Oblivion fan uses Claude to fix the remaster’s low framerate

A fan of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion used Anthropic’s AI model Claude to fix much of the low framerate in the game’s 2025 remaster, reaching a stable 60fps in busy areas that often dropped to 30fps or below. Dutch tech site Tweakers reports that the programmer has published the fix and its source code on GitHub, along with the results.

What happened

According to Tweakers, Reddit user LTSharpe wrote a post explaining how they used Claude to improve one of their favourite games. The Oblivion remaster came out in 2025 and runs on PC, but in some places it struggles badly. Busy areas with a lot going on are the worst. Tweakers names Cheydinhal, which it calls the capital, as one example: there the framerate could regularly fall to 30fps or even lower.

LTSharpe says they still had some Claude credit left and decided to spend it on optimising the game. Tweakers quotes the programmer as saying they were “shocked” that Claude was somehow able to analyse what was going wrong without reverse-engineering the game, and to find several large inefficiencies.

Two engines, one thread

The root of the problem, as Tweakers explains it, is that the remaster runs on two engines. Underneath is the original 2006 game engine, and Unreal Engine 5 sits on top of it. LTSharpe writes that several steps in that pipeline run on a single CPU thread, and when that thread is full, the whole game has to wait.

The fix is a DLL file that is loaded into the game. Tweakers says it targets inefficiencies such as the way the game renders. LTSharpe and Claude found, for example, that several distant characters were all being loaded at once. Another problem was the first frame after a player walks through a door, which is effectively a loading screen. That frame had to load the entire area in one go. Claude improved this by loading that part earlier.

How the work was done

Tweakers describes a methodical process. LTSharpe first found locations and scenarios in the game where performance was poor. They then asked Claude to build a benchmark for each one so that specific scenario could be optimised. From there, Claude worked almost on its own, using a few sub-agents to solve the problems.

The programmer says it took about two and a half weeks, using a Claude Code Max x5 subscription, to release a fully working fix. The result was a stable 60fps in areas such as Cheydinhal and clearly better performance across the rest of the game world. Tweakers quotes LTSharpe as calling it fantastic, “certainly for someone who isn’t even an IT developer”, to manage something that “a billion-dollar company” had not managed in the year and a half since release.

The findings and source code are on GitHub, where LTSharpe also lists the specific improvements Claude found and made.

Why it matters if you live in the Netherlands

The story isn’t specific to the Netherlands, but it has practical value for anyone here who plays games on PC or is interested in AI coding tools.

For PC players of the Oblivion remaster. If the game has been stuttering for you in crowded places, there is now a community fix you can look at. Tweakers says it is a DLL file loaded into the game, and that the code and documentation are public on GitHub. As with any third-party file that hooks into a game, read the documentation first and know what you are installing.

For people curious about AI tools. The case shows what an AI coding assistant can do in the hands of someone who, by their own account, isn’t a professional developer. The method is worth noticing: LTSharpe found specific problem spots, had Claude build a benchmark for each, and then let the model work through them. The project still took about two and a half weeks and a paid subscription, so it was not instant or free.

For readers following Dutch tech coverage. Tweakers is one of the main Dutch-language technology sites, and the story drew 59 reader comments at the time of writing. If you are learning Dutch, its gaming and tech pieces offer useful vocabulary in an area you may already know well.

What to watch next

The obvious question is whether the remaster’s publisher, Bethesda Softworks, will respond to the community fix with performance improvements of its own. Tweakers doesn’t say whether the company has commented, and LTSharpe’s remark about “a billion-dollar company” suggests no official fix of this kind existed when the post went up.

Watch the GitHub project too. Because the source code is public, other players and modders can test it, report problems and build on it. That will show how well the improvements hold up across different PC setups.

More broadly, this is a clear example of AI agents being pointed at real performance problems in existing software rather than at writing new code from scratch. How often hobbyists do this, and how studios react when they do, is a trend worth following.

Source: Tweakers