The HD remake of Oblivion in the Skyrim engine is entering the home stretch. Good thing, because if The Elder Scrolls 6 releases before then, it would be a disaster.
Skyblivion could have been finished long ago. “If we started over today, with all the experience we’ve had along the way, we’d be done in half the time,” says Kyle, the lead developer online known as Rebelzize for the massive Skyrim mod, whose origins date back to 2012.
But the venture, relaunched in 2016 to release a worthy HD remake of Oblivion in the Skyrim engine, kept stumbling along the way. When GlobalESportNews first spoke to Kyle in late 2018 about one of the biggest mod projects of the modern era, it was still in its infancy despite all the progress:
“Three years ago, Skyblivion was mostly a concept and an idea that we worked very hard to realise. Now it’s a real game and a goal that is within reach to achieve.”
So Skyblivion is better than ever, and Kyle shares plenty of insights into the improvements over the old Oblivion in an exclusive interview with GlobalESportNews. These are by no means just graphical changes; Skyblivion will be a true remake, a total conversion with ambitious plans for a next-gen version of Bethesda’s legendary open world.
But the team is running out of time, as Kyle admits: “There’s a point when people will stop caring, and Skyblivion will stop being interesting. Namely, when The Elder Scrolls 6 comes out. That’s our deadline and we’re trying to finish earlier.”
Right now, the chances of that are pretty good, as heaps of new screenshots and info from the giant mod attest. Because after so many years of waiting, Skyblivion 2022 is finally turning into the home stretch.
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Only one big item missing for release
Skyblivion is supposed to reproduce all contents of Oblivion 1:1. However, the most important part is not yet finished: the main quest. For two years, the team has been working on transferring the quests manually into the Skyrim engine; a semi-automatic scripting solution ultimately proved to be of limited help. “It saved us a bit of time in the long run,” Kyle says.
In the meantime, quite a few missions are built in and functional. “We have now built in almost all the side quests plus the Warriors’ Guild, Mages’ Guild and Dark Brotherhood missions. We have more than half of them finished. What’s missing now is the arena, the thieves’ guild and the main quest,” Kyle informs us about the current state of development. “And the latter is of course the most complex.” In the meantime, the quest leader on the team is personally working on the main story; Kyle estimates that a testable version could be available by the end of the year.
In the meantime, the nearly 60 weekly main developers (and the many dozens of other helpers) are subordinating a lot to the goal of getting closer to release: “The team has evolved and learned to work more efficiently and better. This naturally creates the temptation to revisit old areas of the game. Our quality standards have risen, we can now create more beautiful forests, swords or quest scripts. But we don’t want to waste time and focus on our goal: a release as soon as possible. “
For Kyle and his, however, it is not so easy not to get distracted. It takes a lot of discipline, he says: “We have really good ideas sometimes. But if we put every one of them into the game, we might not be done for 20 years.” And there’s also the next official Elder Scrolls looming on the horizon behind Starfield:
“After The Elder Scrolls 6, we’ll be less relevant, yes. But [Skyblivion, editor’s note] will still give people the chance to experience an older part of the series again or for the first time. I’m not too worried about it. Skyblivion is extremely popular and we have a huge fan base, so that instils humility and is the biggest motivating factor for me and many on the team.“
Because the project continues to rely entirely on volunteer labour, Skyblivion cannot, of course, compete with games made by professional studios, “with their full-time staff and million-dollar budgets,” Kyle admits. “We like to stress that we’re developing a AAA-level game, but you have to be realistic. In the end, one circumstance will determine the weal and woe of this project and that’s time [to release].”
“Part of me has always had this wishful thinking that it would be ready in three years. But honestly, the last time we spoke, the projects were just getting started, the team size then was a quarter of what we have now, and we had hardly any experienced developers.”
But Kyle is now convinced that Skyblivion is slowly reaching the end of its development: “We’re not rushing anything and we’re not making a crunch. We’re just trying to stay realistic and do what’s possible in the time we think we have left. “
Where Skyblivion outgrows Bethesda’s original
“The dungeons in Oblivion were boring and linear,” Kyle says when asked where Skyblivion modders are taking a few more liberties with the original. “The same goes for the levels behind the Oblivion gates, they were way too long and tedious.”
