Summary
- Oblivion gates get incredibly repetitive, incredibly fast, and it’s a problem that fans have had with the game since 2006.
- With the remaster inviting a new generation to play The Elder Scrolls 4, new players are suffering through the tedium, igniting this old discussion.
- Fans have a few ideas on how they’d ‘fix’ the Oblivion gates, from making the Deadlands an interconnected second map, to just reducing the number of them and tying them all to more detailed quests.
Oblivion is great, and all the Elder Scrolls fans who came up on Skyrim are finally finding that out for themselves thanks to Virtuos’ new remaster. But there’s one aspect of the game that has always been controversial, and it’s arguably the most important one — the Oblivion gates.
They’re scattered all over Cyrodiil to give the impression that Mehrunes Dagon’s invasion is a pressing, ever-present threat, but nothing ever comes of them other than a few scamps wandering nearby in an empty field. Once you venture inside, they’re little more than repetitive dungeons with repetitive loot, only ever worth completing for the Sigil Stones. At a certain point, it’s easier just to level acrobatics, leap to the tallest tower, and run to the top, skipping everything to save yourself 20 minutes.
It’s a lesson we all learned back in 2006, and it’s a lesson newcomers are learning now in 2025. “Unpopular (maybe) opinion: Oblivion gates are the worst part of the game,” u/punchingtigers19 posted to over 2,000 upvotes. “Whenever I’m forced to do them for a quest, I use items to make my speed and agility as high as possible so I can just run to the end because they are so boring.”
It was quite bold to make the game’s primary gimmick a type of dungeon when they only had one person make literally every dungeon.
As you can probably imagine, it isn’t that unpopular of an opinion. “They were probably my second least favourite aspect,” u/Conny_and_Theo commented. “I don’t think they’re bad in theory, but they got repetitive, so I just ended up sometimes using console commands to speed through them; I think doing them once in a while is cool since they don’t feel as unfresh [sic], but most of the time I don’t bother”.
How Would You Fix Oblivion Gates?
Players have a few ideas about how they would’ve handled Oblivion gates to make them feel a little less dull, like u/melkor_bauglir93, whose suggestion would’ve made every single delve feel unique: “[They] should have been strategically placed near settlements and Imperial-controlled forts, instead of the randomness they have. Each should have its own unique design and quest, wherein there is more interaction with Daedric NPCs, soldiers, and prisoners.”
u/John-for-all, on the other hand, put forward an idea far closer to what The Elder Scrolls Online did in the Blackwood DLC, which also saw Mehrunes Dagon invade Tamriel: “It would have been cool if it was more like its own interconnected world.” Imagine a second map that would be accessed via the portals, making them more practical while also making the Deadlands a more meaningful landscape to explore.
This is actually one of the reasons why I’m so hyped for Skyblivion still. All the Oblivion gates and dungeons are completely remade to be unique.
Thankfully, they’re completely optional (aside from the few you have to enter in the main quest), so unless you want to save scum and get a good enchantment from the Sigil Stones, you don’t need to worry about them.