This is the driving force of many of your favorite video games released in the last few years, but it is largely under the radar. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered, Cyberpunk 2077 and Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater are just a few of the many games that were and are still served by Wirtui, one of the largest independent video game companies in the world with over 20 studies employing about 4,000 employees. Despite this, the average player probably does not know that virtua exists.
It begins to change, and the Virtuos profile is growing with each modern edition. Oblivion Remastered is perhaps the largest virtua project, and its great commitment to its development has become a key part of the game of the game by Bethesd. Meanwhile, CD Projektreams Livestreams present members of the Virtuos programmers team. Looking to the future, continuation of Bioshock Ken Levine, Judas and Riot’s League of Legends Fighting Game 2xko, will come out with the assist of Wirtua.
But that’s not all was simple. Last month, Virtuals released about 7% of the global workforce, i.e. about 270 employees. In a statement of Wirtuali, they said that “he is evolving to meet the changing needs” of their partners and a wider video game industry. Most of the exemptions influenced the Asian work force of virtules.
In a broad interview for IGN on Gamescom 2025, CEO of Virtuos, Gilles Langourieux, discussed the company’s history, its latest projects and what he hopes to achieve in the future. Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered, which went a long way to place virtules on the map this year, was a immense part of our chat.
Langourieux said that the knowledge of virtuoses when it comes to remaster (Batman, Final Fantasy, Dark Souls Remastered) meant that it was a natural part of the conversation around the return of Oblivion.
“We managed to convince Todd Howard and his team that we could do it,” Langorieux began. “He has known us for some time. And then, how does it work? You prove what you are capable of during the pilot phase. You provide a convincing vertical piece or pilot. You will adapt with the team in Bethesda about what they think is the level of quality or details required to achieve the goal of the audience, and continue to the final ship.”
Virtua developed Oblivion Remastered using the Unreal Engine 5. It works with 4K resolution and 60 frames per second, as you can expect, but other changes are more significant. Everything has been improved from alignment systems to form creation and fighting animations after the menu in the game. Meanwhile, there are many modern dialogues, the right sight of the third person and modern lip synchronization technology. The changes have been well with fans, Some of them believe that forgetfulness would be remastered more accurately described as a remake. Bethesda, however, He explained why he went to the Remaster route.
Langourieux said that Virtuals knew that he had to utilize a modern engine for Oblivion Remastered to update the classic RPG in terms of graphics and performance, but also to keep the original engine so that veterans fans recognize Oblivion. As Todd Howard described it himself, Bethesda wanted the remaster Obaster to have part of this “old charm”.
“We realized that one of the solutions would have to connect the original engine with a new engine. Virtua have a long experience in working with Unreal,” said Langorieux. “We have done many such projects in which we connect – this is called evaporation of engines – we combine two engines to cooperate so that the gameplay comes from the original engine, but rendering and new modern bells and whistles come from the new engine. And our experience, our experience with Unreal, was one of the things we had to put into the table.”
Meanwhile, hundreds of artists were mobilized to work on obstrue obstructed to “nailing” the art of Oblivion art, while modernizing it. Virtuos had a studio in Paris, conducting a project, making technical, design and artistic choices about the game, with the assist of other Virtuos Studios. In Bethesda, a compact team under the direct supervision of Todd Howard monitored virtua work.
At the top of about 400 people in Wirtua worked on Omonn. It was a real effort to develop AAA spread over many years. The end result was a successful edition, at this point a video game played by over 9 million people and (largely) an impression on fans. Virtua itself became part of the official Bethesda film with Remastered advertisement, which Langorieux appreciated.
“Sometimes, when you deal with this kind of projects, you are worried about talking about a new program, because you are worried that the new name of the programmer may not resonate the audience so well,” he said.
“They put money where their lips are, supporting us very transparent and openly, and this gave us greater visibility than other projects. So for that.”
Cyberpunk 2077, Oblivion Remastered, Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater … What next? With all kinds of rotating rumors with a larger number of Bethesda remasters, can virtua assist, say, precipitation remaster? Of course, Langorieux is not called names, but generally he talked about what the virtuations have in their sleeve, and irritated “similar” titles to a remastered Oblivion from the company in the coming years.
“I will not be able to share the details”, he began-“but I can say that you saw what we are able to do for a large, influential remaster, such as Oblivion. You can expect that more similar titles will come out of Wirtua in the coming years. And you can also expect that we will engage in the life of titles with the size of life. They would be two directions in which I am very excited.”
But did virtua get out of their ACT status and are their own original IP address? Langorieux seems pleased with where his company is now, insisting that “not everyone is striving to be a rock star.”
“We have many ambitions,” said Langorieux. “We have built one of the largest, most stable game creators in the industry and we intend to continue it. We did it, very clear what we are good at and how we can serve our clients in the industry. And there is a lot of ambitions in this. Not everything is about being Rockstar. Not everyone is striving to be Rockstar.”
Wesley is a director, news in IGN. Find it on Twitter on @św100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpole@ign.com or confidentially at spine@proton.me.
