Oblivion Remastered performance improvements emerge through the gates with update 1.2, plus difficulty tweaks

Begone, unoptimised waterfall particle FX

Image credit: Bethesda

The second of two Oblivion Remastered updates Bethesda told us all they had up their buggy sleeves arrives in Steam Beta later today, July 9th. This one’s update 1.2, and it’s headlined by the sorts of performance improvements folks have been begging for, plus some difficulty setting tweaks.

In case you missed it, The Elder Scrolls 4.something’s last update did many things, but by fair the most noteworthy was stopping a vampire from succumbing to the urge all men get. That being the urge to become bald so you can save like £10 a year by no longer buying shampoo.

Taking a gander at the patch notes for update 1.2, which you can check out in full via the Tweet embedded below, Bethesda’s kicked off by outlining how it’s switched up the settings that control how hard you get Mehrunes Donkgoned by enemies and how much damage you inflict by donking them back.

“Players can now select from Novice, Apprentice, Adept, Journeyman, Expert, and Master options in the Gameplay menu,” they wrote. “We hope the Journeyman setting, specifically, will act as a better bridge between Adept and Expert for players.” I personally preferred yanking the slider on a bar that provides next to no info as to what exact difficulty you’re at, but hopefully this helps folks out.

Beyond that, here are the much-requested tweaks the update makes to Oblivion Remastered’s not always so hot performance:

Fixed frame rate drop in Deepscorn Hollow
Fixed frame rate drops in Black Rock Caverns
Fixed frame rate drop between Skingrad and Skingrad Castle
Fixed frame rate drop south of Bravil Castle courtyard
Reduced the frequency of hitches in the open world.
General improvements to frame time in many locations.
Optimise updating of character attachments.
Optimise rendering of water volumes in the open world.
Optimise light/shadow updates in several lairs.
Optimise waterfall particle FX and rendering.
Optimise the weather system.
Optimise character animation system.

So, hopefully all of that means you get more of the fun jank, and less of the jank that is the equivalent of a stranger taking a big poo on your living room carpet. Unless, of course that is your definition of fun. To each their own.

The update’s out via Steam Beta first, with a full release on PC and those other platforms to follow at some point down the line.

Make sure to check out all of our coverage of Oblivion Remastered modding, including my recent interview with one of the modders currently working on a full Fallout 4-style settlement building system for it.