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

As a Steam Deck game, I already similar The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered to the archetypal Oblivion, and for reasons mirroring wherefore the Deck itself inactive beats newer, faster handhelds: the show mightiness beryllium little but everything, arsenic Toddy H himself would say, just works. Spend 2 miserable minutes trying find a customized controller configuration that makes thumbing done OG Oblivion’s menus adjacent remotely comfortable, and you’ll admit each the much however the remaster gels with the Steam Deck immediately.

That said, its 2025-ified visuals bash contiguous a comparatively chiseled challenge. Indulge excessively enthusiastically successful their fancy lighting and hyper-detailed Patrick Stewart facial creases, and the Steam Deck’s hardware is rapidly overwhelmed. But, driblet the graphics settings to their lowest, and Oblivion Remastered simply looks similar bum, to the constituent of undermining the constituent of the full 'Remastered' thing. The solution: a healthy, balanced premix of debased and mean settings, which you tin find further down successful lawsuit you don’t privation to tally your ain trial-and-error experiments connected however Cyrodiilian bush rendering affects framerates.

Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun

Before getting to the options screen, mind, you’ll request to find country for Oblivion Remastered connected your Steam Deck, and that’s nary casual task if you ain 1 of the smaller ones. All those high-res thespian wrinkles springiness the remaster a 119GB footprint, astir 20 times wider than the 6GB archetypal game, truthful hopefully you’re packing (or person upgraded to) astatine slightest a 256GB SSD.

The amended quality is that otherwise, Oblivion Remastered is pleasantly escaped of Steam Deck friction. The default power strategy is, again, miles amended than what you tin expect from old-Oblivion, with due gamepad enactment connected apical of the mostly smartened up UI. The autochthonal 1280x800 solution is some supported and acceptable automatically, and everything scales smartly capable for adjacent the dinkiest of stat values to enactment readable connected the 7in screen. I’ve seen worse connected artillery life, excessively – it drained a fully-charged LCD Steam Deck successful 1h 29m, which is simply a fewer minutes abbreviated of Skyrim, but longer than chap roamable RPGs Avowed and Starfield.

Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered Steam Deck settings guide

Don’t beryllium fooled by the opening, graphically easy-peasy jaunt done the sewers: gallivanting done the leafy forests and crossed the sprawling hilltops of Cyrodiil astatine ample volition agelong the Steam Deck’s rendering skills. Having tested a afloat acceptable of Low and Lowest-level settings, a afloat dependable 30fps isn’t adjacent possible, though that’s arsenic overmuch to bash with Unreal Engine 5’s well-documented stuttering problems arsenic with the Deck’s APU.

You tin get adjacent enough, though. My benchmarking has led maine to the pursuing settings combination, which generally provides maine with astatine slightest 30fps successful the overworld and up to 60fps successful choky caves and dungeons.

• Motion blur: Off
• Screen abstraction reflections: Off
• View region quality: Low
• Effects quality: Low
• Foliage quality: Medium
• Shadow quality: Low
• Global illumination quality: Low
• Texture quality: Medium
• Reflection quality: Low
• Post-processing quality: Medium
• Hair quality: Low
• Cloth quality: Medium
• Lumen hardware RT: Off
• Lumen bundle RT quality: Low
• Upscaling technique: FSR
• FSR 3 mode: Performance
• FSR 3 generation: Off

Although this database involves immoderate steep cuts, and much than a tiny propulsion from FSR 3, trading disconnected immoderate of the little visually awesome effects lets you support arsenic overmuch of the remaster’s added richness that a playable framerate tin allow. Textures and foliage, successful particular, look drastically amended than their Low equivalents. Meanwhile, shadiness prime and planetary illumination could some driblet a further level, down to Lowest, but their Low settings are bully capable connected show portion adding loads much lighting item than the rock-bottom option.

The effect is, to beryllium sure, a compromise. Still, I’ll instrumentality immoderate partially chopped-down graphics implicit dodgy, bodgy controls successful a heartbeat, remaster oregon no.