[UPDATE] Oblivion Remastered Is on Switch 2, and It Runs Better Than the Leaks Feared

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered is out on Switch 2 as of today, and after a week of grim-looking leaked footage doing the rounds, the actual launch build is in better shape than a lot of us expected. Not flawless. But playable, and in places genuinely nice.

We flagged the port when the date got locked in (Oblivion finally reaching a Nintendo console is still a slightly surreal sentence to type). Now people have hands on it, so here is where it actually lands.

The good news

Digital-Foundry-style testing from launch day has it holding a stable 30fps in enclosed spaces, with the drops showing up out in the open world, same as every other version of this game. It targets 900p in handheld and 1080p docked, both leaning on DLSS, and that upscaling is doing real work: the Switch 2 build comes out sharper than the Xbox Series S version, and by most accounts runs better than it does on a Steam Deck. Handheld barely gives anything up versus docked, which is the bit that matters if you bought a Switch 2 to actually play it on the train.

The catch

The stutter is still here, and it is not a case of Bethesda forgetting to optimise. Oblivion Remastered runs two engines at once: Unreal Engine 5 draws everything you see, while the original 2006 Gamebryo engine runs the game logic underneath. That marriage causes hitching on every platform it has shipped on, and the Switch 2 is no exception. If open-world traversal stutter drives you up the wall, it will do that here too.

Set your expectations to "a 20-year-old RPG running on portable hardware via two engines stapled together," though, and it clears the bar comfortably. That it runs at all is a minor miracle; that it runs this well on a handheld is the actual story.