Bethesda are so chill about Skyblivion that they're promoting it in Oblivion Remastered videos

The release of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered is theoretically terrible news for the creators of Skyblivion, a long-in-development mod that recreates Bethesda's 2006 RPG in the Skyrim engine. On the one hand, you could argue that the official comeback care of Virtuos Studios renders Skyblivion unnecessary. On the other, there's the usual worry that Bethesda's intellectual property lawyers are going to erupt from the toilets like radioactive rats and eat the modders alive.

The Skyblivion crew professed themselves undaunted by the news, however. "This always was a passion project and still is until the end," modder KRebel insisted last week. "For the community its a win-win as you get twice the amount of Oblivion this year." And Bethesda have now met them with open arms by not only declining to sue the pants off Skyblivion for intellectual property infringement, but handing the modders keys for the official remaster and even going on camera to say that they're looking forward to Skyblivion's release.

"Even though I worked on Oblivion Remastered, I'm still excited for Skyblivion," art and development lead Dan Lee comments in a video, as noticed by Passable Crumpet Gamer. "I think what they're doing is very special, and I'm excited to see their interpretation of what we've done in the past. I think it's a great year for Oblivion fans." In case there was any lingering ambiguity about Bethesda's goodwill, the video closes with some footage of the mod.

The Skyblivion team are naturally very happy about this. "Dan, we're just as excited to get Skyblivion into your hands this year as you are to play it!" they write on Bluesky. "Thanks for the shout-out and kind words."

All this is being greeted online as a rare dollop of wholesome vibes from publishers that have launched their fair share of legal action over copyright infringement. At the risk of being a Cyrodiil Cynic and/or Daedra Downer, I think it could be a mixture of genuine benevolence and Bethesda calculating that Skyblivion poses no real commercial threat to the Oblivion remaster at this juncture, and that being nice to the modders is great publicity. See also: this news post. If only Take Two Interactive thought the same of people trying to recreate GTA 6 in the GTA 5 engine.

Regardless, I am interested to compare the visuals of Skyblivion and the official remaster, particularly given James's conclusions about the latter's performance, and Nic's comments in our Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered review about how the extra graphicsability only emphasises Oblivion's capacity for silliness. As he puts it: "by whacking up the verisimilitude dial, by making you believe that much more in every flickering flame or dancing shadow or rapturous sunrise, everything that actually occurs in Cyrodiil becomes that much stupider."