Capcom's series of Resident Evil remakes, built from the ground-up in the studio's proprietary RE Engine, are universally acclaimed for modernizing visuals and systems without compromising mood and tone, but expecting the same treatment for Bethesda RPGs just isn't reasonable, says former studio veteran Nate Purkeypile.
Of course, Bethesda just released the excellent Oblivion Remastered last year, which did a great job bringing the 2006 RPG up to 2025 standards in Unreal Engine, but for the most part, it's just a new skin wrapped around the same bones. That's very different from the Resident Evil remakes, which are essentially entirely new games.
"I really, really like the Resident Evil remakes and those are super cool where it was like, totally remade, but I don't think that's really viable for a Bethesda game to do that," says Purkeypile in an interview with Kiwi Talkz.
"With that many systems interacting, to try and get that to actually behave in the same way. Ugh, I wouldn't wish that on anybody."
As enticing as the idea of a Skyrim or Fallout 4 remake is, that absolutely makes sense. Open-world Bethesda RPGs are entirely different beasts from linear survival horror games like Resident Evil, and when you consider how long it's taking Bethesda Game Studios to make The Elder Scrolls 6, whose announcement teaser is now eight years old, you can understand why full-on RPG remakes probably aren't on the table right now.
Purkeypile was world artist on Fallout 3, Fallout 4, and The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim, and lead artist on Fallout 76. He left Bethesda during the development of Starfield to form his own studio, Just Purkey Games, which launched the "heavy metal horror" hunting game The Axis Unseen in 2024.
