Summary
With an age gap of 19 years,Oblivion Remasteredrecently came out as a present-day version of the original 2006 game, and while it is almost entirely a faithful modernization of Bethesda’sOblivion, it also has its fair share of new features and changes. The original game has always had a massive following, and it’s considered one of the best RPGs of its time and possibly of all time, too. As much as it would have made sense forOblivion Remasteredto simply recreate the original as it was in Unreal Engine 5, it’s great to see some good changes made to it - including the leveling process.
For example,leveling up inOblivion Remasteredoffers players 12 Virtue points to assign as they please among the various attributes in the game, be it in increments of any number from 1 to 5 for regular stats or spending 4 Virtue points to get a single point of Luck and then spend the remaining 8 as one pleases. This is dramatically different from the original, where players could choose which three attributes to level up, but the number of points gained per attribute would be tied to how many times a corresponding skill was leveled up. More importantly, it can be common to feel like one is leveling too fast inOblivion Remastered, and there’s a reason.
Oblivion’s Character and Skill Leveling Up System Doesn’t Hold a Candle to Oblivion Remastered’s
For starters,Major Skills inOblivion Remasteredplay a different role compared to the original. These are the seven skills players choose as part of their custom class, or the predetermined seven of a class they pick from those available after the emperor’s death. Major Skills used to determine when players were able to level up in the original game, as players had to level up any of their Major Skills ten times to then level up their character, whereas inOblivion Remastered, every skill rank contributes to the next character level.
This applies to all skills, both Major and Minor, making it much easier and thus faster to gain a character level. A lot of skills can be leveled up passively by simply playing the game, too, such as Athletics, Acrobatics, Speechcraft, and Mercantile.Oblivion Remastered’s custom classesare even better than in the original because one can purposefully make easy-to-level skills Major or Minor Skills in order to level up at a pace suitable to them. Major Skills do grant more experience toward a character level, but they are arguably less relevant than before.
On top of that, the leveling process moved the needle from Major Skills to the chosen class' Specialization. What the class' Specialization does is determine whether one gets faster rank increases for a subcategory of skills, and these are Combat, Magic, and Stealth. In the original game, players would level up mainly based on Major Skills, which would get a slight advantage based on the chosen Specialization, whereas the opposite can be said aboutOblivion Remastered. For example, choosing Alchemy as aMajor Skill with a Specializationin Magic is beneficial, but the benefit of having a Specialization in Magic outweighs that of Alchemy being a Major Skill over a Minor Skill.
Speechcraft
Stealth
Players can safely rank up all their skills much faster if they fall under the umbrella of their Specialization, and thus level up much faster than they ever could in the original game. Major Skills do rank up faster, but they mainly provide a lot more experience than Minor Skills toward a character level now.
How Leveling Up Magic Skills in Oblivion Remastered Compares to the Original
On top of that, Magic has also changed to a degree.Spellcrafting inOblivion Remasteredis still very much busted, but crafting a low-level spell to spam is less effective for ranking up that school of magic compared to using a spell that consumes more Magicka.
In fact,leveling up Magic skills inOblivion Remasteredis as easy and fast as it is more complex compared to the original. Using cheap spells is no longer the ideal scenario, and instead, players need to cast expensive spells to make the most of their rank-up experience with each school, but there are certain breakpoints for Magicka costs that should be met to increase the overall experience gains. As such, leveling up in Oblivion Remastered is both different and faster than the original, hence why some players may find themselves with a level 15-20 character fairly soon (after 20 hours or less) compared to the 2006 game.
The Pros and Cons of Oblivion Remastered’s Revamped Leveling System
This is not necessarily a bad thing, as players can have an easier time exploring all that the game has to offer - from the very early levels all the way to the endgame inOblivion Remastered. There are some pros and cons to this, though, such as the fact thatOblivion Remastered’s fall of Kvatchquestline may be fairly approachable all the way to hellish, with little in between.
This is becauseenemies scale in level inOblivion Remastered, so approaching the questline at level 5 is already more difficult than right out of the sewers, but doing it at level 14 or more can make it a problematic affair because the Siege of Kvatch quest has players pitted up against a horde of monsters based on their level, with just the help of a few NPCs who may very well die in the opening moments of the battle.
Leveling faster can be a good thing, especially for promoting multiple playthroughs and testing various race andBirthsign combos inOblivion Remastered, as well as other skills and classes, but it can be equally detrimental. There’s a certain allure in ranking up skills and not leveling up the character for a while, too, so players have ample ways to determine when, where, and how much their character levels up, and that’s a good thing.
