The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered | Ep. 3 – Lovely Place, Shame About the Gates to Hell

We’re heading back to beautiful Cyrodiil, where the rolling countryside, ancient ruins, and charming towns are unfortunately interrupted by enormous flaming portals to another dimension. It’s an absolutely lovely place to visit, provided you don’t mind the occasional demonic invasion.

Tonight, we returned to The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered for our third episode, and by the end of the evening, I wasn’t entirely confident we’d actually accomplished anything. We certainly explored plenty of places, collected far too much loot and managed to get ourselves into areas where we weren’t supposed to be.

We might even have completed a proper quest somewhere along the way!

🏰 About the Game

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered takes us back to Cyrodiil in a refreshed version of the classic open-world RPG. With the Emperor murdered and mysterious Oblivion Gates threatening the province, the future of the Empire is looking rather uncertain.

Our adventure involves exploring towns and ancient ruins, joining guilds, completing quests, discovering dungeons and eventually confronting the forces of Mehrunes Dagon. There’s an enormous world to investigate, and we can choose whether to follow the main story or spend our time doing practically everything else instead.

As this episode demonstrates, we’re rather good at the second option.

🗺️ Where We Are in the Journey

We’re still fairly early in our adventure. Having escaped the Imperial Prison and visited the abbey during our earlier episodes, we’d spent some time exploring the countryside and completing a few smaller quests.

We also acquired Battlehorn Castle during the previous stream after defeating four people attacking it from outside. That has now become our headquarters, although I’m still learning where everything is and how best to organise our belongings.

Our character also needed some attention. There were several unfinished quests, equipment in questionable condition and a few game mechanics I’d forgotten during the weeks since we last played.

🧭 What Happens in This Episode: Three Forts, Five Deaths and a Stolen Staff

We began the evening back at Battlehorn Castle, which we’d acquired during the previous stream after defeating four people who were attacking it from outside. It had been a few weeks since we’d last played Oblivion, so the first challenge was remembering where we’d left off, finding the correct save file and working out what we were supposed to be doing.

Before heading anywhere, we had a look through our quest menu to see which objectives were available. There were quite a few things we’d picked up during our previous adventures, although some of them were going to have to wait until we’d improved our character a little more.

One particular problem was Speechcraft. We’d previously struggled with the persuasion minigame, and although I’d gone back into the game between streams to learn how it worked, I’d managed to forget again by the time we returned. So, anything requiring us to persuade someone was probably best left alone for the moment.

The quest system wasn’t making planning particularly easy either. Unlike Skyrim, where we could activate several quests and display all their markers on the map together, Oblivion only seemed to allow one active quest at a time.

I’d much rather be able to see all the available objectives together, work out which ones were close to each other and plan a route around them. Otherwise, we could travel halfway across Cyrodiil to complete one quest, only to discover afterwards that another objective had been practically next door.

Several of our quests appeared to involve settlements further south, so that gave us a general direction to head in. We also visited the local Fighters Guild and successfully signed up as an associate, although we were promptly informed that we’d need to travel to another town if we wanted any contracts.

Apparently, joining the guild in this particular town didn’t mean there was actually any work available there.

We weren’t in any particular hurry to continue the main storyline and find the Emperor’s heir either. That would have been far too obvious when there was so much countryside waiting to be explored.

Eventually, we settled on a plan. We’d follow the main road towards the Imperial City, head south from there and then work our way west towards the other settlements. Taking the roads rather than cutting directly across the countryside would also give us an opportunity to see what interesting places we might encounter along the way.

Unfortunately, that sensible plan didn’t survive our first unexpected turning.

A Slight Diversion to Fort Camala

When we reached a T-junction, I noticed a small path heading south that didn’t appear to be marked on our map. Naturally, we decided to follow it and see where it led.

Along the way, we encountered Dibella’s Wayshrine, which we activated. I’m still not entirely sure what blessing we received from it, but it seemed worth activating while we were passing.

A short distance further along, we discovered Fort Camala.

