This article has major spoilers for Oblivion’s Dark Brotherhood quest line. Yes, this is a warning for a nineteen-year-old spoiler.
Summary
Oblivion Remasteredis a very faithful recreation of Oblivion. The two games are far closer aligned than anyone would have imagined during the rumour-laden months preceding the game’s surprise release. That’s because, for the most part, Oblivion Remastered is just Oblivion with a new coat of paint; the original Creation Engine is literally running beneath a veneer of Unreal Engine 5.
That’s why we have all the same bugs and quirks that we had nineteen years ago. However, Virtous did change a couple of features in the remaster. The levelling system has been revamped because the old one was obtuse and nonsensical even back then. You can no longer go first-person on horseback, but thatcould be changing in the near future.
We Draw the Line at Nudity
However, a user whose name I dare not repeat highlighted another change in arecent Reddit post. People who played the original Oblivion, or have been diving deep into Oblivion Remastered, will know the big twist of the Dark Brotherhood quest line, where Lucien Lachance is framed as a traitor and murdered by the rest of the Black Hand.
The scene is quite brutal. The player unexpectedly stumbles into the aftermath of Lachance’s torture. The body has been hung upside down, with its innards and bones exposed. In the original scene, Lachance’s genitals have (presumably) been removed, though the texture doesn’t depict gore in that area.
In Oblivion Remastered, Lachance is wearing a relatively clean pair of underwear. It’s not a massive deal, but it seems an unnecessary change given Lachance’s nude state in the original release.
“This moment seemed so much darker to me as a teen. It was horrific, shocking, and made me realise just how serious the Dark Brotherhood took this kind of betrayal,” writesReinhardtXWinston. “If they truly put underwear on the model in this remake, then they missed the entire point of this scene. They mutilated the man, tortured him for hours until you arrive, only for you to be far too late. When I saw they had cutitoff, I was horrified. To block the things that make this scene so grizzly and upsetting is like putting underwear on the Amnesia monsters.”
Next time I speak to Lucian Lachance’s ghost, I’ll ask him how he feels about his corpse’s new-found underwear.
