This massive 400 people supporting the studio work on the Elder Scrolls: Forgot Forgot – But you may not know they exist
Blog Andrew Joseph 30 Aug , 2025 0
This is the driving force behind many of your favorite video games released in the past few years, but it flew heavily under radar. Elder Scrolls IV: Forgot to remake,,,,, Cyberpunk 2077and Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater Just one of Virtuos, one of the largest independent video game companies in the world, is a few of the many games in many games, with more than 20 studios worldwide with about 4,000 employees. Still, the average gamer may not know how to be creative.
However, as each new version grows, Virtuos' profile will start to change. The Forgotten Restoration is perhaps the largest project to date, with its massive involvement with its development becoming a key part of Bethesda's announcement. Meanwhile, CD Projekt Livestreams is a member of the Virtuos development team. Looking to the future, Ken Levine's Bioshock follow-up, JudasLeague of Legends Fighting Game with Riot 2xkoboth of them will be raised with the help of Virtuos.
But this is not all sailing. last month, About 7% of the global workforceor about 270 employees. Virtuos said in a statement that it is “continuously evolving to meet the changing needs of its partners and the wider video game industry.” Most of the layoffs have affected the artist’s Asian workforce.
Virtuos CEO Gilles Langourieux discussed the company’s history, its recent projects and what it hopes to achieve in the future during an extensive interview with Gamescom 2025 IGN. Elder Scrolls IV: “Forgotten” has come a long way to go for this year's show, and it's an important part of our chat.
When it comes to remakes, Virtuos' expertise (Batman, Final Fantasy, Dark Souls Remastered) means it's a natural part of the conversation around Ollivion's return, Langourieux says.
“We managed to convince Todd Howard and his team,” Langourieux began. “He knew us for a while. Then how did it work? You proved your ability at the pilot stage. You provide compelling vertical slices or pilots. You align with the team at Bethesda to meet the level of quality or detail they think they need to meet their audience goals and continue all the way to the final transport.”
Virtuos developed Forget using Unreal Engine 5, which, as you would expect, runs at 4K resolution and 60 frames per second, but other changes make more sense. Everything from level systems to character creation, combat animation to in-game menus has been improved. Meanwhile, there are a lot of new conversations, proper third-person views and new lip synchronization techniques. The changes of fans are going smoothly. Some of them think that forgetting remakes will be described more accurately as a remake. But Bethesda Already explained why it went along the remake route.
Langourieux says Virtuos knows it has to be forgotten with the new engine to keep the classic RPG up to date in terms of graphics and performance, but also keeps the original engine so that veteran fans can recognize Oblivion's gameplay. As Todd Howard himself described, Bethesda is keen to forget about re-creating the “old charm.”
“We realized that one of the solutions had to be combined with the original engine with the new one. Giveruos happens to have a long experience working with Unreal,” Langourieux said. “We've done a lot of similar projects, in this combination, which is called engine pairing – we paired two engines to get the gameplay from the original engine, but the rendering and the new modern bells and whistles from the new engine. Our experience is our unreal experience, one of the things we have to bring to the table.”
At the same time, hundreds of artists were mobilized to re-create forgetting, using the “nail” forgetting artistic style, while also modernizing it. Virtuos leads the project's studio in Paris and, with the help of other Virtuos Studios, makes technical, design and artistic choices for the game. Under the direct supervision of Todd Howard, a small team monitored Virtuos' work in Bethesda.
At the peak, about 400 people were forgotten in Virtuos. This is the AAA development work that has been really spread over the years. The end result was a successful release, a video game played by more than 9 million people at this time, and a (to a large extent) an impressive fan base. Virtuos itself is part of the official Bethesda forget-re-made announcement video, which Langourieux appreciates.
“Sometimes, when you work on projects like this, you’re worried about talking about new developers because you’re worried that the new developers’ names may not resonate as well with the audience,” he said.
“They have brought us more visibility to us by supporting us very transparently and openly, putting our money in our mouths. So they appreciate it.”
Cyberpunk 2077, “Forgetful” Repair, Metal Equipment Solid Delta: Snake Eater…What's Next? As all kinds of rumors spin around more Bethesda marriages, artists can help Some descriptions of consequence repairers? Of course, Langourieux doesn't name it, but it's usually talk about Virtuos' sleeves and mocked “similar” wills in the coming years to get it back from the company.
He started saying, “I can't share the specifics, but what I can say is that you've seen our ability to big, influential remakes like Oblivion. You can expect to come out of Virtuos in the next few years. You can also expect us to be involved in expanding the lifespan of the large. These are two directions that I'm very excited about.”
But will Virtuos get out of its support bill state and make its own original IP? Langourieux seems to be happy with the current location of his company and insists that “not everyone aspires to be Rockstar.”
“We have a lot of ambitions,” Langourieux said. “We have built one of the largest and most stable game developers in our business and we intend to continue to do so. We have a very clear idea of what we are good at and how to serve customers in the industry. And, with the ambitiousness to get along with it. Not everything is becoming Rockstar. Not everyone wants to be Rockstar.
Wesley is IGN's news director. Find him on Twitter via @wyp100. You can reach Wesley via [email protected] or secretly visit [email protected].