Now, we could have continued towards our intended destination, but there was an unexplored fort sitting directly in front of us. It would have been a shame not to investigate.

Inside, we found a collection of enemies, including skeletons, along with plenty of corridors, rooms and chests to search. One opponent appeared to be using some sort of invisibility effect, although it wasn’t particularly successful. EntertainJD suggested that we were dealing with a “minimum wage guard” who couldn’t afford a proper invisibility cloak.

The skeletons also reminded me of the creatures from Ray Harryhausen’s classic Jason and the Argonauts. That started a conversation about the old stop-motion fantasy films, including the Sinbad adventures and Clash of the Titans. We even discussed whether some of them might be suitable for a future movie night.

Back in the dungeon, we were doing our usual thorough exploration. I kept looking for hidden buttons or switches because some of the walls and passages looked as though there ought to be something tucked away behind them.

We also had a little difficulty remembering how to access the local map. Gary eventually explained that we needed to zoom all the way in, which made checking the areas we’d already explored considerably easier.

There was plenty worth collecting, including weapons, armour, soul gems and other useful supplies. We also discovered a bottle of wine that unexpectedly added another quest to our journal.

After working our way through the fort and clearing out the enemies, we eventually decided we’d explored everything available. Unfortunately, we’d also collected so much equipment that our carrying weight was getting dangerously close to the limit again.

We were almost over-cucumbered, and we’d barely started our journey.

Back to Battlehorn Castle

Rather than continue towards the Imperial City with our inventory almost full, we fast travelled back to Battlehorn Castle.

There was a chest near the entrance that we’d decided would become our main storage chest. I’m not entirely sure what other storage arrangements are available around the castle, so for the moment this one is going to hold practically everything we bring back from our adventures.

We started sorting through our collection, comparing weapons and armour, keeping anything potentially useful and depositing the rest. There were bows, swords, spare armour, books, rings, miscellaneous items and quite a lot of things we’d collected simply because they happened to be lying around.

Some of our equipment was also in a rather poor state of repair. I considered having the blacksmith fix everything, but we didn’t have a particularly large amount of money, so replacing damaged pieces with some of the armour we’d collected seemed more sensible.

That resulted in our character wearing a rather ridiculous-looking helmet, but at least it offered some protection.

We also needed to level up. Between streams, I’d discovered that Oblivion requires you to sleep before accumulated level-ups can be applied. We’d earned enough experience to improve our character several times, but hadn’t actually done so.

Finding a bed inside our own castle took longer than expected. We wandered through several rooms before eventually locating one that we could use. I wasn’t particularly concerned whose bed it was, provided it allowed us to level up.

After sleeping, we worked through the available attribute increases, putting points into areas including health, speed and luck. We repeated the process until we’d reached level four, having started the evening at level one.

That was a worthwhile improvement, especially considering how much fighting we’d been doing and the increasingly questionable condition of our equipment.

By now, we’d already spent a considerable amount of time playing and hadn’t really completed any of the quests we’d originally been considering. We’d explored one dungeon, joined the Fighters Guild, collected a lot of equipment and improved our character, though, so at least something had been accomplished.

With our inventory reduced once again, we headed back onto the road.

Fort Ash and Another Collection of Loot

This time, when we returned to the T-junction, we ignored the southern diversion and continued towards the Imperial City as originally planned.

It wasn’t long before we encountered Fort Ash.

We climbed the stairs to investigate the upper levels before heading through the doors into the dungeon below. Once again, we found ourselves fighting enemies, investigating passages and collecting anything that looked useful.

The dungeon included traps and obstacles that required a little care. There were moments when I wasn’t entirely sure what had triggered an attack, along with passages where we had to work out whether we’d already explored the adjoining rooms.

We collected more weapons, arrows, lockpicks and other supplies, although our enthusiasm for picking things up was doing very little to help our inventory situation.

I also spent some time experimenting with our bow. Unfortunately, the damage was rather disappointing compared with what we could achieve using a sword. Gary suggested that our bow skill was probably too low, which seemed a reasonable explanation.

