Skyblivion
Skyblivion is an upcoming open world action role-playing video game. It is a fan-made game remake of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion developed through the Creation Engine of Bethesda Game Studios as a total conversion mod for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. It is scheduled to be released in 2026. The game development began around 2012 as part of The Elder Scrolls Renewal Project and was initially intended to be a porting, before it was switched to a full remake by 2014. Pre-release reception has been positive.
Since 2016, the team released several trailers, including "Skyblivion – Return To Cyrodiil", "The Elder Scrolls: Skyblivion – Teaser Trailer", and "Official Release Year Announcement Trailer", the latest of which set a release date of 2025 which was later pushed back to 2026. In November 2016, the project lead Kyle Rebel started to send out invites on Nexus Mods in the hope of attracting more volunteers. More people joined and the "Skyblivion – Return To Cyrodiil" trailer was published in December 2016, resulting in an influx of new volunteers. A Developer Map and Road Map series was released to show the game development.
Background
Skyblivion is part of a fan volunteer effort by TES Renewal Project to recreate and remaster through total conversion the video games in The Elder Scrolls series. While the team is best known for its Skywind project, which seeks to recreate The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind on The [Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim – Special Edition] engine, known as the Creation Engine, another volunteer team works separately on Skyblivion, a similar but separate project to remaster Oblivion on the more advanced Skyrim game engine. Skyblivion is a recreation of Oblivion within the engine for Skyrim – Special Edition.In addition to re-creating what was previously in Oblivion and its downloadable contents, the developers are improving and expanding upon elements of the original game. This includes the user interface, which is being done via a mixture of the SkyUI modification alongside bespoke Adobe Flash menus, as well as textures, environments, cities, dungeons, quests, characters, weapons, and clothing. They are also adding new content such as an expansion of the cities of Leyawiin and Anvil based on concept art from the original game, goblin tribes, and more music.
Development
Early development as direct port
Like its sister project Skywind, which was in turn inspired by Morroblivion, Skyblivion began by another volunteer team within the Renewal Project in 2012, and involves an overhaul of most aspects of the original game, including landscaping, weapons, and armors. In late 2012 or early 2013, Zilav began a project to port Oblivion assets into the Creation Engine, which was used to make Skyrim, the sequel of Oblivion. To do this, work was done on writing a tool to port the assets from Oblivion into the engine; however, technical limitations arose with the incompatibility of many files, resulting in broken or empty parts of the map, crashes, and bugs. The initial version of the project, 0.1, was released onto internet forums. In 2014, Zilav was joined by modder Monocleus, and they released a stable yet incomplete version of the project that would serve as the basis for further development. Rebelzize, the eventual project lead, retroactively called this build a "hot mess".In 2014, Zilav was joined by modder Monocleus, and they released a stable yet incomplete version of the project that would serve as the basis for further development. In May 2014, the project sought outside help from visual artists and declined voice actors, as Oblivion already featured a full voice cast. That same month, the team released version 0.2 of the project, which still required more help in areas such as visual asset creation, modeling, navmeshing, and voice acting. At this point, a selection of mods together could be used to play a portion of the project. After Rebelzize joined to help the project with its PR, he pitched the idea of remaking Oblivion rather than converting the game assets. The idea was approved. By November 2016, Rebelzize sought help from other modders to help with work on the project. He also did so through Nexus Mods, a site that allows users to upload and download mods. Rebelzize jokingly called it "the perfect pyramid scheme".
Later development as remake
With Rebelzize at the helm, Skyblivion team began work to shift the focus towards a proper remake of Oblivion in Skyrim engine. To release Skyblivion, Bethesda required the project to fully replace 100% of all assets from the original to not redistribute their own proprietary content. By 2018, Skyblivion as a remake was in full swing with multiple departments working on the project. Despite having the game's entire open world ported, they still had to hand remake the entire landscape of the game, which was largely procedurally generated in the original. Additionally, new improvements to the original game continued to be added as the project progressed. The cities of Leyawiin and Anvil were envisioned to follow early Oblivion concept art, all unique armors were redesigned to be truly unique, new musical scores were added to complement the originals, and new improvements were made throughout the game. By August 2019, the project started to near its completion, with the exterior map in its final stages of development, 3D computer graphics assets being implemented at a rapid rate, and debugging being done for the quests. In September 2020, the team launched the Developer Diary Series, showing the game development. By November 2021, the volunteer team had over 40 members, including individuals who work for large game studios as well as hobbyists. Rebelzize explained that their approach to development is similar to that of a AAA game.In January 2023, the team announced that the game was scheduled to be released by 2025. In order to play Skyblivion when released, the players must legitimately own Oblivion, Skyrim, and all downloadable contents for both games. To access Skyblivion, it would have to be downloaded from Nexus, Steam Workshop, or Bethesda's mods store, then installed; afterwards, the player can launch Skyrim and create a new character to play Skyblivion. Due to its size, involving the open worlds of Morrowind, Cyrodiil, and Skyrim, the game would not be available to consoles; Skyblivion is planned to be playable in both Skyrim and Skyrim: Special Edition versions. In order to complete the development of Skyblivion by its scheduled release date in 2025, the team was not able to launch it with all the downloadable content including The Shivering Isles. The team said that once Skyblivion is released, they would work on all downloadable content. Throughout 2023 and 2024, roadmap updates were given by the development team, with only one region left to remake by January 2025. In April 2025, Bethesda officially announced and released The [Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered]. In response to concerns about fan-led project Skyblivion, Bethesda affirmed support for community efforts, and the Skyblivion team confirmed they would continue development. The entire Skyblivion team, which sent "all love and no hate" to Bethesda and Virtuos' official remaster, was gifted by Bethesda free keys to Oblivion Remastered. In September 2025, a former developer came forward to say that Skyblivion had become a crunch project in order to meet its announced release date. In December 2025, the release date was postponed to 2026.