Can a bunch of amateur mod makers really band together and do a better remake of one of the greatest games of all time… in their evenings and weekends? The people behind Skyblivion certainly think so. But at what cost? And why did one of its most prolific contributors publicly remove himself from the project, claiming that it had started to feel more like a job than a passion project? We’ve interviewed him to find out, and to get an insight on what it’s like to take on such a mammoth task. Also featuring Sean Noonan of Fireblade Software (ex Ubisoft, Cloud Imperium) and Mark Warren of Rock Paper Shotgun, who has made the modding scene his own personal beat for the last several years.
The Skyblivion team aim to remake The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion with the engine, gameplay, and quality of life experience of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. It’s been in active development for almost as long as Skyrim has been available, and its profile went absolutely stratospheric this year with the announcement of the long rumoured Oblivion Remastered, a massive official visual overhaul of the original game that led many to question whether or not Skyblivion was even needed any more. But when over a decade has been spent on painstakingly re-imagining ever inch of Oblivion’s map – not just covering it up with a coat of Unreal 5 paint – it’s clear that there is plenty of room for this labour of love in the hearts of Elder Scrolls fans.
You may remember that for years before its official unveiling and subsequent Beyonce Drop onto Game Pass, the official Oblivion Remaster was the subject of much industry speculation. Rumours swirled for years about this mysterious project, at one point believed to be a full-blown remake with ‘soulslike combat’ (heaven forbid). And nobody took more notice of those pervasive reports more than, perhaps, the Skyblivion team: the ambitious project over a decade in the making that is re-imagining every inch of Oblivion in the Skyrim engine.
In the modding scene mini-documentary published today by our very own video team, we get a glimpse into the rollercoaster of emotions felt by Skyblivion devs as a potential rival project – commissioned by Bethesda themselves – threatened the relevancy of their own fan-made game.
“It was not set in stone whether it was a ‘remake’ or a ‘remaster’, so we were concerned” recalls Dee Keyes, Skyblivion’s former world designer. However, the mood changed upon Oblivion Remastered’s release: “it was a huge relief because we realised ‘oh, they’re doing something completely different. They’re doing a very faithful remaster, and we were going for something more remade from the ground up”.
And it shows, too. It’s clear from the numerous Skyblivion Dev Diaries that entire cities have been meticulously re-designed and expanded by the mod team, often bearing little or no resemblance to the original layout. It may seem fanciful to think that a hobbyist project can rival or even surpass the scope and quality of an official release, but if Skyblivion pulls off what it is promising, then it will genuinely represent a much more comprehensive overhaul of Oblivion than the official Remaster, which is literally the original game with an Unreal 5 derived graphical overlay – a product of “engine blending”. Meaning it looks fresh and modern, but it is still the same game with all of the same foibles underneath. And it’s still physically impossible for boats to reach the sea from the Imperial City, something which Skyblivion goes out of its way to fix, as an example of how well thought out and lore-friendly its changes are.
But Dee left the project very publicly some weeks ago, as reported by Rock Paper Shotgun, citing mismanagement issues, and a belief that too much time was being spent on producing, among other things, slick dev diaries while the project remained in a far less polished state. Our doc covers this, as well as the wider issue of the commercialisation of modding – with one professional developer, game designer Sean Noonan (ex Ubisoft, Cloud Imperium) opining that some large modding projects feel more like “mock business opportunities…rather than something fun”.
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