For the moment, getting close enough to hit enemies with a sword was proving considerably more effective.

There was also an encounter with a roadside bandit who demanded money or death. That didn’t end particularly well for him, and his appearance prompted chat to compare him to a hairless cat. Mr V contributed a “bad kitty”, while EntertainJD thought he resembled one of those completely hairless breeds.

Chat was keeping everyone entertained while we explored. Gary had been discussing his attempts to rescue a struggling zoo from financial disaster, while Mr Smith had been sharing his experiences in Waterpark Simulator, including some rather unfortunate incidents involving visitors and saunas.

We also had the continuing #BlameJim jokes. I’d admitted that a space-related project involving Jim had been occupying much of my spare time, leaving considerably less opportunity for playing games. Apparently, that was sufficient justification for everyone to blame Jim for practically everything.

The music selection wasn’t helping everyone concentrate either.

Gary activated the channel jukebox and selected the symphonic version of “La-la Loop”. Mr V was less than delighted by this choice, while Mr Smith was quite happy with the idea of making people listen to it, especially those who complained.

There were also conversations about older Elder Scrolls games and how different people had originally discovered the series. Gary mentioned playing Morrowind, while I remembered my own time with Oblivion on the Xbox 360, when I’d played through it between Skyrim and its downloadable content.

TitchAndCo brought up the familiar Skyrim joke about taking an arrow to the knee, which reminded me of something rather amusing involving my best friend RoyalTea.

RoyalTea was recovering from surgery, and I wanted to send her a game to enjoy while she was recovering. I’d originally planned to buy her the Hogwarts game for the Switch 2 and already had it in my shopping basket. However, during a conversation, she mentioned that she’d never played Skyrim before.

Well, that immediately changed my plans. I cancelled the Hogwarts game from my basket and ordered her Skyrim instead. It’s such a brilliant game, and I thought it would be perfect for someone who had plenty of time to explore while recovering from surgery.

It wasn’t until a little while after I’d placed the order that something occurred to me. Perhaps Skyrim wasn’t the most appropriate game I could have chosen, considering that RoyalTea was recovering from knee surgery.

I’d just sent my best friend a game famous for guards telling you that they used to be adventurers until they took an arrow to the knee!

That hadn’t even crossed my mind when I ordered it. It was completely unintentional, which made the whole thing even funnier once I realised what I’d done. Chat seemed to appreciate the coincidence too, with EntertainJD describing it as the “Best gift ever.”

Still, I stand by the choice. Skyrim is a fantastic game, particularly when you’ve got some time to lose yourself in its world. I still enjoy playing it on my own Switch, usually for half an hour here and there, and I’ve spent countless hours building my house, improving my armour and generally doing my own thing without even getting around to visiting the Greybeards.

So, hopefully RoyalTea will get just as much enjoyment out of it, even if the game’s most famous line is perhaps a little unfortunate under the circumstances!

Eventually, we finished exploring Fort Ash and returned to the surface. This time, rather than travelling back to Battlehorn Castle, we decided to keep going towards the Imperial City.

Fort Nikel and the Road to the Capital

Our journey continued until we approached the bridge leading towards the Imperial City, where we encountered Fort Nikel.

Of course, having already explored two forts that evening, we couldn’t simply walk past a third one.

We headed inside and once again found ourselves clearing enemies, searching rooms and collecting anything worth carrying. There were more fights, some rather close encounters and the usual problems trying to keep track of which passages we’d already investigated.

After working our way through Fort Nikel, we eventually returned to the surface and resumed our journey.

By this stage, the original plan to travel south towards the other settlements had rather fallen apart. We’d spent most of the evening exploring three forts, and now we were almost at the Imperial City anyway.

I decided that since we’d come this far, we might as well go and investigate the capital.

At the beginning of the bridge, we discovered the Wawnet Inn. I thought it might be worth having a look inside to see whether there were any quests available or interesting people to speak to.

I have to say, the place was absolutely buzzing with activity.

