The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered took absolutely everyone by surprise, but has fortunately proven to be a delightful experience, one that simultaneously pays a huge amount of respect to the original game while also updating it where necessary. Frankly, there’s a lot about the original Oblivion experience that needs updating, from its somewhat questionable character design choices to its clunky combat and inconsistent progression systems. Oblivion Remastered addresses all of that and more, and, amazingly, all for less than the price of a normal AAA game.

However, as much as Oblivion Remastered undeniably improves upon the original game’s foundations, it does take some elements and make them somehow more bizarre. Fans are loving how the remaster keeps Oblivion’s most bizarre quirks, but in one instance, it may have made them stranger. That’s not to say that it is worse, per se, but rather that Oblivion Remastered has put its own delightfully quirky spin on an already wonderfully weird feature, and I’m not sure how I feel about it.

Oblivion Remastered’s Character Models Are Bizarre

They Look Simultaneously Better And More Uncanny

One of the worst aged parts of Oblivion was its character models. While the surrounding environments look pretty great, even today, owing largely to the game’s phenomenal art direction and vibrant color palette, the characters you interact with look hideous. Everyone from the adoring fan to the Gray Prince himself has an odd, washed-out, stretched, and bloated appearance, with the elves suffering from it the worst, with their elongated, drooping faces. It’s not a great look on anyone, even if the game’s awful character designs led to some hilarious player-made creations.

Fortunately, one of the many improvements Oblivion Remastered makes over the original is fixing these character designs. The game was built from the ground up in Unreal Engine 5 – at least its visuals were – which not only allowed developers Bethesda and Virtuos to add more detail to each object, but also vastly improved upon the questionable faces of Cyrodiil’s populace. However, as much as every NPC, enemy, and even the player, look substantially better in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered, there’s still something really off about them.

I think the face that made me question this artistic choice was the Adoring Fan’s, which looks as if it was molded in clay. It still haunts me to this day, his warped smile and squinting eyes piercing into my soul. Truly terrifying stuff. Not every NPC looks horrible, and the humans, while uncanny, certainly look marginally better. Of course, they looked the best in the original game, too, so that wasn’t too hard to achieve. I want to stress that I don’t think this new direction is a bad thing. In fact, it’s quite the contrary and genuinely surprising.

I Respect Oblivion Remastered’s Dedication To The Original

It Has Retained The Same Style, Even If It Looks Odd

There is something remarkably commendable about Oblivion Remastered’s dedication to the original game’s atmosphere, tone, and even visuals. While the external environments certainly look a lot more generic now than ever before – Unreal Engine 5 can’t quite capture the ethereal nature of Oblivion’s bloom-heavy visual style – everything else is distinctly Oblivion. Wandering through Vilverin at the start of Oblivion Remastered felt like visiting an old friend after years apart, and finally stepping into the Imperial City after over a decade away was like returning home.

I was so worried that this remaster would ruin Oblivion’s best features, but those fears couldn’t have been more unfounded. This is a truly passion-driven homage, and that is easily best seen in these weird faces. Every character is just as uncanny as before, even with the game’s gorgeous new visuals. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion’s interpretation of each race always felt distinct, and it would have been a shame to change that in this remaster, even if switching to Skyrim’s far better-looking versions would have been easy.

It isn’t uncommon for remasters to replace old character models with better-looking ones from later in the series. For example, Horizon Zero Dawn’s remaster did this with some of its main characters, including Aloy, by taking character models from Horizon Forbidden West. That could have worked with Oblivion Remastered taking Skyrim’s character models for each race, but doing so would have worsened the experience overall.

There’s a cartoonish, goofy, almost childlike charm to each race’s appearance, from the Argonian’s Mario-Bros.-movie-dinosaur aesthetic to the Lion-King-looking Khajiit. Of course, future Oblivion Remastered mod support could allow players to completely revamp these faces if they wanted to and add all those ghoulish beautification mods that Skyrim’s modding scene is smothered by. However, I think that the inclusion of these wonderfully weird faces makes Oblivion Remastered a more familiar experience and true to the original, but also beautifully distinct.

Oblivion Remastered’s Character Models Make It A More Playable Experience

They Look Infinitely Better Than The Originals, Even If They’re Weird

Ultimately, even though they’re still as weird as they were in the original Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion experience, Oblivion Remastered’s character models are a substantial upgrade and make the game significantly more playable. They’re not as unpleasant to look at, and character creation, especially with all of its many enhancements, is more fun to play around with. You can make a somewhat good-looking character now – or continue to make monstrosities if you so please – which at least helps to make roleplaying a little easier.

It also makes legendary characters like Sheogorath and Uriel Septim stand out a lot more, as their vastly improved and more detailed character models are more expressive and full of life. Of course, all of the main story NPCs absolutely fall into the uncanny valley, their wandering eyes a tad unsettling. However, that feels almost in keeping with the rest of Oblivion’s magical and slightly haunting world, one that is as scary as it is whimsical. The more I think about it, the more I think I really love Oblivion Remastered’s approach to character designs.

They won’t be for everyone, and may certainly turn off a lot of newcomers who aren’t familiar with the original Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. However, for those willing to give it a chance, and, of course, those who have already spent 100s of hours with faces that look significantly worse than these, it is very easy to overlook the superficial ugliness of some of these characters and completely buy into the charm and quirkiness of Oblivion Remastered and its delightfully bizarre approach to bringing to life these endlessly hilarious and often iconic characters.