In March of 2006, I distinctly remember rushing out of the office as soon as the workday ended to meet a friend. I didn’t yet own an Xbox 360, but my friend did – and he’d pre-ordered the sequel to one of my favourite games of all-time! I darted from the city centre down a side road to my friend’s place, which was a tiny attic apartment with one minuscule window and a sloping ceiling. As soon as I got there, we fired up The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, and I spent the rest of the night hanging out with him as he created his character, played through the game’s iconic opening sequence, and stepped out into the world of Tamriel.
It wouldn’t be until 2008 or 2009 that I got to play Oblivion for myself, but when I did I had a whale of a time. I remember thinking that, while the game was more limited in some respects than Morrowind had been, other elements and mechanics more than made up for that deficit – and gave Oblivion a truly immersive world. All of the characters were fully voice-acted, facial animations and lip syncing looked great, and your character could mount and ride a horse! And the main storyline of Oblivion – the quest to find the Emperor’s heir and stop an invasion from another realm – was riveting stuff. I genuinely enjoyed my playthrough of Oblivion and its Shivering Isles DLC, and although I haven’t returned to the game since then, I still consider it to be a fantastic experience.
I’d been hearing rumours of a remaster or remake of Oblivion for at least a year. But as you may know, I don’t like to cover hearsay here on the website, so I was content to wait until we heard from developers Bethesda and Virtuos in an official capacity before talking about the game. Earlier today, the Oblivion remaster was shown off – and I gotta say, it looks great. It won’t be a totally modern game, as it’s still built on the same bones of the original, but it’s been updated with all new graphics, additional voice acting, and some gameplay tweaks to bring things like combat and exploration closer to modern standards. As I write this, I’m actually downloading the Oblivion remaster and I plan to play it as soon as it’s ready!
But – and you knew there had to be a “but” coming after all of that – I feel pretty sickened by Oblivion’s £10 “Deluxe Edition.”
I’ll give Xbox and Bethesda a lot of credit for bundling Oblivion’s main pieces of DLC in with this remaster. Oblivion is almost twenty years old, and it’s retailing for £50 here in the UK, so trying to charge extra for Shivering Isles or Knights of the Nine would’ve been just plain wrong. But Bethesda is a greedy company, so there’s still something extra that players can purchase separately – and it’s connected to one of the most notorious episodes in the company’s history.
In April 2006, Bethesda released Oblivion’s horse armour DLC – one of the first pieces of small-scale cosmetic DLC for a single-player game. And the company was roundly criticised for trying to sell such a tiny and meaningless piece of content. Unfortunately for us all, and despite the relentless attacks from critics, the horse armour DLC sold reasonably well – well enough for Bethesda to keep going down this DLC road. Look at Starfield’s utterly disgusting in-game marketplace – which resembles something out of a free-to-play mobile game – to see where this approach ultimately led the company.
Other corporations in the games industry took note of both the backlash to, and the financial success of, Bethesda’s horse armour DLC… and it’s not unfair to say it was a harbinger of things to come. Many games now launch with little pieces of content hacked off to be sold separately, and it’s gotten so bad that I daresay most people won’t even bat an eye at the Oblivion remaster coming with a “deluxe edition.” But I’m afraid I do – I didn’t like it in 2006 and I like it even less now. Bethesda is, I would argue, one of the guiltiest parties in the games industry when it comes to pushing for and normalising the idea of single-player microtransactions – and that’s something which can quite literally ruin a game for me.
So the Oblivion remaster is launching with an expensive £10 “deluxe edition.” Contained within that is the typical bullshit you might expect: a collection of JPEGs that self-importantly claims to be an “art book,” the game’s soundtrack, and… wait, what’s that? Surely it can’t be… horse armour? Bethesda wouldn’t do that again, surely? But it is. It’s horse armour.
Oh piss off, Bethesda.
Seriously? After all of the controversy in 2006, with horse armour becoming the quintessential example of bad-value DLC, you’re really going to do this again? It must be a joke, right? A self-aware nod and wink to fans and players. But Bethesda is still earnestly asking you to cough up an additional £10 to access this “deluxe edition” content, complete with horse armour.
