Oblivion Remastered Aims High On Switch 2 – But Fallout 4 Falls Behind PS4

Nintendo’s latest Direct delivered a welcome array of new Switch 2 ports and – in the form of Oblivion Remastered and Fallout 4 Anniversary Edition – an initial look at what are effectively eighth and ninth generation console ports onto the new Nintendo hybrid. It’s early days for one of these titles, but the results aren’t quite what we expected. Oblivion Remastered looks technically ambitious but some way off the quality seen on existing versions of the game. Meanwhile, Fallout 4 clearly needs work: based on what’s been revealed so far, we’re looking at a last-gen game that falls short of last-gen standards.

A monster hit when it was released last year, Oblivion Remastered is a game of two halves – the graphical modernisation is impressive, but a combination of technical issues inherent to Unreal Engine 5 and even the original game engine combine to cause a frustrating experience.

Switch 2? In some clips, we’re not even sure we’re seeing the actual port to the Nintendo version but elsewhere there are some stark issues. For starters, much of the footage completely lacks anti-aliasing. In a modern game with dense geometry, specular highlights and fine detail, that’s a big issue. Without anti-aliasing, edges shimmer, hair effects fall apart and specular elements crawl in motion. No anti-aliasing in a 2026 release is almost absurd, but at least this makes pixel counting a doddle. What we’re assuming is docked Switch 2 footage delivers a native 1080p presentation, seemingly targeting 30fps, though a single 60fps clip stands out for some reason.

That said, there is evidence that Unreal Engine 5’s Lumen global illumination system has been retained for the port – something we’ve only seen so far in Bloober Team’s Layer of Fear Switch 2 port. Several interior shots show convincingly rich indirect lighting, while others look noticeably flatter. Maybe we’re looking at a tweaked set-up, but if Lumen is confirmed, this does make it one of the most technically adventurous Switch 2 titles seen to date.

Perhaps more concerning is the surrounding context with this game. We were hoping for improvements to Oblivion Remastered’s PC and console versions by now, but the underlying issues – including traversal stutter and progressively worse performance on consoles the longer you play – have yet to be addressed, to the best of our knowledge. The Switch 2 footage avoids scenarios where stutter would manifest – long-distance travel and world partition borders – so if a high-end PC and more powerful consoles struggle, where does this leave the Switch 2 port?

There is another way of looking at it though, as John mentions in DF Direct Weekly #250. Even in this compromised state, the Switch 2 version at least appears to run far better than the original non-remastered console releases, which were notorious for poor performance. And lacking AA aside, the presentation looks like the sort of trade-off Steam Deck players make routinely: crank the settings down, accept the shortcomings, and enjoy the novelty of a portable version of the game.

If Oblivion is a technically interesting but risky proposition, Fallout 4 is more straightforward, but there is the sense that this port isn’t putting its best foot forward in this initial showing. Fallout 4 is built on much older tech and should, in theory, be an easier port than Oblivion Remastered.

In short, there’s the sense that what we saw doesn’t match up to the PS4 version of the game, with aliasing problems, poor texture quality and low resolution shadow maps. It looks like Fallout 4 is targeting 1080p to 30fps – a match for PS4 – which makes the rougher presentation difficult to justify. For a game of this age running on a more capable processor, that’s difficult to justify.

Oblivion Remastered is due to arrive on Switch 2 at some point in 2026, suggesting that there is still a good amount of time left in development to improve on the presentation we saw. In theory then, aspects such as the puzzling lack of anti-aliasing can be addressed – but the question is the extent to which the game’s foundational problems may impact the Switch 2 port. On the flipside, Fallout 4: Anniversary Edition arrives much sooner – February 24th – so there’s the assumption that we saw in Nintendo Direct is final code, or close to it. We’ll be reviewing it as soon as we can.