With the right settings, Oblivion Remastered won’t sacrifice Steam Deck support to the graphics gods

As a Steam Deck game, I already prefer The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered to the original Oblivion, and for reasons mirroring why the Deck itself still beats newer, faster handhelds: the performance might be lower but everything, as Toddy H himself would say, just works. Spend two miserable minutes trying find a custom controller configuration that makes thumbing through OG Oblivion’s menus even remotely comfortable, and you’ll appreciate all the more how the remaster gels with the Steam Deck immediately. That said, its 2025-ified visuals do present a relatively distinct challenge. Indulge too enthusiastically in their fancy lighting and hyper-detailed Patrick Stewart facial creases, and the Steam Deck’s hardware is quickly overwhelmed. But, drop the graphics settings to their lowest, and Oblivion Remastered simply looks like bum, to the point of undermining the point of the whole 'Remastered' thing. The solution: a healthy, balanced mix of low and medium settings, which you can find further down in case you don’t want to run your own trial-and-error experiments on how Cyrodiilian bush rendering affects framerates. Read more

Apr 24, 2025 - 12:44
 0
With the right settings, Oblivion Remastered won’t sacrifice Steam Deck support to the graphics gods

As a Steam Deck game, I already prefer The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered to the original Oblivion, and for reasons mirroring why the Deck itself still beats newer, faster handhelds: the performance might be lower but everything, as Toddy H himself would say, just works. Spend two miserable minutes trying find a custom controller configuration that makes thumbing through OG Oblivion’s menus even remotely comfortable, and you’ll appreciate all the more how the remaster gels with the Steam Deck immediately.

That said, its 2025-ified visuals do present a relatively distinct challenge. Indulge too enthusiastically in their fancy lighting and hyper-detailed Patrick Stewart facial creases, and the Steam Deck’s hardware is quickly overwhelmed. But, drop the graphics settings to their lowest, and Oblivion Remastered simply looks like bum, to the point of undermining the point of the whole 'Remastered' thing. The solution: a healthy, balanced mix of low and medium settings, which you can find further down in case you don’t want to run your own trial-and-error experiments on how Cyrodiilian bush rendering affects framerates.

Read more