Oblivion Remastered Faces Challenges on Steam Deck

The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered is running into some bumps on the road when it comes to its performance on the Steam Deck. Players eager to dive into the revamped world may find themselves having to fiddle quite a bit with the settings to get things running smoothly. Ever since those early whispers became reality, and Bethesda unveiled the remaster on April 22, fans on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC have been eager to explore Cyrodiil once again.

Taking players back nearly two decades to the epic saga of the Oblivion Crisis, this remaster has been crafted with care using Unreal Engine 5. It keeps the charm of the original, retaining its captivating voicework and rich storyline, while giving a significant visual and gameplay upgrade. However, this leap forward in graphics, with its snazzy dynamic lighting and detailed shadow mapping, asks for a lot of muscle from a PC. Despite the game earning the Steam Deck verification badge, it’s just not optimized for the handheld’s specifications right out of the box.

Players firing up the game on Steam Deck will probably notice their graphics set to low, accompanied by Intel’s XeSS upscaling tool aimed at squeezing out performance. But, from what we’ve seen via PCGamesN, even this setup doesn’t hit the mark for a solid 30 FPS. To smooth things out, folks will have to dive into settings adjustments again, switching to Performance or Ultra Performance to boost those frame rates. Still, there’s a catch—these tweaks might also lead to image quality taking a hit. And let’s not forget, frame generation might help with speed but can throw in unwelcome input lag or ghosting when starting from a low base frame rate.

For those who put framerate above all else, tapping into Nvidia GeForce Now may be the way to go, despite the need for a subscription. This cloud-based option offers superior image quality compared to the native Steam Deck experience right now. There’s always the Xbox Cloud Gaming path as well for Game Pass subscribers wanting to stream the game without the grunt work of managing performance issues themselves.

Taking a peek under the hood, Oblivion Remastered requires a hefty 125 GB on your drive, with at least 16 GB of RAM suggested for your rig by Steam. Sure, the Steam Deck comes with the necessary 16 GB of RAM on paper, but to really max out what this remaster can offer, you’re looking at needing 32 GB of RAM alongside a top-tier CPU and GPU. And if the rumor mill churns out true tales, a potential alternative might be in the works with the handheld-friendly Nintendo Switch 2, which could promise an even more seamless Oblivion experience on the go.