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GamesRadar
Technology
Scott McCrae

After a disastrous Skyrim launch, Switch 2 getting Oblivion Remastered in August is less exciting – especially when Bethesda won't show much gameplay footage or fix the existing versions of this RPG

A screenshot of the Adoring Fan seen in The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered.

Bethesda has finally confirmed the release date for the Nintendo Switch 2 Edition of The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered, but it's not inspiring a huge amount of confidence based on Skyrim on Switch 2 and Oblivion Remastered everywhere else.

Bethesda Game Studios closed out the Nintendo Direct Partner Showcase earlier this year with news about its library coming to Switch 2, including the announcement of Fallout 4 Anniversary Edition and news about Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, but the big finale was that Oblivion Remastered would also be coming. And despite a Nintendo Direct no-show earlier this month, Bethesda has released a new trailer confirming the port will release on August 11, and despite word it would be a game-key card release, it will release on a proper cartridge after all.

The trailer is mostly a live-action segment showing the iconic Adoring Fan NPC from the 2006 classic following a man around, before showing a teeny-tiny bit of gameplay from the port at the end. Now, considering Skyrim's Switch 2 port was described as running "like wet ass" at launch (which, surely a wet ass would be smooth… Not important…) before getting a fix a few months later, the lack of gameplay isn't exactly inspiring confidence.

That's not to mention the fact that Skyrim is a game from 2011 with minimal improvements, whereas the remastered overhaul of Oblivion still has pretty terrible performance on PC, so how will the handheld handle it? "Will it actually work though?" one YouTube commenter asks, as another speculates: "There is a reason 80% of this video doesn't show any gameplay at all."

On top of Oblivion Remastered running poorly on other platforms, it hasn't been updated in some time, so some are hoping this new port will result in love for other versions. The YouTube comments on the trailer focus on this, with one user saying, "Please fix the performance issues on other consoles first," while another asks: "Does this mean it’ll get some patches for other consoles? I was bummed by how little post-launch support this got."

As Fallout 3 and New Vegas remake hopes and rumors persist, Bethesda's Todd Howard says he's actually "anti-remake" and prefers remasters like Oblivion's instead.

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