Bethesda’s long-awaited The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered launched on April 22, bringing fans back to Cyrodiil in stunning new detail. While the remaster looks incredible on modern hardware, it’s proving to be a bit too much for Valve’s handheld. Despite being listed as Steam Deck Verified, Oblivion Remastered is struggling with performance issues on the portable device.
A Beautiful Yet Demanding Remaster
Powered by Unreal Engine 5, Oblivion Remastered introduces dynamic lighting, virtual shadow mapping, and enhanced textures—features that make the game shine but also significantly increase hardware demands. The remaster retains the original game’s iconic voice acting and quest structure, but beneath the surface, it’s running an entirely different beast.
Steam Deck Default Settings Aren’t Enough
According to PCGamesN, the game defaults to low settings on Steam Deck, with Intel XeSS upscaling set to Balanced. Even with these conservative defaults, players are reporting unstable frame rates, hovering below 30 FPS and often accompanied by stutters and drops.
To get a smoother experience, players have had to push settings even lower—opting for Ultra Performance XeSS—but this introduces trade-offs like blurry visuals, input lag, and ghosting, particularly when using frame generation.
Verified But Barely Playable?
The “Steam Deck Verified” badge may suggest compatibility, but performance is a different story. While the game boots and runs without crashing, the out-of-the-box experience is far from ideal. Players must manually tweak graphics settings and performance profiles just to get the game running somewhat smoothly.
Should You Play It on Steam Deck?
If you’re planning to dive into Oblivion Remastered on your Steam Deck, be prepared for some compromises. Expect to spend time adjusting settings, and even then, visual fidelity or input response may take a hit. It may be worth waiting for performance patches or community mods that better optimize the experience for handheld hardware.
The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered is a love letter to RPG fans, but Steam Deck players are facing serious performance hurdles. While it’s technically playable, the current state of the game demands extensive tweaking and sacrifices in image quality to hit acceptable frame rates.