Wouldn’t be much of a point, though. Skyblivion is already just about done. If they C&D it later this year, there will still be a 99% finished Skyblivion floating around on various hosting sites that they’d never be able to stop people from getting their hands on. Basically I don’t think it’s a question of whether or not Microsoft/Zenimax would want to kill the project to boost their own profits, but rather if they even could at this point, and I think the answer is no. A few years ago may have been a different story, but that ship has sailed.

It’s not the same sort of situation as teams making mods or romhacks of Nintendo games who (foolishly) announce it early and get C&D’d immediately before there’s anything to play. Skyblivion is something you can play in an almost-complete state right now if you wanted, and I don’t think a C&D in a few month’s time will stop modders from finishing it anyways since it’s so close to completion.

It wouldn’t be the first sort of game that Microsoft has remastered in that style, though.

The Halo 1 and 2 remasters used a separate rendering layer over the original game which included updated art assets, and a setting to toggle between the original graphics and the updated ones on the fly. For the most part it was fine, but there were a couple of (primarily out of bounds) areas where the original collision did not always align with the updated geometry.

But I am hoping that it is more than just a simple rendering layer over the original game, because like you said it would require more hands-on work to improve things like forest density and interior clutter. It would look odd if they just increased the polygon count of foliage while still leaving it as sparse in places as the original. At least based on the leaked screenshots, the side-by-sides do give the impression that things have moved slightly and additional objects have been added, so extra rendering layer or not, my guess is that edits to the original game are also still involved (and likely means there won’t be a Halo-style graphics toggle button).

My copium is maybe we get a little update with this announcement. Not thinking it likely, but this whole Oblivion shadowdrop move would tie in well with a statement that ES6 is still coming and this is their way of tiding people over until then.

My only thing is that Oblivion does not play well on newer hardware. It was a bit of an ordeal to try to get it running well on my PC where I have two monitors, since it only runs on whichever monitor is primary and only if in Fullscreen mode. And don’t even think about alt-tabbing to check Discord, or it just crashes.

If it got the OpenMW treatment, I’d be thrilled with even that.

Agreed, though one would think they’d have taken steps to C&D Skyblivion the very moment they decided to move forward with their own project if that was their intent. It wouldn’t make much sense otherwise to let Skyblivion keep going this whole time if they saw it as a threat to their profits, since the mod is pretty close to completion at this point.

I’m guessing not likely, if only because we’ve already seen mod compatibility take a hit for less drastic engine updates (Skyrim vs Skyrim SE, Fallout 4 vs Fallout 4 next-gen). The work they’re doing seems more extensive than those examples, so I wouldn’t expect old mods to work, but maybe they could be recreated or converted through community effort.

As another user already said, this remaster is being done by an outside studio, so it shouldn’t be significantly affecting any ongoing work at Bethesda.

While Todd Howard is full of shit half the time, I do believe him when he talks about their development roadmap. When Elder Scrolls 6 was announced, it was under the disclaimer that it was not an active project for the team at the time, and would not enter full production until Starfield was done. Starfield released in fall of 2023, so Elder Scrolls 6 should have been in full development for about a year and a half now.

That is still the big question for me. I am all for modernizing the engine and don’t care if that means Unreal Engine 5, but if it doesn’t have comparable mod support to other Bethesda games, I feel that will end up hurting it pretty badly.

But as long as they don’t pull a Blizzard and replace the original game with the remaster, the original game and all of its mods will still be there to be enjoyed, at least. And maybe that means we might someday see an OpenOblivion similar to OpenMW if all else fails.

Don’t think we know yet. Based on earlier leaks, the thought is that Unreal Engine 5 is involved somehow, but there is uncertainty about whether or not it is full-on in UE5 or if UE5 is just being used as a rendering layer. If Bethesda’s own engine is still used as the core of the game, we don’t know if that means simply reworking the original Oblivion code, or if they updated everything to the latest version used for Starfield.

What we can assume is that, even if the original engine is used, there will need to be a good deal of work done to update it regardless, since it is still a 32-bit application that would need to be rewritten for proper 64-bit support. And a lot of the game mechanics, physics, movement, etc. would need to be updated to work with the UE5 rendering layer if that is indeed how it’s working.

I don’t expect they would, since Skyblivion already has their blessing and the team has been working with representatives from Bethesda to make sure that everything they’re doing continues to be kosher with them.

The Skyblivion devs also released a statement recently that they are also looking forward to the release of this remaster, and believe that there is enough love to go around for both projects.

Basically, Oblivion fans are going to be eating well this year. If the official Oblivion remaster is underwhelming, there will still be Skyblivion to look forward to.

Without going into spoilery details, the film Conclave raised a very interesting question about pope eligibility. Recommend checking it out, not just for the topical relevance but also simply because it’s a good movie.

Hours later, even.

As others have said, Francis also stacked the electors who will be deciding the next pope, so it is possible that his successor will also be just as progressive (well, progressive for the leader of a conservative religious institution, at least).

Luckily digital signboards will always be an option to replace TVs with if the situation becomes truly dire. The sorts of no-frills displays corporations buy to display whatever media they want in store.

Might not come with sound, but you can pick up a cheap sound bar and it will still be better than whatever cheap speakers commercial TVs try to cram in there.

It’s not like the PC market is in great shape either, though. I mean I’m sure it’s fine if you’re mostly playing indie games that are not too visually demanding and taxing on the hardware, but it is insanely expensive to buy a good computer these days that can play newer games in good quality. Even with the price increases, a GPU alone will run you the cost of a PS5 or more, maybe even double.

Or maybe that’s just it, maybe there won’t be a noticeable gen bump for a long time, since no one can afford it. Time to start focusing on how to make hardware cheaper instead of better.