Oblivion on Switch 2 Looks Lovely - Until Cyrodiil Starts Hitching

Honestly, I expected this port to be a cautionary tale. A sprawling Unreal Engine 5 remaster of a 2006 RPG, squeezed onto a handheld? That's the kind of sentence that usually ends in tears. And yet Digital Foundry's new tech review of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered on Switch 2 opens with something I didn't see coming: it looks good. Really good.

According to DF's breakdown, Bethesda and Virtuos have carried over most of the visual upgrades from the other platforms, a little over a year after the remaster first launched. Because Switch 2 runs on Nvidia silicon, the port gets to use DLSS upscaling - and DF reckons the result actually comes out sharper than the Xbox Series S version in places. A Nintendo handheld out-crisping an Xbox console on a Bethesda RPG is not something teenage me would have believed.

So where's the catch?

Performance, of course. It's always performance with this game. DF describes a 30fps target that holds up most of the time, but wandering the open world or stepping into busy interiors can send the frame rate tumbling. The famous hitching is here, and it's frustrating precisely because the rest of the port is so solid.

The twist I love, though: in DF's testing, handheld mode was the most stable way to play. Long stretches on the small screen went by without drama. For once, the portable players aren't getting the compromised version - they're getting the smoothest one.

And before anyone reaches for the 'lazy port' pitchfork - don't. DF points out that the very same stutters still haunt the PS5 and Xbox Series X|S versions. The root of it lies deep in how the game's old Gamebryo core loads the world while Unreal Engine 5 streams its shiny new visuals on top. Cyrodiil's problems, in other words, travel with Cyrodiil. No console escapes them.

So here's where I land: if you've been waiting to potter around Cyrodiil on the sofa, pick mushrooms, and accidentally join a cult of assassins, this seems like a genuinely charming way to do it - hitches and all. I just wish 'mostly stable' wasn't still the ceiling for this remaster, a year on, on every machine that runs it.

Image: AOMAF2024 from Wedel, Germany / CC0, source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nintendo_Switch_2_console_in_handheld_mode.png