Oblivion Remastered doesn’t ‘officially’ support mods

The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim, which preceded The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion, is one of the most modded games of all time; despite it’s age, the modding community remains vibrant. While Oblivion’s modding community has been much smaller, it’s still active — and interest has grown since Oblivion Remastered was released Tuesday. The catch, though, is that developer Bethesda Game Studios isn’t “officially” supporting mods for the game.

That, of course, doesn’t mean you can’t mod Oblivion. You absolutely can. In the past, Bethesda has offered officially-made tools to help support the mod community. “Mods are not officially supported for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered,” Bethesda wrote on its support website. “If you are experiencing gameplay issues while playing with mods, it’s recommended you first try uninstalling your mods, then verify your games files on Steam, or the Xbox App.”

For Skyrim and other games like Starfield and Fallout 4, Bethesda allowed players to download and tinker with the game using the official Creation Kit. The Creation Kit is an editor that makes it more streamlined to modify the game’s quests, characters, and other parts of the game. Oblivion itself had official mod support when it was released 19 years ago, too. It was called the Construction Set, available only to PC players. Oblivion players on Reddit suggest that you’re able to open the new game files using the Construction Set tools from the old game. (Polygon has not confirmed this.)

Regardless of official mod support, modders are already working on Oblivion Remastered. The game’s been out for less than a day, and there are already more than 100 mods listed on popular modding website NexusMods — everything from “engine tweaks” and game optimization to a difficulty slider and colorful reshades.