As a gamer, I’m always watching Steam, looking for titles that have the potential to be fun and interesting. If it appears to have a good story, an open world to explore, or interesting characters, it goes on my list. Bonus points if it’s an RPG or survival game.
And while there are a number of titles inhabiting my wishlist at this point, some of which I’m definitely looking forward to, the one title I’m looking forward to the most isn’t a game – it’s a mod for a game that’s been around for 18 years. This game had it all – a fun story told through quests and lore found around the world, a wide world to explore and discover, and fun gameplay with both melee and magic. It also had its share of bugs, glitches, mediocre graphics and more, mostly mitigated by the modding community.
That game I refer to is Oblivion. And the mod, scheduled to release in 2025 for free, is Skyblivion.
Created by a team of volunteers under the group ‘The Elder Scrolls Renewal‘, this project to port Oblivion into the Skyrim engine began in 2012. The lead developer, Zilav had created what the team refers to now as version 0.1, nothing more than a tech demo. It was missing most of the content and very buggy, but the promise was there.
The introduction of a new member of the team, Monocleus, saw the flicker of life grow into a small flame as he began fleshing out the technical end of the mod. And by 2014, they’d managed to provide for others a stable base game to develop.
Over the years, the group has grown to 85 volunteers, all working on various aspects of the mod. Everything has been meticulously recreated and, in some cases, improved by the passionate team of fans.
Among the things a player can expect are –
- The quests from Oblivion (obviously)
- All of the big and small DLC for Oblivion
- Settings, including landscapes and towns, re-rendered in 3D. All of it has been recreated from the ground up to match the appearance of Skyrim
- Custom content courtesy of the Skyblivion Dev team
- Combat, including underwater combat
- And so much more
Now, one must note that while the mod is free, there are still requirements. You must own a legitimate copy of Oblivion and Skyrim SE in order for the mod to work. And the FAQ states that if you can run Skyrim on medium settings then you should be able to handle Skyblivion too.
This has been a passion project 13 years in the making and the progress of it can be seen on both the Skyblivion website as well as their Project Lead’s YouTube channel – Rebelzize.
I stumbled across the mod in late 2022, after looking for mods to improve the appearance and gameplay of Oblivion. Once I saw what they were doing, I was determined that I’d wait to finish playing the game until I could get my hands on this mod. To date, I have yet to complete Oblivion, despite finding the story fascinating.
The suspense is killing me!
And this isn’t the only project in works by the ‘The Elder Scrolls Renewal’. There are also two versions of Morrowind mods being developed –
- Morrowblivion – Morrowind in the Oblivion engine
- Skywind – Morrowind in the Skyrim engine
You can imagine which of those I’m looking forward to!
2025 looks to be a great year for fans of Oblivion and, I for one, will be counting down the days until Skyblivion is released and I can once again enter the world of Tamriel to stop the Daedra from taking over Cyrodiil.
What do you think? Have you played Oblivion and will you play Skyblivion when it releases? Leave a comment.
And, until next time, bye for now!
Ms. Bella's World 