This is where the Skyblivion team comes in and makes improvements where a simple HD remaster is no longer sufficient. However, the modders always regard Elder Scrolls lore as the highest authority. Kyle cites the city of Leyawiin as an example.
“There’s supposedly a very large river running through the city, which is why it’s supposed to be an important trade route. But the way Oblivion implemented the lore, that would be impossible because the city is off the river, so there’s no direct connection to the Imperial City.
“That’s why in Skyblivion we decided to run the river through the city. There is a harbour, drawbridges and two large locks for the ships. This was a necessary change in our eyes. But not all cities need this kind of redesign. We are currently working on Bruma, for example, and there is nothing fundamentally wrong with that.”
Never the less, the team is logically completing or expanding Oblivion’s design. “If you’re looking for the blacksmith, you should know at a glance what building it is,” Kyle points out. That’s why, he says, they put an anvil in front of the house in Bruma. The façade of the warriors’ and mages’ guilds has also been adapted.
Finally, as you progress through the main quest, you’ll see various soldier camps pop up around the fortress: With each city you help, a new banner will appear above the camp representing that very city. In addition, many more details are supposed to support the impression of a real army camp. That didn’t exist in the original from 2006. Kyle says: “It’s a nice example of how you can use the empty spaces to support the main quest in this case.”
The developers are currently working on this
Recent advances in the game include the goblins, which the graphic designers recently gave a major graphics update. For this purpose, several variants were created for the different enemy classes in the game. Instead of creating umpteen different 3D models, the team simply uses skins to visually differentiate the goblin tribes with their tattoos and individual accessories. Kyle explains the decision as follows:
“We don’t want to waste time on something like that. It’s something we’ve learned in the past. We want the game to be released as soon as possible, so we minimise the effort wherever possible.”
Goblins also now have nicer camps than in the original, they’ve been reworked just like the rest of the many forts. “They were boring,” Kyle says. “Now they look incredibly awesome, just like the familiar Oblivion creatures. Without them, the game wouldn’t look and feel the way it should.” Whenever possible, the team collaborates with modders who have remodelled creatures from older Elder Scrolls history in the past.
The fourth developer video, which the Skyblivion team hopes to keep fans updated with, will also focus on upgrades for the unique (Daedric) weapons in the game. “There’s a lot of cool stuff you can do beyond the boring 15 extra points of fire damage in Skyrim,” Kyle says. A recent addition to the staff has reworked all the effects of the daedric weapons. For example, you can now hit the ground with a two-handed hammer and knock all enemies in the area for a loop.
Why such detail work does not contradict Kyle’s propagated no-time-to-lose course? The answer is simple: “It’s easy to get someone to design weapons. But it’s much harder to create a city tileset.” Many graphic designers would use the work on Skyblivion to expand their own portfolios. “We have a lot of cool weapons, at least some of which we want to show off.”
In contrast, he said, there are few people who want to work on Skyblivion’s level architecture in their spare time, or who have the skills to do so. “It takes a lot of time and skill,” Kyle says.
The Skyblivion team cannot easily reuse the old Oblivion graphics; even though Kyle and colleagues initially adopted many assets as placeholders in the Skyrim engine, they now have to gradually replace them all. On the one hand, because of the increased requirements for resolution and level of detail, on the other hand because Bethesda would otherwise block the mod release. That would really be a shame after all the obstacles Skyblivion has already overcome in the past.
Nine months of standstill
Skyblivion’s darkest hour came when the developers simply ran out of space. Around the turn of 2018/2019, the team faced an unsolvable problem: Skyrim would not allow any further changes to the mod.
The technology had reached its limits, as the developers had reached the limit of possible references in the code. Roughly speaking, this is the maximum number of changes that can be made to the game with the Creation Kit as part of a single mod.
Skyblivion, which until then had been based on the Skyrim: Legendary Edition, was forced to move. The Special Edition, released in 2016, allowed double to triple the references. But the move turned out to be more difficult than expected, because the developers simply lacked the technical expertise to do it. A supposed helper also turned out to be a blackmailer with whom cooperation was impossible. The result:
“For nine months we couldn’t work on the world map, the interiors and the dungeons; the morale of the team was at rock bottom, a lot of the daily work comes from these departments. Finally we made the switch – with a lot of pain, effort and wasted time. There were problems and we made some mistakes. Fixing those took a few months, maybe even a year.”
