Todd Howard on Why Bethesda Doesn’t Like Making Remasters

Last year’s remastered version of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion has become a massive success for Bethesda Game Studios, reaching 3 million players in three days after its release. And what’s more exciting, the game was released the same day it was announced—on April 22, 2025—which could also have influenced its huge appreciation.

Bethesda is not the kind of studio that likes to make remastered versions of their titles. In 2016, they made a remaster of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim titled The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim – Special Edition, and we can also remember five years later they released the Anniversary Edition of Skyrim, but it’s now a remaster, more likely an expanded re-release with some enhancements. During the latest interview with GamesRadar, the boss of Bethesda Game Studios, Todd Howard, was asked why the studio didn’t make the remastered versions of their classic RPG titles, and, according to him, he wanted to make sure these games would still be playable nowadays and praised backwards compatibility support. You can check out the highlights from his interview below:

“For a long time, I was a no, no, no. That is a game of its age, let's just make sure it runs. They did an incredible job with backwards compatibility. Right now, you can go and play the original Oblivion, you can play Morrowind, you can play Fallout 3. It's backwards compatible, it's 4k, and like, great. So that to me, was like, job number one – can you play them as they were?

"Feeling like this also serves the Elder Scrolls audience that we hadn't had this, this is good for that audience, and having a single player game and kind of this pocket of time. But there's a million ways that that could have gone wrong.”

As we know, Bethesda Game Studios is working on more remasters, with Fallout 3 being the next to receive an improved version and Fallout: New Vegas following. Although the studio hasn’t announced the upcoming remastered versions for Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas, multiple insider reports suggest both projects are in the works, including the recently unveiled McFarlane Toys leak.

There is also a suggestion, as was recently confirmed by gaming journalist Jeff Gerstmann, that Bethesda is not involved in the remastered project directly—they are developing it by separate studios. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered confirms it, as it was produced by Virtuos studio; that means Fallout 3 Remastered and further titles will also likely be made by different companies, not Bethesda.