There was practically nobody there.

For an inn located immediately outside the capital city, it was surprisingly quiet. We explored its three floors, looked around the rooms and spoke to the few people we encountered before deciding there wasn’t much else to do.

With that investigation completed, we crossed the bridge and entered the Imperial City through the Talos Plaza District.

It had been many years since I’d explored this place properly, and although some of the architecture looked familiar from my original Xbox 360 playthrough, remembering how all the districts connected was another matter.

We had a look around the immediate area before heading towards the White-Gold Tower.

That was where the evening became considerably more interesting.

The White-Gold Tower Experiment

When we entered the tower, the guards informed us that visitors were welcome on the first two floors, but weren’t permitted to go any higher.

There was also a large chamber that we couldn’t access through the normal doors.

While exploring the upper level, we discovered a central opening overlooking an enormous room below. There was a massive table surrounded by chairs, and I could see that the chamber was the same one we hadn’t been able to enter earlier.

Anyone who knows me will be aware that I enjoy exploring places where we’re not supposed to go. If a game allows us to reach somewhere that appears inaccessible, I’m usually interested in finding out what happens when we get there.

The first thing I checked was whether we could jump onto the ledge overlooking the chamber. There wasn’t an invisible wall stopping us, which immediately gave me an idea.

Before doing anything particularly foolish, I created what I call a solid save. That’s a proper save using a new file, rather than relying on a quicksave or autosave, so we’d have somewhere safe to return if everything went wrong.

With that completed, I made an additional quicksave and jumped over the edge to see how much fall damage we’d take.

It turned out to be fatal.

That was the beginning of our first #Deathloop of the evening, and we ended up with five deaths during our various attempts to get into the chamber.

Looking down at the chairs, I wondered whether we could avoid the fall damage by pressing the interaction button repeatedly as we dropped. If the game detected a chair close enough to use, perhaps it would trigger the sitting animation before we hit the ground.

It seemed worth testing.

We made several attempts to jump towards the chairs and activate one while falling, but couldn’t quite get close enough or aim accurately enough before reaching the floor.

After a few unsuccessful attempts, I had one of my “Headaches with Pictures”.

I wondered whether Oblivion actually remembered a character’s falling momentum when loading a save.

What would happen if we jumped from the ledge, quicksaved immediately before hitting the ground and then reloaded that save?

There was only one way to find out.

We jumped again, and just before reaching the floor, I pressed F5 to create a quicksave. Rather than allowing the fall to finish, we opened the menu and reloaded.

Our character appeared about a foot above the ground and landed perfectly safely.

It worked!

Apparently, the game wasn’t carrying our falling momentum over when loading the save. We’d successfully bypassed what should have been a fatal fall by saving immediately before impact.

That was quite an interesting discovery, although it did leave us with a new problem.

We were now standing inside the restricted chamber, and the door wasn’t going to let us leave.

High Chancellor Ocato and the Missing Keys

The chamber wasn’t completely empty. Sitting at the enormous table was High Chancellor Ocato, who didn’t seem particularly pleased to see us.

We had a look around the room and tried speaking to him, but he wasn’t especially helpful. Since we couldn’t open the doors, I started wondering whether he might be carrying something useful.

Rather than immediately reloading our earlier save, we decided to investigate his inventory.

I crouched down, moved behind his chair and attempted to pickpocket him while he was sitting there.

He had three things: a stack of gold, a staff and a set of keys.

We decided to leave his money alone, because stealing that as well seemed to be pushing our luck a little too far. The keys, however, were exactly what we needed, and the staff seemed worth taking while we were there.

So, we stole both.

The keys allowed us to open the chamber doors and escape into the surrounding corridors. Interestingly, the guards didn’t seem concerned that someone who had previously gone upstairs was now emerging from a room that visitors weren’t supposed to enter.

With our newly acquired key, we naturally started checking what other doors we could open.

We returned to the upper chamber where we’d originally jumped from the ledge, because there was another door leading further upwards. Unfortunately, the Chancellor’s key didn’t open that one.

