The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered launched earlier today, and while the standard edition of the game includes all the DLC released for the OG RPG, there is an extra DLC pack available that adds a few things, including new horse armor. Yes, in 2025, Bethesda is charging for horse armor again.
On April 22, after years of rumors and leaks, Bethesda finally unveiled a big, fancy remaster of its original 2006 open-world RPG Oblivion. The new remaster features improved visuals, more voice actors, better combat, movement tweaks—you can sprint now!—and a bunch of small quality-of-life changes, too. And best of all, the remaster includes all the DLC and expansions released for Oblivion. That’s nice. However, there is a $10 “Deluxe” DLC you can buy separately (or as part of a bundle) that adds new quests, weapons, and hilariously, new horse armor.
Back in 2006, not long after launching Oblivion, Bethesda released a DLC pack for the RPG that added horse armor to the game. This horse armor was worthless. Literally worthless. It was just cosmetic and didn’t make your horse tougher. Yet, Bethesda charged $3 for it. And the internet destroyed them for it. But hey, it was 2006! Devs and publishers were still figuring out what DLC was and how much to charge for it.
In the years since, publishers don’t sell skins for a few bucks. Things have changed. Now they all know that they can actually charge a lot more for cosmetic-only skins. In 2025, it’s cute to look back at horse armor in Oblivion and how angry people got now that publishers regularly sell skins for $10, $15 or even $20 a pop.
So I have to admit that I laughed when I saw that Bethesda is selling new horse armor for three times as much as it did back in the day. Sure, this deluxe pack comes with other goodies, too. But it is really funny to me that after 20 years, Bethesda has seemingly learned only one thing from the horse armor debacle of 2006: You can actually charge a lot more for this crap.
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered is out now on Xbox, PS5, PC, and Game Pass Ultimate.
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