I could be wrong, because I haven’t played Oblivion in more than fifteen years at this point, but the “deluxe edition” horse armour in this remastered version doesn’t look the same as the original 2006 version. But is that because it’s brand-new content or is that just the way it looks in the remastered version? Visuals have changed across the board, so I genuinely can’t tell at a glance. If it’s brand-new, I guess that’s at least marginally better. But if this is the original horse armour updated for the remaster, still being sold separately… I mean. I’m at a loss for words.
Super Extra-Special Platinum Premium Deluxe Editions of most games are usually poor value. Worse, they carve out content that was developed alongside the main game and fully-integrated into it to be sold separately for extra cash. I really do miss the days when games came feature-complete out of the box, and when expansion packs added a meaningful amount of content. But to sell a “deluxe edition” for a twenty-year-old game which is already retailing for £50 is piss-poor from Bethesda. And that’s not even mentioning that this “deluxe edition” contains the poster child for bad-value DLC; horse armour was received so universally poorly that it became a meme and remains the textbook example of this kind of single-player microtransaction to this day. Heck, I’ve used horse armour as an example of a shitty microtransaction on several occasions here on the website.
I thought it was a joke when I first saw the leaked image of Oblivion’s “deluxe edition.” I could believe that Bethesda and Xbox would be greedy enough to create a poor-value “deluxe edition” of a twenty-year-old game, but when I saw the horse armour bit… I genuinely thought it must’ve been a joke. It looked like something a troll had mocked up to poke fun at Bethesda and the old controversy. But no, this is real. It’s 2025 and Bethesda is asking you to pay extra for horse armour in Oblivion all over again.
I think the Oblivion remaster looks good. The presentation that Bethesda and Virtuos put together was genuinely entertaining, and the people involved all seem to be passionate Elder Scrolls players and fans. That leads me to believe the game is in good hands. I’m a Game Pass subscriber, and the Oblivion remaster is available there, so it felt like a no-brainer to fire it up and step back into that world for the first time in more than fifteen years. But this “deluxe edition” has really taken the shine off the game for me. I don’t know if anyone else cares as much as I do; this doesn’t feel like a Nintendo Switch 2 type of situation, where the price is overshadowing everything else. But would it really have been such a financial hardship for Bethesda to offer the “art book,” soundtrack, and fucking horse armour as freebies? Is that content worth £10 to anyone?
Bethesda could really use a win right now. The company has endured basically a decade of controversy, with Fallout 4, Fallout 76, Starfield, and even some of its mobile games all having issues and being criticised. With The Elder Scrolls VI still years away, this launch of the Oblivion remaster was a chance to get people talking about the company and its games more positively for a change. It was an opportunity to remind players why they liked Bethesda’s games to begin with, as well as to keep the series in our minds as production on The Elder Scrolls VI continues. I can’t help but feel this “deluxe edition” greed is getting in the way of that, at least somewhat.
And I have to ask: was it worth it? This article could’ve been titled something like “Bethesda stuns everyone by shadow-dropping a remastered version of Oblivion!” and I could’ve spent this time talking about my memories of the game, what I like best about the remaster, and how cool it is in 2025 to see a big game being released immediately after its announcement. Instead, we’re talking about horse armour again, and how Bethesda is a greedy, money-grubbing company. We could’ve been reminded of what Bethesda games were when they were close to their best, but instead we’re reminded more of Starfield’s microtransactions than Oblivion’s storytelling.
I’m gonna play the Oblivion remaster, I’m gonna try to push the stupid “deluxe edition” out of my thoughts, and if I’m lucky (and if Virtuos hasn’t screwed things up) I daresay I’ll have a fun time getting lost in the world of Tamriel all over again. But I’m disappointed that the game launched like this, and I really don’t think it would’ve been too much to ask to include those tiny pieces of content in the already-expensive price of the remaster.
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered is out now for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series S & X. The game is also available on PC Game Pass and Xbox Game Pass. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered is the copyright of Bethesda Game Studios, Virtuos Games, Xbox Game Studios, and/or Microsoft. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Trekking with Dennis 