We then headed back down the corridor, passing the guards and the doorway we’d escaped through, until we reached another passage leading towards a lower area.

Luckily, I created another save before investigating.

As soon as we entered, the guards became rather upset and wanted to arrest us. Since we’d only just acquired the keys and staff, I wasn’t particularly keen on losing them.

We reloaded our save and made another attempt to investigate the restricted area, running around to see whether there was anything worth collecting before the guards caught up with us.

That didn’t achieve very much either, so we returned to the safety of our save file and finally decided to leave the White-Gold Tower.

By this stage, we’d managed to get into an inaccessible chamber, discovered a way around fall damage, stolen the High Chancellor’s keys and staff, and upset the palace guards.

I couldn’t remember the exact name of the staff, although I thought it might have been the Staff of the Battlemage. Whatever it was, we now had a rather interesting souvenir from our visit.

We hadn’t accomplished any of that as part of a quest, of course.

We’d simply been curious about what was at the bottom of a large hole in the floor.

Exploring the Imperial City

After leaving the White-Gold Tower, we continued exploring the various districts of the Imperial City.

The circular layout meant travelling between different areas, and I wasn’t always entirely sure which district we’d entered. Gary helped identify a couple of locations, including the Temple District and the Arena District.

We also spent some time admiring the buildings and discussing parts of the Elder Scrolls universe with chat.

Mr V asked whether we were actually planning to close any Oblivion Gates during the evening. It was a reasonable question, considering that the game was supposed to involve an invasion from another dimension.

Unfortunately, we’d been rather busy exploring forts and investigating the Imperial Palace.

Our next destination was the Arena District, where we decided that signing up for a few battles might be an interesting change from wandering around the city.

Our First Arena Victory

While exploring the Arena, we encountered Agronak gro-Malog, better known as the Gray Prince.

He told us about his uncertain family history and the possibility that he might have noble ancestry. That introduced another quest involving Crowhaven, where we could investigate his background and potentially discover more about his parents.

We weren’t going to deal with that immediately, but it gave us something else to add to our growing collection of unfinished quests.

Instead, we headed into the Arena Bloodworks to sign up for a fight.

There we met Owyn, who wasn’t particularly welcoming and didn’t seem to have much confidence in our chances of surviving.

Our equipment wasn’t helping matters either.

Although we’d collected a substantial amount of armour during our travels, much of what we were actually wearing had reached zero durability. We were technically heading into our first Arena battle with very little effective protection.

Fortunately, the Arena provided an outfit for us to wear during combat.

Unfortunately, equipping it pushed us over our carrying capacity once again.

We were over-cucumbered, and this time it was preventing us from moving properly before we’d even entered the Arena.

We started going through our inventory to see what we could abandon. I think there was a fairly heavy mace that we’d picked up earlier, along with some other equipment we weren’t particularly likely to use.

After dropping enough weight, we could finally move around again and prepare for our first fight.

Eventually, Owyn allowed us to enter the Arena as a member of the Blue Team.

The battle itself wasn’t especially complicated, although it took considerably more effort than I’d expected to bring our opponent’s health down.

Our weapons weren’t dealing an enormous amount of damage, and with the condition of our equipment, it was becoming increasingly obvious that we’d need to invest in some repairs or upgrades before attempting more difficult opponents.

We also had the occasional moment of confusion with the controls and healing during the fight, which didn’t make matters any easier.

Nevertheless, we managed to defeat our opponent and win our first Arena battle!

Returning to Owyn afterwards was rather satisfying. Given how little confidence he’d expressed in us before the fight, he seemed genuinely surprised that we’d actually survived, let alone won.

We collected our reward and considered the possibility of returning for more battles in the future.

Before doing that, though, I think it would be sensible to improve our equipment a little. The first opponent had taken quite a lot of punishment before going down, and I wasn’t particularly confident that our current weapons and armour would be sufficient against stronger enemies.

