Bethesda PR vice president Pete Hines reveals that the amount of work needed for an Oblivion remaster would be 'mountainous' and would be better served towards a new game.

Following persistant rumors about the existence of a Skyrim remaster, Bethesda finally showed its hand at this year's E3 conference when it revealed that the popular RPG will be getting a Special Edition relaunch later this year. Seeing as how the medieval-inspired open-world title has remained enduringly popular and has since become one of the best-selling games ever, it was little surprise that Skyrim received the remaster treatment. However, the remaster has brought up an interesting question for a portion of the Elder Scrolls fanbase as many have queried why Bethesda chose to redo Skyrim instead of the equally-popular Oblivion. As it turns out, the answer is pretty straightforward.

Speaking to GameSpot, Bethesda PR vice president Pete Hines stated that despite all the love towards Oblivion, the work required to remaster a decade-old game would be enormous and that the effort would be better served towards a brand new title.

"Oblivion is 10 years old, so the amount of work for that engine and that tech to bring it and remaster it and do all the things we wanted to do was significant. It's not impossible, but it was mountainous. It was either like, go make an entire new game or do Skyrim."

As for why Skyrim was chosen for the remaster treatment, Hines stated that the development team had already ported Skyrim to the Xbox One as a technical exercise during the research phase of Fallout 4, and some of the work had already been completed. Combined with the still-massive fanbase of Skyrim, it just made logical sense for the team to remaster the game.

Moving on from why Skyrim was remasterd, Hines then talked about how the game's mod support would work on consoles and PC, which will essentially work in the same way as Fallout 4's creation kit. Not only will PC gamers who already own Skyrim and all its DLC get the Special Edition for free, they will also get a new creation kit bundled alongside it. To get mods onto consoles, players will have to run a mod through the new Skyrim creation kit and then publish it to Bethesda Net, where it will be available to everyone.

Of course, Skyrim is just one of a number of projects Bethesda currently have in the works. The developer is currently finishing up on Nuka World, the last planned expansion pack for Fallout 4, and then there are the two untitled major-scale projects that have yet to be revealed. For now though, all eyes will be on the impending return to Tamriel, and it's looking like Skyrim will be as beautiful the second time around as it was way back in 2011.

Skyrim: Special Edition will be available on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC on October 28, 2016.

Source: GameSpot