Bethesda remembers it just released an Elder Scrolls game, announces gameplay-focused Oblivion patch that addresses about 5% of player complaints

Good news: someone at Bethesda tripped over a discarded game case in the hall and remembered that it released an Elder Scrolls game a month and a half ago. After a lengthy period of silence regarding Oblivion Remastered, Bethesda has poked its head up to announce not one, but two upcoming patches to its redone version of The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion.

The patches are split into two areas. The first—available today as a Steam beta—covers "quests, major bugs and blockers, and quality of life fixes." You know, the kind of minor gripes that have been rubbing you the wrong way ever since the game released, like Oblivion Remastered's cunningly hidden local map, the inability to switch off your HUD, and Savlian Matius deciding to spend the rest of his life in the courtyard of Castle Kvatch. It's set for a full release on June 11, but you can opt into the beta in the properties section of Oblivion Remastered in Steam.

The second patch is taking aim at the game's performance issues. I gotta be honest, my time with Oblivion Remastered has been pretty slick on the performance front, but there are definitely a lot of people out there who have been running into stutters and judders as they jaunt about Cyrodiil.

My guess—though Bethesda doesn't say this—is that these problems are proving a little harder for the devs to fix, since the studio doesn't stick a date on this patch, and instead promises to "share more details when we are able."

I have to be honest, the patch notes (which I'll put below in full) for the gameplay-focused update are a little underwhelming. Making games is hard and Oblivion Remastered—as a strange chimera of the original Gamebryo version and UE5—is no doubt a tough thing to work on, but the game has been out for almost two months at this point.

Players have spent that time identifying a whole bunch of areas where Bethesda and Virtuos could make quality-of-life improvements: inventory categories, more shortcut slots, a Goldilocks difficulty between Adept and Expert, deleting old spells, and plenty else besides.

For Bethesda to finally come out after a long radio-silence and address a fraction of people's complaints is a little disappointing. Hey, maybe the work is turning out to be real tough. That's fair enough, but if it's the case then the studio should probably communicate that.

But hey, hopefully this is just the first patch of many, and in the not-too-distant future we'll have a version of the game with all the fixes it clearly needs. Until then, well, just stay prepared to spend a lot of time exhaustively scrolling through your inventory.

Oblivion Remastered Update 1.1

General

• Enabled ToggleHudVisibility and ShowHud console commands.

UI

• Fix for missing text when installing the Deluxe Upgrade
• Fix 'Skip' button not showing correctly during intro
• Fix for Redguard Origin stats being reversed
• Fix for not automatically showing Local Map when inside interior spaces
• Fix for being unable to name Enchanted items when using a controller
• Fix punctuation issues in Chinese translation
• Localized string fixes
• Fix for interacting with Daedric Shrines not displaying subtitles

Crashes

• Fix crash when loading after fast travel to Vilverin
• Fix crash when exploring Crayfish Cave
• Fix crash when fighting Stunted Scamps
• Fix crash when paying the fine after stealing in Castle Bravil
• Fix for crash when loading Quicksaves
• Fix crash when loading after fast travel to Mortal Camp
• Fix for crash when loading a save in Quill-Weave's house
• Fix crash when rapidly switching between Quality and Performance modes
• Fix crash when storing items in a chest in Frostcrag Spire
• Fix crash when creating multiple potions at once using stolen ingredients
• Fix various CPU crashes

Gameplay

• Fix player animation issues when mounting horses
• Fix High Chancellor Ocato arms not animating
• Fix Shambles' animations getting stuck when attacking
• Fix for Staff of Sheogorath not freezing enemies
• Fix for Cap'n Dugal not spawning
• Fix for Light spells not showing VFX
• Fix for offset Map Markers when running on a secondary monitor
• Fix for Local Map being blank when opening
• Fix Peryite Shrine's voiceover being cut off
• Fix for First Person camera being set above the player's head
• Fix for Chameleon VFX being stuck on player
• Fix for player's skin textures not matching when infected with a disease

System

• Fix player settings being reset when updating Settings
• Fix XCloud mirroring settings from PC to XBOX
• Fix for infinite loading issues
• Fix for freezing when pressing Alt+Tab
• Fix autosaving creating a new group of saves
• Fix for old save files being renamed when the character is renamed at the Sewer exit
• Fix for small Display Resolution sizes not showing correctly in Windowed Mode

Quests

• The Battle for Kvatch - Fix Savlian becoming stuck after Castle Courtyard fight
• A Knife in the Dark - Fix for Vincente Valtieri losing his hair
• Finding the Thieves Guild - Fix for NPCs not appearing
• The Sunken One - Fix for a Diary page being hidden under a bowl
• The Elven Maiden - Fix for crash when Hieronymus Lex attempts to take Llathasa's Bust out of the cupboard in Myvryna Arano's house