There was a big question hanging over the launch of Oblivion Remastered: Will mods work? The news from Bethesda support was not good: “Mods are not supported for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered.” But it looks like “not supported” doesn’t mean much to a community that’s been taking apart Bethesda games for decades at this point, because mods are already popping up on NexusMods, and yeah, they work.
Bethesda itself hinted at the moddability of Oblivion Remastered even as it denied support: After warning that mods are not supported, it added, “If you are experiencing gameplay issues while playing with mods, it’s recommended you first try uninstalling your mods, then verify your games files on Steam, or the Xbox App.” That’s a pretty clear indication that the game will run with mods installed.
Over on Reddit, modders are already tearing into the new code. One redditor wrote that Oblivion Remastered game files can be opened in the old Construction Kit, and while it’s not clear (in that thread, at least) just what can be done with it—or even how exactly it’s working—the speculation is that the way the game piggybacks Unreal Engine 5 graphics onto the original game logic opens the door to, well, something.
“The first thing I did was see if the game was still using .esm files,” redditor osunightfall wrote. “It is. Therefore, modding is only a matter of time. Those of us who speculated that Creation Kit was still used for content creation and UE mainly for runtime engine were correct.”
There may be limitations to what can be done with that setup. “From the sounds of it, this still stymies modding, since the high fidelity assets are swapped in by UE5 at runtime, while the old 2000s era assets are still in the base files,” TorKHU wrote in reply. “So, that’ll be a problem that needs fixing if we want to make any mods that add content.”
That may be, and it’ll likely be a while before the ins and outs of modding Oblivion Remastered are fully exploring. For now, though, the bottom line is that less than six hours after Oblivion Remastered went live, an updated Unreal script extender is up on NexusMods, and the mods are flowing.
It’s fairly basic stuff so far, like Classic Oblivion Color Grading, Skip Intro Screens, Ultimate Engine Tweaks, and a longsword that does 10,000 damage, but as I mentioned it’s also been like six hours. At least one old Oblivion mod, the Player Random Conversation System, has already been updated for the Remastered edition, and a new subreddit dedicated to Oblivion Remastered mods is also live and doing a brisk business.
And yes, for the record, I tested an Oblivion Remastered mod to ensure it works—which is to say, PC Gamer’s Chris Livingston installed Player Random Conversation System to ensure it works, and then he told me it does. Why he chose to talk to this creepy looking guy I do not know, but the mod installed and ticked over without a hitch, and that’s what matters. It’s a positive sign that many more mods for the original game will likely follow in short order.
For anyone curious on behalf of a friend, Oblivion Remastered nude mods aren’t yet out there, but in what I take as probably the truest sign of confidence in the viability of the mod scene, bets are already being placed. And rest assured: the gooners are on it.
The truth is that, dire words from Bethesda support aside, it only makes sense. Bethesda may not want to deal with the headache of officially supporting Oblivion Remastered mods, but mods, from the useful to the bananas, are an essential part of the Elder Scrolls experience, and core to their longevity. Locking players out of them would be a tremendous misstep, but leaving them to work things out on their own? That’s just fine.
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