Oblivion Remastered revisited: profound problems have yet to be addressed

Over a fortnight since its launch, the state of the Oblivion Remastered’s performance on console is still a disappointment. The dust has settled on an ambitious, visually striking Unreal Engine 5 overhaul – which is also faithfully running the original Bethesda logic behind the scenes. However, the more we look at the console versions, the more problematic they become. No platform is spared of issues: whether it’s PS5, PS5 Pro or either Xbox Series machine, all struggle with traversal hitches while roaming the open world. Secondly, there’s major sub-60fps frame-rates, where I’ve also discovered that performance slowly degrades with more playing time – quite possibly down to a memory leak. And finally, software freezes are the icing on the cake, with all PlayStation and Xbox platforms crashing to the system menu on loading a save one to many times.

It’s a dire position for any remaster to be in and developer Virtuos needs to address the game’s stability – the crashes – as a priority. Meanwhile, questions need to be asked about the technical QA process: how did the game’s stuttering and performance-related problems make it to launch? There’s the feeling that the game was rushed to market when more time was needed. Also, it’s worth noting that there is still no equivalent hotfix update in place on PS5 or PS5 Pro to match Series X’s version 233550. After giving it some time to appear for our follow-up coverage, it’s seemingly not forthcoming – and so it seemed better that we present the facts as they stand today, with both PS5 machines running on the earlier version 233194. In the end, though, the hotfix has less bearing on the results than expected.

First off let’s address the PS5 Pro upgrade situation. The PlayStation Store suggests that a Pro upgrade is in place and on close inspection, there is a resolution boost over base PS5 and Series X. It’s very much a straightforward bump in pixels pushed by the Pro GPU on both graphics modes, though – performance or quality – and fundamentally there are no other visual changes. Starting with the 60fps performance mode, base PS5 and Series X share the same 1440p resolution target at peak with PS5 often operating at 900p in practise, and Series X typically running at a higher 990p value in matching areas. In this case, PS5 Pro gives us a boost to a higher 1620p target – notably in the inventory screen or simpler dungeons – with drops to 1188p lowest based on my testing. Again, all textures, shadows, world draw, and the quality of the game’s Lumen GI and reflections are identical – and rather, PS5 Pro’s GPU resources are pushed towards more pixels pushed per second.

Switching to the 30fps quality mode it’s the same story, with Sony’s enhanced console offering a further resolution boost. Base PS5 and Series X render at a matching 1620p in the absolute best case, with drops to 1296p at the lower end of the DRS scale. PS5 Pro meanwhile bumps that up to practically a native 4K target – or 3484×2016 in my tests on the inventory screen – which is close enough to suggest a native 4K is theoretically the goal. In practise, of course PS5 Pro is more typically running at numbers like 1584p or 1620p during open world roaming, which is still a sizeable image quality boost over base PS5 and Series X. The potential was there for Virtuos to get more inventive with PS5 Pro upgrades, but it is what it is.