The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered is finally here, after a string of leaks surrounding the much anticipated, classic RPG. The title is built on top of Unreal Engine 5, and as such can be quite demanding on most systems.
Unfortunately, this means that the game runs quite poorly on lower end PC hardware. This extends into handheld gaming devices, such as the Steam Deck.
However, there do exist a few ways to improve performance, even if only by a little. More on these best Steam Deck settings – along with some useful mods below.
Optimized settings for Oblivion Remastered on the Steam Deck
In-game settings
- Window Mode: Fullscreen
- Display Resolution: 1280×800; deck native resolution
- V-Sync: Off; always keep disabled
- Frame Rate Limit: Uncapped
- Show FPS: Off
- Show VRAM: Off
- Brightness Intensity: 0; user preference
- FOV First Person: 75; user preference
- FOV 3rd Person: 75; user preference
- Motion Blur: Off; best to keep disabled
- Screen Space Reflections: Off
Quality
- Quality Level: Low
- View Distance Quality: Low
- Effects Quality: Low
- Foliage Quality: Low
- Shadow Quality: Low
- Global Illumination Quality: Low
- Texture Quality: Low
- Reflection Quality: Low
- Post-Processing Quality: Low
- Hair Quality: Low
- Cloth Quality: Low
- Lumen Hardware RT: Off
- Lumen Software RT Quality: Low
Advanced
- Anti-Aliasing: TSR/Disabled
- Upscaling Technique: FSR 3
- Sharpness: 2; user preference
- Frame Generation: Off; keep to disabled to avoid latency and ghosting
- Upscaling Mode: Ultra Performance
Steam Deck specific settings
- Frame Rate Limit: 60
- TDP: 15 W
- Battery Drain: 25-20 W
With the combination of settings above, it is possible to run Oblivion Remastered at around a 30 FPS average. However, the game is prone to severe FPS drops from time to time (going down to as low as 20 FPS!) – which coupled with the atrocious image quality makes for a rather poor experience on the Deck.
Tips, tweaks and mods to improve performance
As it stands, the Steam Deck is currently not capable of running Oblivion Remastered well enough – despite its Verified status. Consider running the game on your desktop and/or on other, more powerful handhelds instead.
Alternatively, try streaming the game from your desktop to the Deck. Programs such as Moonlight/Sunshine and Parsec can be a good place to start with.
Assuming you must play the game natively, try using mods to boost performance.
