game release just compressed and dynamically decompressed these to get massive improvements in load times and memory management.
I look forward to the day that game companies start making hi res textures an optional part of the installation. I don’t need all of the textures used for 4k when I’m running in 1440p High. They are just wasted space on the hard drive.
For the user interface they can easily inform the user which options are restricted if they don’t install the textures.
Texture resolution doesn’t map to screen/render resolution like that. Depending on the object, its mesh, the physical size (dimensions) of the in-game object, and how close your player view/camera is to it, you can absolutely see a clear difference between 2k and 4k textures for the object, even when the game is rendering at 720p or lower.
More importantly it was limited by physical media back then.
Like, DVD level physical media, there was a hard limit for everyone, so there was a huge focus on optimization to save space
Now that almost all games are downloaded, they can be as huge as they want. So optimizing for file size is often the first place that gets cut. You might not keep a huge game installed, but it’s rare to avoid buying a game due to file size.
Which sucks for anyone that doesn’t have a 8GB+ GPU. I’m fine with 1024x1024 textures, I don’t need or want higher res textures, I want good framerates
You can usually set that in game although the settings are usually vague (low, med, high, ultra, etc.)
The entirety of Fallout: New Vegas is playable from an arcade machine in game.
Unfortunately semiconductors haven’t been invented in the Elder Scrolls universe so no arcade machines which means this is a lie.