If things go according to schedule, we’ll be playing Oblivion remade in Skyrim next year. The latest trailer for the Skyblivion project shows it looking pretty smooth (apart from one discolored face and a horse walking while going nowhere), highlighting two quests in and around the town of Chorrol. Chorrol itself looks lush and colorful, with some real pretty windmills on the outskirts and an impressive fountain outside the Mages Guild. Everything is so nice to look at that it makes the blandness of the actual quests in this quest showcase stand out.
First up is Fingers of the Mountain, one of way too many quests you have to complete to earn commendations so you can begin the Mages Guild storyline, which is even more boring than the main questline of Oblivion. This is a game where there are famously a heap of sidequests more interesting than the central one, like the Dark Brotherhoood, Thieves Guild, Fighters Guild, and Daedric Shrine questlines, so to demo dud sidequests like this seems an odd choice. In this first mission you’re sent to retrieve a spellbook, then given the choice to return it to one of two competing wizards. Whoever you give it to, the other demands you steal it back, and either way the quest ends with you earning your commendation. Yawn.
The other sidequest highlighted here is The Killing Field, in which you help two brothers defend their farm from goblins. Watching the fight play out makes me wonder how many reloads it took to get a clean battle where neither brother took a single hit from the player, even when they’re tossing lightning magic around. I remember this quest being a chaotic melee where they were constantly running in front just as I attacked, but then I also remember my horse joining the fight. That probably didn’t help.
You earn different rewards from the boys’ father depending on whether you protected one, both, or neither of them, with the subsequent state of the farm also changing to reflect this. Which is nice, I guess, not that I ever hung around a random farm to pay attention to things like that.
Still, this video is impressive as a showcase of Skyblivion’s visuals. The ruins of Cloud Top have been remade, and Chorrol’s been gussied up as well. As we saw previously, the Skyblivion team is refreshing Oblivion’s dungeons by giving them unique appearances suited to each region, and it’s those kinds of changes that interest me most about this project. I can’t wait to see how The Shivering Isles looks when Skyblivion releases in 2025.
