One of the great joys about playing last year's Oblivion Remastered was seeing and hearing all the mid-2000s Bethesda jank and voice-over mistakes still intact. It's a glitchy, messy game at times, and that's very distinctly part of the appeal. Todd Howard agrees, and leaving in these bugs and errors was a specific decision for the remaster.
"I think there's a lot of fuzzy judgment calls," he explains during a roundtable attended by GamesRadar+. "Like, which ones are players gonna go try to do - take that one where you can stand on things – fixing that is so complicated."
There are a couple of potential candidates for what he's referring to, but the most likely is the glitch where you suddenly become significantly taller in first-person. Figuring out how and why these happen can be laborious, and for a project like a remaster, teasing out a solution might not be worth it.
"So, you know what, it's fine. I love the VO line flub," he continues. "Stuff like that? Yeah, just leave it. It's fine. It's part of the game's character."
This one's more famous: Tandilwe, in the Temple of the One, contains a double line-reading where you can hear the performer go twice. "Wait a minute, let me do that one again," they exclaim, before going back over the dialogue.
It's hilarious, and still listenable in the remaster, just as it is in the 2006 version. I'd very much be in Howard's camp on this, that's something unique to Oblivion that should be preserved. It's an eccentricity and part of the overall charm.
Bugs are more case-by-case, depending on how they impact gameplay, but a side character's lines being slightly off? An accidental treasure, for fans to discover. Honestly, we'll have to see what emerges from The Elder Scrolls 6.
