The highly anticipated total conversion mod Skyblivion was once again showcased by the talented modders during a 40-minute live gameplay demo. During the stream, the creators also answered several questions from the fans.
In this recreation of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion into Skyrim’s engine, long-time players of the classic 2006 open world RPG will find some differences in character progression:
We’ve got the Oblivion attributes returning. We’ve adjusted the way they progress slightly. Rather than giving you points based on how you level up each skill per level, you just get a fixed number of points per level, similar to Fallout really. That helps alleviate a lot of the issues that Oblivion had with character progression, where if you didn’t optimize your level up, you ended up with a character that was too weak for scaled enemies.
For the most part, our level up system is comparable to Skyrim in the way that the enemies scale with you. We’ve got someone going through now creating different tiers of enemies, so you won’t just be going straight from imps straight to ogres. There will actually be different levels of power for each species, so that helps kind of balance things out a bit.
The new Skyblivion UI (user interface) allows players to easily keep track of all their stats and also all the factions they’re a part of. Answering a question from a viewer, the team said there wouldn’t be a Radiant Quest system like Skyrim’s at launch. However, the content is set up in a way that creating a mod like Missives should make it entirely possible to add the feature.
When asked whether Skyblivion would use sound effects from Oblivion, Skyrim, or original ones, they answered:
We’ll be using a mix of all three. We’ll create new sound effects; we’ve got a really great sound designer on the project. Also, where we can, we use Oblivion sounds because we can extract them from your Oblivion installation. There are certain effects, like skeletons, which come from Skyrim. And then there’s small stuff like footsteps, which have been replaced and are a bit more specific for the type of ground you’re walking on, and there’s small little touches like that.
We should actually mention that the sound designer we have is the developer of the really popular Skyrim Audio Overhaul mod, so a lot of people who have played modern Skyrim are probably quite familiar with the quality of work he does.
The Skyblivion team has been working on this project for a long time. We first covered it in late 2016, with the modders having started earlier that year. Nine years later, they are just about ready to launch, having reconfirmed in this latest video that the goal is to release it in 2025.
Somewhat ironically, though, insistent rumors suggest that Bethesda might be about to launch its own official remaster of Oblivion.
