Why Some The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Lore Fans Are Disappointed With Oblivion Remastered’s New Dark Brotherhood Door

While The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered is, overall, a smash hit, with 4 million players, a ‘very positive’ user review rating on Steam, and high peak concurrents, some aspects of the rework have caused veteran fans to complain. Chief among them: a door.

Warning! Potential spoilers for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered follow.

This has to do with the door to the Dark Brotherhood’s Cheydinhal sanctuary entrance. It is at the centre of an iconic moment in Oblivion, one that players who took on the excellent Dark Brotherhood quest will probably remember well. In the original Oblivion, the glowing door has a heavy mood aesthetic and a relief showing the Night Mother (who members of the assassination obsessed Dark Brotherhood worship) murdering five children. The Oblivion Remastered version of this door has no glow, is light on atmosphere and, weirdly, has two extra children.

You can see a comparison with accompanying complaint in the reddit post from alvaro-elite, below:

While some are upset that this new door is a lot less moody than the one in the original, The Elder Scrolls lore fans are pointing out that the addition of two kids on the relief doesn’t make a lot of sense when you consider what we know about the story of the Night Mother.

This moment in time is meant to represent the Night Mother’s murdering of the five children she conceived with Sithis, the Elder Scrolls deity who represents emptiness and the Void. As the story goes, the Night Mother is murdered by the locals for murdering her kids, which turns her into the immortal Night Mother in the first place. In fact, in Oblivion, the Night Mother’s tomb includes skeletal remains of one adult and five children, reinforcing this lore.

So why are there seven kids in the scene now, where there were five before? That’s the question fans are asking.

“I have no clue why someone just decided to copy/paste two more children on there,” commented redditor AutisticAnarchy. “I guess the larger texture looked ‘better’ with it or something and the artist working on it didn’t understand the lore.”

“I’m still really confused by the thought-process behind it,” added TurboDelight. “Where’d the extra kids come from? Who thought to change what the mural was actually depicting? I can understand not knowing what the figures are meant to represent, but why change an objective detail like that?”

“inb4 it’s a lore retcon because something about the Dark Brotherhood questline in TESVI is based around lore written about these two extra figures, be they her sixth and seventh children or otherwise,” suggested ConstantSignal..

“Or the digital artist tasked with recreating the door just didn’t know it was meant to depict significant lore and felt the extra figures filled the space better lol.”

The question now is whether Bethesda and developer Virtuos will patch Oblivion Remastered to change the door to be lore compliant, or is this is all part of some masterplan that leads into fun story shenanigans in future games or DLC?

We’ve got plenty more on Oblivion Remastered, including a report on a player who managed to escape the confines of Cyrodiil to explore Valenwood, Skyrim, and even Hammerfell, the rumored setting of The Elder Scrolls VI.

We’ve also got a comprehensive guide to everything you’ll find in Oblivion Remastered, including an expansive Interactive Map, complete Walkthroughs for the Main Questline and every Guild Quest, How to Build the Perfect Character, Things to Do First, every PC Cheat Code, and much more.

Image credit: alvaro-elite / reddit.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.