Bethesda is still to announce its highly-anticipated The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remake, but there’s no denying the project is real and ready to launch.
Earlier this week, screenshots and details of The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remake were dug up from developer Virtuos’ website. Now, references to the project have been found on Bethesda’s own website too – including code for a “Buy Now” button that has since been removed.
As Eurogamer previously reported, it’s understood that Bethesda’s current plans are to shadow drop the game next week on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S, including via Xbox Game Pass. But nothing has been officially announced – for now.
Still, Bethesda is clearly readying for next week behind the scenes, with some overly-eager website updating that – of course – caught the eye of fans.
“I was digging through the source code of bethesda.net and found a reference to ‘oblivion-remastered’ in the Google Tag Manager setup,” a fan posted on reddit, showing a screenshot of the code in situ.
“It points to this URL: https://elderscrolls.bethesda.net/en/oblivion-remastered The page isn’t live yet, but what’s interesting is that I checked the Google Tag Manager container on the Wayback Machine, and this reference wasn’t there as of April 10th. So it looks like it was added very recently!”
The code has now been removed – just as the screenshots from Virtuos’ website were too. But, of course, copies are now all over the internet, and you can still see the original files in place via an archived version of Virtuos’ website.
After years of leaks and an even lengthier wait for a new entry in The Elder Scrolls series (don’t look up how long ago Skyrim landed), fans don’t have long to go now.
Earlier this month, Eurogamer’s Jim Trinca called on Bethesda to “remake Morrowind, not Oblivion, you cowards”. Maybe that could come next?