Are you going into battle in Oblivion Remastered? Do you need the potion seller's strongest potions? Are the potion seller's potions too strong for you, traveller? Do you even have any idea what I'm talking about? If you do, and you've been playing any Oblivion Remastered recently, you might want to pop into the console commands, because there's a real treat of an easter egg in there for you.
If you don't have any idea what I'm talking about, allow me to point you towards the 2011 YouTube video Potion Seller from Justin Kuritzkes—probably now more well known for penning scripts for recent movies Challengers and Queer. It's a very early 2010s-ass meme, with Kuritzkes acting out a back-and-forth between a knight and a man who sells potions, complete with the goofy face distortions we were all messing around with back then.
Now I have to show my ass a little here and admit I'd never actually seen this video until now, but that doesn't mean it hasn't left its mark on the internet. Potion Seller has nearly 13 million views, and when I put it to the rest of the PC Gamer news team, our senior editor Robin Valentine said: "That video is a foundation stone of my personality." So, safe to say it's a pretty big deal.
So where does Oblivion Remastered come into this? Well, as discovered by Twitch streamer TerraGuildTV, there's a brand-new console command tucked away in the game referencing this very video. If the command "Altar.Player.PotionSellerGiveMeYourStrongestPotions" wasn't already a big enough nod to the meme, the description then says "Powers the player up with the means of defeating the Romans coming to conquer the last free village of Gaul. 'Have you heard of my potions? …My potions are too strong for you, traveller.'"
That final line is yet another direct quote from the video. The first part seems to be a sneaky bonus reference made by French studio Virtuous (who co-developed the remaster) to Asterix the Gaul—a French comic and series of movies about the titular Asterix who keeps the village safe from Roman rule. Two niche references for the price of one? Don't mind if I do.
I had to dive into Oblivion Remastered myself to see if the console command was there and yup, it sure is:
TerraGuildTV gives a brief demonstration of what the console command actually does, seemingly giving you a super-strong punch that sends anyone who dares be in the vicinity of your fists flying straight into the stratosphere. I'm currently doing a sweaty achievement run so haven't tinkered around with activating it myself, but I'm looking forward to using it in the inevitable troll playthrough where I mess things up to the nth degree.
