The former Blizzard boss rails against The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered and believes they could never compete with current open worlds like Elden Ring

This afternoon at exactly 16:00 BST/17:00 CEST will finally see the announcement, and presumably also the release, of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered, the recently confirmed remake of Bethesda's 2006 classic, now updated for a new generation thanks to the team at Virtuos.

There's a lot of buzz around the title and whether, as all indications suggest, it will launch immediately after the presentation (as an added bonus, Twitch has today enabled the game's official category for streaming on the platform), and there's a lot of buzz on Social Media about the possible shadowdrop.

However, if anyone is less than enthusiastic about the arrival of TES IV: Oblivion, it's former Blizzard president Mike Ybarra, who believes that bringing back past hits in a new guise is always going to be a mistake. In a post on X, the former Microsoft executive describes it like this:

"I'm skeptical about 20 year old remasters. What was once fantastic, now remastered, will never hold up against modern masterpieces like Elden Ring. The bar has simply moved from safe open world RPGs to what Elden Ring brought us all.

"I would love to be proven wrong. But I'm not."

Ybarra apparently believes that there is no going back from FromSoftware's open world title, even if it was actually Nintendo that opened the door to this new direction with The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and then new currents such as the recent Kingdom Come: Deliverance II that have also innovated, albeit to a lesser extent.

What do you think of Mike Ybarra's words? Do you think Oblivion Remastered will be a failure among gamers?