The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered Is Mostly Solid on the Steam Deck - First Look

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The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered came out of nowhere, and while there was speculation for its release, it's still pretty amazing to see it out now. To my surprise, the giant open-world RPG is Steam Deck Verified, which I was a little skeptical about after looking at the minimum system requirements. Still, I was excited, and I wanted to try and see for myself if it lives up to its green checkmark.

So, here are our thoughts on whether the game truly deserves its Steam Deck Verified badge, and what the performance is actually like on the Deck.

You can also save some money and buy the game on Fanatical for $41.49 now! It's a solid deal for the newly released game, so if you plan on buying it anyway, check it out there.

The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered - Steam Deck Impressions

From what I have played so far, this is going to be a tough judgment call. There are both good and bad aspects to the performance on the Steam Deck, and I will be going through my thoughts. Before I begin, these are all based on my impressions after an hour and a half with the game. Its performance could get better or worse later on, though, as you start using more complex magic and fight more enemies, I believe it will get a little worse.

To temper expectations, this is not a game you will be playing above 30 FPS. The inside and closed-off areas may be able to reach higher framerates, but the outside open-world will not. There may be ways to downgrade the visuals and resolution even more, and use Ultra Performance upscaling, but it could ruin the experience due to blurry visuals.

The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered defaults to the Low quality preset and uses XeSS upscaling at the Performance setting. For the most part, I found that the game looks pretty good with these settings. Moving them up to Medium will make the game look much better, but we also introduce more performance drops, so I would keep them the same for stability.

I also feel that FSR 3 Performance upscaling looks more blurry than XeSS at Performance. Moving it up to Balanced looks better, but I had more performance issues, so I recommend not moving it up. This can be up to personal preference, but I would just leave it at XeSS. There will be some slight blurriness in shadows, but for the most part, I could make out more details with XeSS.

In closed-off areas, like the sewers and caves, there will be little to no problem hitting 30 FPS. I was running through with no issues and sticking below 18W battery drain. Even at the default quality settings, it still looks great and the lighting shines in the caves. This stability extends to towns as well, where I was sitting at a solid 30 FPS when running around Imperial City. There was one or two times where the framerate dropped due to coming up on a group of people, but it stayed stable otherwise.

However, Oblivion Remastered's open world is going to be a mixed bag. It stays at 30 FPS for the most part, but running around in new areas caused some noticeable stuttering, which I wasn't a fan of. It was able to balance out quickly, and I fought some enemies in around the ruins I was hanging at, but as soon as I started to move away, there were more stutters. Looking towards the ground or not out into the distance helped too, but that's hard to do in games like this.

There is also some major pop-in for models and decals that is too extreme for my liking. We can fix this by turning Global Illumination up to Medium, but it introduces more performance drops, so it's tough. Right now, I would say to leave it off, but be prepared for models popping in and out of nowhere when you are getting close to objects. This is more noticeable in the open-world and not much in the closed off areas.

Even though the text size is set to Large, some of the subtitles can be a little small. It isn't unreadable, but I do wish they were a little bigger. All of this testing is without any TDP limits, so expect around 1.5-2 hours of battery life on the LCD Steam Deck and 2.5 - 3 hours on the OLED. It does have cloud saves too, which is nice to go from PC to Steam Deck as you please.

Is The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered Worth Playing on the Steam Deck?

So, is The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered worth playing on the Steam Deck? That's tough. It runs and looks great, but the open-world is less than ideal. We can lower settings more for better performance, but the visuals will be taking a big hit, and that's not something I would recommend doing. Otherwise, in closed off spaces, it's running very well.

If you are willing to deal with the model pop-ins and slight stuttering in the open world, I would say it is. It's not going to be the best experience, and the amazing visuals shown in the stream will not be as noticeable on the Deck, but it's playable. It's crazy being able to experience this remaster, which feels more like a remake, on the go at all, but it definitely comes with some compromises. As long as your expectations are realistic, this will be a good way to experience a classic RPG that deserves recognition.

The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered can be purchased on Steam for $49.99, but you can also save some money and get it on Fanatical for $41.49!

The Fanatical links above are using an affiliate link, which gives us a little back from sales at no extra charge to you. All proceeds go back into SDHQ and its development.

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