Skyrim modder who spent 13 years remaking Oblivion reacts to official release

We finally have proper, genuine confirmation that the gaming industry’s worst-kept secret is real, and it’s coming out very soon, because screenshots of a Remastered version of Bethesda’s 2006 RPG The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion leaked online a couple of days ago.

This is all great news, obviously, but upon learning of its existence, my first thought wasn’t a happy one.

That’s because I’ve been following the development of Skyblivion, a fan-made recreation of Oblivion using Skyrim’s engine, for several years now.

All I could think of when looking at those leaked screenshots was “damn, the team that’s poured 13 years of unpaid labour into that Oblivion remake must be incredibly angry.”

Turns out, nope… if anything, they seem just as excited as the rest of us.

K Rebel, the lead for the Skyblivion project, took to Twitter recently to explain how he believes "the real remake is the friends we made along the way" (per PC Gamer).

“To be clear this changes nothing for me,” K Rebel stated in a post reacting to the news.

“This always was a passion project and still is until the end. For the community its a win-win as you get twice the amount of Oblivion this year… All love and no hate towards the people who made the official remaster.”

It’s nice that the team behind it seem to be taking the news in their stride, but honestly, the more I think about it… I’m kind of still excited to play both the official and the unofficial Oblivion remasters.

While Bethesda’s Oblivion remaster seems to be a faithful recreation of the game we know and love, the Skyblivion remaster is built on the back of Skyrim’s engine. I think that’ll result in two oddly similar, yet oddly unique games.

At the end of the day, I’m still going to play both. You don’t need to convince me to play through the best Elder Scrolls game twice anyway.