As spotted by DSO Gaming, the YouTube channel Digital Dreams has uploaded a video which compares Oblivion with itself, showing the vanilla experience on one side and a heavily modded version on the other. The difference is night and day. In fact, the altered version utilizes more than 200 mods, including implementing ray tracing, and really gives this 16-year-old release a modern facelift. While it’s not quite up to par with its 2011 follow-up, it still looks pretty impressive and really gives some insight into how far modding can go.

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The YouTube channel is known for showcasing numerous examples of how games can be graphically improved with custom add-ons. Not long ago, Digital Dreams showed how realistic Red Dead Redemption 2 can look with an 8K ray tracing mod. RDR2 is already a gorgeous title, considered one of the most true-to-life worlds in gaming, so adding a visual kick to it just makes the game pop with realism and verisimilitude.

While Oblivion is considered one of the best Elder Scrolls games, with a Metacritic score of 94 on PC, some who have yet to play it could easily be put off by the dated graphics. Luckily, as Digital Dreams has demonstrated, there are tons of mods out there that go to great lengths to make it look more contemporary. Of course, visuals aren’t everything, so there are modifications that can implement new gameplay mechanics, fix bugs, or even add new missions and NPCs.

While many fans are keen to go back to the older games, modded or otherwise, many would prefer the developer give some update on the whereabouts of the next game in the series. Although Bethesda is working on The Elder Scrolls 6, it’s likely to be a long time before anyone gets to play it. It will almost certainly be stunning to look at it when it does finally come out, so it will be interesting to see whether anyone makes any graphics mods for that as well.

The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion is currently available on PC, PS3, and Xbox 360.

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Source: DSO Gaming