Summary
- Players can't save Emperor Uriel Septim in The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered despite repeated attempts.
- Desperate strategies like a precise bow shot and charging into battle have proven futile.
- The emperor's scripted death scene is necessary for Oblivion Remastered's story to play out.
Players diving into The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered are becoming fixated on saving Emperor Uriel Septim VII. In a case of history repeating itself nearly two decades after the release of the original game, The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered is once again seeing players trying, and failing, to come up with new ways to keep the central character in Tamriel's lore from meeting his end.
Prior to the release of The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim in 2011, Uriel Septim had been featured in every game in the series, dating back to the PC launch of The Elder Scrolls: Arena in 1994. A stalwart protector of the provinces of Tamriel, the emperor is thrust into danger at the very start of Oblivion: Remastered, making a retreat from assassins through a secret passage in the player character's prison cell, with the fortunate escape route immediately endearing him even to players who had never experienced the story of the first three games.
The Unwritten Rules of The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered Explained
Oblivion Remastered hides a wealth of secrets beneath its surface, so mastering its unwritten rules is key to transforming confusion into freedom.
Unfortunately, Uriel Septim is destined to die in this escape effort just after entrusting the fate of the realm to the player, though many have made desperate attempts to keep him alive through the ordeal. With the release of Oblivion Remastered in late April, an even newer batch of players has begun seeking out ways to save the emperor, and their attempts posted across multiple social media platforms are proving just as futile as they were in 2006. These rescue efforts include a couple of different strategies, with players both standing perfectly still with an arrow nocked and pointed at the successful assassin's entry point and diving into the fray to take out swarms of assassins coming from the other direction.
Oblivion Remastered Players Try, and Fail, To Save the Emperor Again
Neither of these methods have proven successful, though watching players try against impossible odds is providing some entertainment. Charging forward into the fray has been producing images of massive piles of assassin bodies, as they will not stop spawning until the key event of the scene plays out. In the same vein, the bow and arrow method is ineffective because the successful follower of Mehrunes Dagon won't appear until the player gets close enough to the emperor for him to say his final words, and once he appears, players are frozen in place until the deed is done.
Of course, outside the use of mods or console commands, there is no way to avoid the emperor's scripted death scene, and for good reason. While the player-controlled Hero of Kvatch accomplishes many feats during the course of the game, the story of Oblivion is built around the lore of Martin Septim, the emperor's bastard son, who serves as the game's ultimate tragic hero. That story couldn't play out without Uriel Septim's death, but that fact isn't deterring players from attempting Oblivion Remastered's most famous impossible feat.
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OpenCritic Reviews
- Top Critic Avg: 82 /100 Critics Rec: 87%
- Released
- April 22, 2025
- ESRB
- Mature 17+ // Blood and Gore, Sexual Themes, Violence
- Publisher(s)
- Bethesda
WHERE TO PLAY
- Engine
- Unreal Engine 5
- Genre(s)
- Action, RPG, Open-World, Adventure