One Last Look Around Before Calling It a Night

With our first Arena victory completed, we headed back outside and continued exploring the next section of the Imperial City.

This brought us into the Market District, which immediately looked vaguely familiar. I remembered parts of the area from when I originally played Oblivion on the Xbox 360, although it had been many years since that playthrough.

There were still plenty of places worth investigating, including the various shops and buildings around the Market District, but it was getting rather late.

We decided that exploring the Market District properly, along with the Elven Gardens District, would probably be better left until our next visit.

Looking back over the evening, we’d actually accomplished quite a bit, even if none of it was particularly close to what we’d originally intended.

We’d joined the Fighters Guild, explored Fort Camala, Fort Ash and Fort Nikel, reached level four, collected a considerable amount of equipment, discovered a rather interesting way to survive a fatal fall, and acquired the High Chancellor’s keys and staff.

We’d also learned more about the Gray Prince, picked up another quest and successfully completed our first Arena battle.

What we hadn’t done was make any meaningful progress towards finding the Emperor’s heir or dealing with those enormous Oblivion Gates.

Considering we’d originally planned to travel south and work through some of our existing quests, we’d managed to get ourselves completely distracted again.

Chat had been keeping us entertained throughout, from the opening cheese and potato jokes to the discussions about other games, classic films, music and the continuing #BlameJim campaign. We also talked about the upcoming streams and Sunday movie night, with HappyCat having selected Tucker and Dale.

Before finishing, we sent everyone over to OurChickenLife for a raid, bringing another evening of exploring Cyrodiil to a close.

Next time, we’ll hopefully continue investigating the Imperial City, explore the Market District and Elven Gardens, and perhaps return to the Arena once we’ve improved our equipment.

We might even get around to completing some of those quests we’ve been carrying around for the last few episodes.

Although, given how easily three unexplored forts and an interesting opening in the White-Gold Tower managed to distract us this time, I wouldn’t make any promises.

🎬 Watch the Episode

If you’d like to see how our Imperial City experiments turned out, including the five deaths, the quicksave discovery and our first Arena victory, you can watch the full episode here.

You can also catch up with the adventure through the Oblivion Remastered series playlist.

If you’re enjoying the series, please consider liking the video, leaving a comment and subscribing to my YouTube channel. Let me know whether you’ve ever discovered a similarly unusual way of getting somewhere you weren’t supposed to go.

🔴 Join the Adventure Live

There’s always something unexpected happening when we’re exploring Cyrodiil, especially once chat starts offering suggestions.

Come and join us live on Twitch or YouTube, where you can help us decide which quests to tackle, offer advice when I’ve forgotten the controls and join in with the usual conversations.

We might even manage to close an Oblivion Gate eventually!

💬 Community & Links

Our adventures don’t end when the stream finishes. There’s always somewhere to catch up with everyone, share what you’ve been playing or find out what’s happening next.

Live — Find us when the next adventure begins:
Twitch | YouTube

Community — Join the conversations, share your adventures and keep up with our upcoming streams:
Discord

Socials — Follow what we’re getting up to between streams:
TikTok | Bluesky | Instagram | Facebook | Threads | X

Music — If you’ve survived the cheese song and La-la Loop, there’s more music to discover:
Spotify | Apple Music

Support — If you’d like to support the channel and help keep everything running:
Fourthwall | Teespring | Streamlabs

More — There’s quite a bit happening outside the world of gaming as well:
Business Centre | Download the Brochure | About Me | Blog

🏆 Five Deaths, Three Forts and Not a Gate Closed

So, that brings us to the end of our third episode of Oblivion Remastered. We made some decent progress with our character, explored quite a few new locations and managed to win our first Arena battle. We also discovered something rather interesting about how the game handles fall damage.

Next time, we’ll hopefully continue exploring the Imperial City, look around the Market District and Elven Gardens, and perhaps get started on some of those quests we’ve been carrying around.

Whether we actually follow that plan remains to be seen.

Thanks to everyone who joined us for the stream, and I’ll see you all again soon!

— Dr Ravenholm