The Elder Scrolls Skyblivion is Oblivion remade in the Skyrim engine. The massive fan undertaking has been in the works for a while and will continue to be as a new trailer reveals the launch date for the project.
While Skyrim continues to enjoy a large player base, it was arguably the 2006 release of Oblivion that streamlined the Elder Scrolls series and helped pave the way for the series to snag a whole new audience, opening up the series to a greater range of gamers. But the game has aged and it's here where a band of fans have set themselves the ambitious task of recreating the entirety of Oblivion using the more modern Skyrim engine.
"Remaking Oblivion in the Skyrim engine is what we set out to do when we started the Skyblivion project," writes the lead on the project, K Rebel, underneath the new YouTube trailer. "Making games takes time, this goes double for a volunteer project the size of a AAA game that took a team of fulltime devs years to make."
However, the Skyblivion team wanted to reassure that the project is in a state where they can "promise a 2025 release at the latest". So there you go. While it might be a while yet, as described, a project of this scope and size is going to take time especially when it's being worked on by a team that's not under payroll for making it. So fans should have patience although the trailer above will certainly whet the appetites.
Last year, Skyblivion lead K Rebel told TheGamer that original project lead Zilav started working on a port for Oblivion around ten years ago. "You could download it through the forums, but it was completely broken," K Rebel said. "That's how I first heard about the scope while I was working on Skywind, a similar remake of Morrowind."
Rebel has a YouTube channel called Rebelzize where he regularly updates on how the Skyblivion build is going, with dev diaries talking about world design and game design. But fans may have been a little concerned since the last update was nine months ago, with a video dedicated to the project's 3D art. But today's trailer should allay fears.
While 2025 seems a ways off, Rebel does say they hope to beat their own estmation, but it will require the help of volunteers. Those who are interested and have the skills can apply via the Skyblivion website.