(Kyle/Rebelzize, Skyblivion project manager)
It was a disaster for the giant mod, also in terms of external perception: development seemed to have stopped, the team could hardly show any progress. “Not because we weren’t working, but because we couldn’t show it in the mod,” says Kyle. “That was by far the biggest hurdle we had to overcome. Luckily, we’re in much better shape now with several people who could handle that task. If we had to do it again today, it would take two to three weeks and there would be no mistakes.”
However, the team is not currently planning to switch to the Anniversary Edition of Skyrim, which will be released in November 2021. This is because the Skyrim Script Extender (SKSE) must be updated with every new patch from Bethesda. This is an important tool on which almost all major Skyrim mods are based. The Skyblivion team would thus have to interrupt work again and again until compatibility was restored. “This could cause a certain feature to stop working for a month,” explains project leader Kyle.
Ready for the future
When Kyle looks back on the early days of the project, he can only shake his head at the lack of structure back then. In the meantime, he says, there are Trello boards with cards for every aspect of the development, on which the original asset and concept drawings are stored, as well as people in charge and contacts for questions.
“We learned from our mistakes, that went by the trial-&-error principle. […] The way we keep track of the progress of the project has been greatly optimised. I can tell you exactly what is finished: 72 of 94 caves are distributed, eleven of them are merged with the world map. For the mines, there are 23 out of 25, eight of them finished, six in the game. I can see exactly where the project is at the moment. That’s a big improvement.“
Each volunteer brings their own experience to the team: for software engineers or modders who usually work with the Unreal Engine, working with Bethesda’s Creation Kit is like a trip down memory lane, but they are still among the most productive contributors. Those who make their living as office managers in real life have been able to help improve the project’s organisational structures. Kyle comments, “We have much better documentation now, so new artists and volunteers can access it more easily.”
Some team members are also working on other Skyrim mods at the same time. There is a particularly close collaboration with Beyond Skyrim, as Kyle tells us, “We’re both building new tilesets for the towns; we’re giving them something they can use and getting something we need in return. The two mods can coexist well. As far as I’m concerned, we’re not competitors because we’re working on very different things.”
Beyond Skyrim aims to recreate all of Tamriel, but is set in a different time period to Skyblivion. Read more in our huge preview:
They also have friendly relations with Skywind, and the Spellcraft system introduced there will also find its way into Skyblivion. The user responsible “presented it to us on a silver platter and asked, ‘Can you use this?’ Sometimes you just get lucky.”
Skyblivion is now entering its sixth official year of development after several reboots and project leader Kyle is “very happy with the progress. Currently we’re a little further along than I would have estimated. Now it’s about maintaining that momentum and not making the same mistakes as before.”
“We are now at a point where we can see the light at the end of the tunnel. We know exactly what we need to work on and it’s no longer a question of whether we can make something happen, but only how long it will take us”
One thing hasn’t changed, however: Kyle still won’t give any details about a specific release date. “The date depends on three factors. Firstly, the quests. The only thing missing are the more complex quests. I am very confident that we will have them ready within a reasonable time. […] The quests have always been my biggest concern, as it is very difficult to find staff who can and want to implement quests. “
On the other hand, there is level design, such as working on the city tilesets or dungeons. “We have to make sure that all the locations are in their correct place. Every city must have a house for every citizen. They don’t all need to be the best houses you’ve ever seen, but quest locations need to be ready and dungeons need to meet a certain standard of quality.”
And lastly, there’s the outside world, the big, connected Oblivion map with all its hills, forests and lakes. “Currently we estimate to be done with that before the end of the current year. We can do it in the next six months, but as I said, that’s only one pillar of Skyblivion. “
Editorial conclusion
Waiting for big, promising mods can sometimes be pure hell. After all, projects that people work on exclusively in their spare time seem to take up endless amounts of time. That’s annoying at first, but then also completely understandable when I think about how I deal with my own hobbies. Sometimes a box of Lego is put aside and not touched for months or even years.
However, after talking to Kyle, I am confident that Skyblivion has now made the leap from hobby project to semi-professional development. Progress is visible and communicated regularly and transparently. The way the team adds to the old Oblivion world without distorting the intentions of the original developers earns my respect. And the more new HD assets find their way into the game, the more Skyblivion actually looks like a completely new, modern AAA game and no longer like a Skyrim mod.
