One more beautiful and tiny lore post has come out of Bethesda‘s very own Elder Scrolls accountinter alia, about Cheydinhal: A city with purple rooftops. “The city of Cheydinhal sits nestled among the base of the Valus Mountain range. Overseen by Count Andel Indarys, Cheydinhal sports iconic violet roofs and a great Chapel of Arkay.” Alongside the tweet went a gorgeous artwork, map or painting of a location. This is one out of a series that highlights cool places across Tamriel. And there are fans for this! One such fan, Morcath, had to reply back, “Great that you’re continuing these. The art is gorgeous.” That’s one thing in fact; the art is well done.
The replies to this very tweet? Well, that’s a different story. It was like every pent-up ounce of grief from gamers poured out at once from Bethesda. The whole thing almost stops being about Cheydinhal, really. Around that point, several conversations suddenly took an abrupt detour and instead spoke ill about Oblivion Remastered recently released on PC. For example, Ironsides91_91 rarely wrinkles from the subject: “This is a cool map. By the way Oblivion remastered on PC still needs some work. It’s still a stuttering broken mess for too many people.” Not a single voice was to disagree, not even remotely.
Khurd214 went on to say that he hoped that “they can update oblivion remastered some more it really needs the memory leak issue resolved.” Then the rest are just demands: “Patch the game”, shouts two-worded adnan_ahmed. It’s almost as if the community is screaming into a void and the void is posting purple roofs back. Osvaldo_Neto jumped in with a specific bug plea: “FIX THE MANNIMARCO BUG!!!!!!!!” I guess I would try to defend the devs a little bit, but… yeah, if a legitimate remaster is broken, people are gonna get mad, no matter what.
And when there’s an Elder Scrolls tweet, there’s the Elder Scrolls VI chorus, just by virtue of reflex. d4n13l5_j0urn3y comments: “Just drop Elder Scrolls VI already nobody cares about anything else.” Andrew Hanson attempts to stir the pot with “Elder Scrolls 6 confirmed to not have this location,” just being a lil troll, most likely. Still, it lays out what’s on so many minds. They see a post about an old game’s location, and their thoughts immediately shoot to the future, at the game they’ve been waiting on for what feels like a decade.
It’s definitely a mix. Lore buffs who pile on these articles, thrilled with the art and world-building. And the much louder crowd is using this platform to shout out their complaints. A little nostalgic for physical things; RainResignation responded with, “If only I could see this on like…a physical map…that would ship inside a…boxed copy of Oblivion remasted on PS5… Maybe just maybe! Then could I close shut the jaws of Oblivion!” While that sounds great and encapsulates how many players feel, this digital stuff is all very good, but they miss tangible things, like maps they could lay flat on their floor.
So, what does all this mean? Bethesda is trying to engage the community with cool art and lore about their rich and grand world. But the community is… well, engaged indeed, but they are also anxious about the state of games that they could actually play right now. The Oblivion Remastered issues appear to be a real sore spot, a reminder that re-releasing a classic doesn’t always go smoothly. Hovering over everything is the giant, silent shadow of The Elder Scrolls VI. Every tweet, every piece of art, every whatever just leads people to wonder when we’ll finally get some solid news on that.
It’s a tricky one for any big game company. You want to keep the hype train chugging with small bits of content but if the current content is not working well, then that’s all anyone’s gonna talk about. The reply’s less of a “discussion” about Cheydinhal and more of a list of demands and frustrations. Think about showing someone a picture of some delicious cake while their dinner is on fire. They might say, “Yeah, that cake looks good,” but they’ll be pointing at the fire first every single time. Right now, the city of Cheydinhal sits nestled amid the mountains, while the players sit in a pile of technical problems and impatient longing for the next chapter. Wait, what was I saying? Purple roofs. They are nice.
