Oblivion and Oblivion Remastered on Xbox: Horse Armour

Day eight of our series on 15 Xbox classics you can still play on Xbox Series X|S is a double bill. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is still playable through backward compatibility, and its 2025 remaster is a current Xbox Series X|S game. Both are in Game Pass, and both are tied to one of Xbox’s best-known downloads: Horse Armour.

Oblivion at a glance

Developer: Bethesda Game Studios (Oblivion Remastered co-developed with Virtuos)
Publisher: Bethesda Softworks (the original’s Xbox 360 version was co-published with 2K Games)
Original release: 20 March 2006 (North America), 24 March 2006 (Europe)
Oblivion Remastered release: 22 April 2025
Xbox Store price: Oblivion £8.99 / $9.99; Oblivion Remastered £49.99 / $49.99
Game Pass: both in Premium and Ultimate; Oblivion Remastered also in PC Game Pass
Backward compatible since: 29 November 2016 (original)
Enhancements: original is Xbox One X Enhanced with FPS Boost; Remastered is Xbox Play Anywhere

What is Oblivion?

Oblivion is an open-world role-playing game set in Cyrodiil, the heartland of the Elder Scrolls world. It opens with the player in a prison cell as Emperor Uriel Septim VII, voiced by Patrick Stewart, flees assassins through a secret passage. From there, the main story is about closing the gates to Oblivion that are opening across the province, but you’re free to go anywhere and join guilds, fight in the arena or ignore the main quest entirely.

Work began in 2002, straight after Morrowind. Bethesda built a Radiant AI system so that characters made their own choices about eating, sleeping and working, rather than following fixed scripts, and every character was voiced for the first time in the series. The cast included Patrick Stewart, Sean Bean, Lynda Carter and Terence Stamp, with music by Jeremy Soule.

Oblivion’s history on Xbox

Oblivion was announced in September 2004 and was meant to launch with the Xbox 360 on 22 November 2005. Delays pushed it to 20 March 2006, and it had shipped 1.7 million copies by 10 April.

On 3 April 2006, Bethesda released the first add-on over Xbox Live Marketplace: a set of armour for the game’s horses, in Elven and Steel styles, for 200 Microsoft Points, or $2.50. Players liked the idea of extra content but not the price for something so small. Bethesda’s Pete Hines told Engadget at the time that the team had tried to price it alongside other Marketplace content: “A Theme costs 150 points. The Kameo thing was 200…These are optional things, not requirements, so if you don’t want to get them you don’t have to.”

Later packs were cheaper for what they offered, including faction houses, a new dungeon and new spells. Knights of the Nine followed on 21 November 2006, and Shivering Isles, a full expansion set in the realm of the Daedric prince Sheogorath, on 27 March 2007. A Game of the Year Edition with both arrived in September 2007, and the final content pack came out on 15 October 2007.

Todd Howard looked back on it in 2019. “Horse armor is not bad. I think horse armor is fine. The price point, at the time, was the issue,” he said in an interview reported by GameSpot, adding that “looking back now, it’s quite cheap”.

Oblivion Remastered

Virtuos’s Paris studio and Bethesda Game Studios started work on a remaster in 2021. It uses Unreal Engine 5 for the visuals, while the original Gamebryo engine still runs the game underneath. Images leaked from Virtuos’s website on 15 April 2025. A week later, on 22 April, Bethesda announced it in a livestream and released it the same day, with Game Pass access from day one. It reached 4 million players in three days and 9 million in three months.

Horse Armour is in there too. The standard edition includes Knights of the Nine, Shivering Isles and the original add-ons, including the Horse Armor Pack. The Deluxe Edition adds new horse armour sets, among other extras.

Why it matters

Oblivion arrived in the Xbox 360’s first months and was one of its first big open-world role-playing games. Its Horse Armour Pack came early in the history of paid add-ons on Xbox Live Marketplace, and the reaction to its price shaped what Bethesda released next. Oblivion Remastered then brought the game to Xbox Series X|S and Game Pass, with Horse Armour still included.

How to play Oblivion on Xbox Series X|S today

The original Oblivion has been backward compatible on Xbox One since 29 November 2016, and it runs on Xbox Series X|S too. It’s on the Xbox Store for £8.99 or $9.99. It’s Xbox One X Enhanced and got FPS Boost on 15 November 2021. If you own the Xbox 360 disc, an Xbox One or Xbox Series X will recognise it.

Oblivion Remastered costs £49.99 or $49.99 and is an Xbox Play Anywhere game, so one purchase covers both Xbox and PC.

Both games are included with Game Pass Premium and Ultimate. Oblivion Remastered is also in PC Game Pass. Our Game Pass tiers guide explains the plans.