This article contains minor spoilers for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered. Major plot points won’t be covered, but please be advised.
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered (2025) seemingly cropped up overnight. With weeks of leaks leading up to the announcement and drop of the game, some fans of The Elder Scrolls expected the remaster, but it’s safe to say that most didn’t expect it quite so soon. Despite the surprise drop, Oblivion Remastered has done incredibly well. Sales are high across all platforms, reviews are positive, and many gamers are already talking about what other Elder Scrolls games deserve a remake.
Calling Oblivion a remaster isn’t quite accurate. This game was actually built from the ground up in Unreal Engine 5. It’s really more of a remake than a remaster, with modern controls, updated graphics, brand-new dialogue, and so much more. Despite all the improvements the game made, it did keep the heart and soul of the original alive, which is why the remake is doing so well. The developers poured a lot of heart into the game, so much so that it even kept a mistake from the original game that fans actually love.
The Voice Actor Breaks Character to Restart Her Line
Image via Bethesda Softworks & YouTuber IGriffoI
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (2006) is definitely a product of its time. The Oblivion remake features a lot of new content and updates, including new voice acting for multiple non-player characters (NPCs). The original game used the same voices for multiple characters, likely due to budget constraints or other limitations during development. There’s a lot of memorable dialogue in the game despite the limited number of voices, which definitely helped Oblivion stand out as one of the best Elder Scrolls games ever made.
That said, the original Oblivion has an infamous blooper that somehow made it into the final release of the game. During a scene where the player’s character speaks with Tandilwe, the Speechcraft trainer, Tandilwe talks about a rumor concerning thieves breaking into Arcane University and several other locations. At the end of the statement, Tandilwe’s voice actor breaks character and says she wants to do the line again. She then repeats the previous line, but she changes a few points of emphasis to sound more compelling. YouTube user IGriffoI has a great video clip showing the brief blooper.
“I heard that thieves broke into the Arcane University, the Imperial Legion Compound, and the Temple, all on the same night!—Wait a minute, let me do that one again.” – Tandilwe
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No one knows how this blooper managed to make it into the game, but for some reason, the voice actor’s first attempt at the line, her pausing to start over, and her second attempt were all included in place of this line of dialogue. The actor clearly wanted to change how she presented the line, hence redoing it. Bloopers exist because performers won’t get the take the first time every time, but it’s so jarring to hear a voice actor break character in a video game.
This mistake became so infamous that Elder Scrolls fans and gamers who have never touched The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion know of its existence. It’s not an exaggeration to say that it’s one of the most infamous video game bloopers of all time. It’s also an admittedly small but interesting peek behind the curtain. A lot goes into making a game, so it’s cool to see a little bit of the process of how voice actors record, even if it’s just one tiny line.
Surprisingly, Oblivion Remastered Includes the Blooper
& the Remake Managed to Make it Even Better
Image via Bethesda Software & YouTuber Mao Deegan
Since The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered is more or less a ground-up remake, removing this dialogue mistake would have been the easiest thing in the world. While the remake did bring in some new voice actors to provide fresh voice-overs for some of the NPCs, Tandilwe’s voice is the same performance from the original game. Despite using the same voice, developers Virtuos and Bethesda Game Studios could have easily edited this line to only include the voice actor’s second take. That was the version she clearly wanted to be included in the game.
However, the developers believed that this iconic blooper was part of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion’s identity. It’s such a recognizable thing in the gaming world that removing it to “fix” the scene would actually ruin it. So the developers decided to keep the line exactly as is, with Tandilwe saying the line, breaking character, and then re-saying the line.
In the remake, Tandilwe’s lip-syncing is much better, though. In the original game, after the actor’s first attempt, Tandilwe’s lips more or less stop moving. The lip-syncing was already pretty bad, as her mouth was just moving without really matching the words, but her mouth abruptly stopping only emphasized how out-of-place the mistake was.
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In the remake, Tandilwe’s lips move throughout the entire bit of dialogue, even the moment when the voice actor breaks character. YouTuber Mao Deegan provided a short clip of the remake’s version of the blooper. The lip-syncing is also way more accurate to what Tandilwe is actually saying. It may not be 100% perfect, but anyone who’s halfway decent at reading lips could probably understand what the character says even without the audio.
Virtuos and Bethesda making this blooper a more serious moment in the game and acting like it was always supposed to be there actually makes it funnier. This isn’t the only “mistake” hidden in the game, either. One Oblivion Remastered player managed to glitch outside the game’s map. Once the player glitched out of the map, they found a secret location, Hammerfell. Hammerfell is rumored to be the main setting of the next major installment, The Elder Scrolls VI.
While many have written this off as an extra bit of code left in the game accidentally, some players believe that this is an Easter egg purposefully left in the remake to tease the upcoming game. Since the developers were willing to leave the Tandilwe blooper in, it’s not unreasonable to think they’ve purposefully included other Easter eggs, like Hammerfell.
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered
Systems
Released
April 22, 2025
ESRB
Mature 17+ // Blood and Gore, Sexual Themes, Violence
Developer(s)
Virtuos, Bethesda
Publisher(s)
Bethesda
Engine
Unreal Engine 5