Remember during the Wii, PS3, and 360 era when everyone was doing hardware gimmicks? Nintendo had the Wii Remote and DS, Sony was all in on gyro with the SixAxis (and later their own waggle with PS Move) and kitted out the PS Vita with all sorts of cameras, touch sensors, and what have you. Xbox mostly followed behind halfheartedly, with their second screen experiences and eventually Kinect. By the time that generation was over, I think pretty much everyone was sick of waggling to play video games, with even current VR titles mostly steering away from that. Thankfully, we came out with some great innovations like gyro aiming and everything the DualSense can do. However, there just aren’t a ton of games, outside of first party offerings, that take advantage of all or even some of those features, particularly on the Nintendo Switch. How many games can you think of that actually used the touch screen?
This is why I’ve found Bethesda’s ports to Switch 2 of Skyrim, Fallout 4, and most recently Oblivion so fascinating. Most people are just expecting simple port jobs; the Elder Scrolls and Fallout on the go. But each one of them has at least some cool feature that someone cared enough about the game and the hardware to think of including. None of them have all these features, which they really should in my opinion, but testing them out rekindled that spark of joy I felt when I first waggled a Wiimote to swing Link’s sword.
Skyrim is the first and, thus, the most basic: you can use motion controls to swing your weapon, block, or aim your bow. You swing the Joy-Con 2 lightly for normal attacks, then harder for a Power Attack. On paper that sounds like a recipe for disaster, like the game registering a Power Attack when you meant to do a normal attack, but in practice it works shockingly well. There’s a bit of delay between your movement and the action happening in-game, but honestly I still had a lot of fun playing the game like this. There aren’t any motions for casting spells, other than gyro aiming, which can cause a weird disconnect when playing, but there are a lot of different types of spells and ways of casting them so that’s probably for the best.
I’ve also been playing through the game using Survival Mode, which prevents fast travel, adds in hunger, temperature, and sleep meters, and makes carry weight a bigger issue. When I normally play on PC, I just don’t have the patience for this mode, but being able to sit on the couch with my Switch 2 in portable mode, I found it a lot more palatable. It’s been a long time since I’ve played Skyrim extensively, but the different approach to play Survival Mode requires is making the game feel fresh all over again. I’m actually exploring the world instead of moving between quest markers, and I don’t think I’d be doing that if I just booted the game up on PC or PS.
Fallout 4 Anniversary Edition doesn’t have gyro aiming, which is a genuine crime as it has approximately 75% more aiming than Skyrim, but it does have a bunch of Creations included and a very neat 40 fps mode that I enjoyed messing around with. It splits the difference between the Performance of 60 fps and visual fidelity of 30 fps, and was nice to swap to in longer conversations since the 60 fps mode can look pretty crusty. Just don’t turn on 40 fps when docked, as it can cause some visual weirdness. Maybe we’ll see a patch since the Switch 2 supports VRR in docked mode now.
I haven’t touched Fallout 4 since it released and I finished my first playthrough, but I’ve been having a lot of fun revisiting the game, putting aside my RPG expectations and just playing it like a town builder with an open world shooter attached. I never played any of the DLCs either, so I’m excited to dive into those. I just wish the game had gyro aiming or, better yet, full on pointer aiming like Metroid Prime or Sin and Punishment. This is the most underwhelming port of the three, so I hope the remasters of 3 and New Vegas get a bit more love. It's exceptionally unlikely, but I also hope we get Creations support on these ports. I'd love to play through Faalskar on Switch 2.
The port of Oblivion might run the worst, but it has the most cool features, namely touch screen support for all menus. I spoke a bit on the motion controls in my impressions on the game, and they’re somehow inferior to Skyrim’s implementation, actually realizing what I feared would happen in that game. he game does support Mouse Mode, which is a fantastic way to play Oblivion when you’re stuck on a plane for 5 hours, for example. Fallout and Skyrim also support Mouse Mode, but they can feel a little jittery when moving the mouse. I didn’t have that problem in Oblivion.
The touch screen is my favorite part of this port though. It makes scrolling through Oblivion’s menus or looking around the map a lot quicker and more intuitive. It might not work too well with Skyrim’s menus, but the Pip-Boy feels made for touch screens, so much so that the original game’s Collector’s Edition came with a plastic Pip-Boy shell to put your phone in and connect to the game. It’d be nice to have in both of those games, but for now it’s been a great addition to Oblivion.
So, why am I talking about this? It’s because these ports have sparked a bit of nostalgia in me, yes, but also because it’s been a while since I’ve felt a studio had fun making something when it comes to hardware. Like I said at the top, Bethesda could have just ported the games and called it a day, but they went a little beyond that. These things aren’t going to make or break a port for anyone, they’re just included because they’re neat. Because someone had a cool idea and implemented it.
I don’t know the inner workings of Bethesda—even when I worked QA there we were far away from other development teams in our own building—but I certainly hope they enjoyed making these ports, especially in the industry’s current climate of constant layoffs, no junior positions, and shuttering of studios. Especially since their parent company, Microsoft, is supporting the genocide of Palestinians. (Free Palestine!) It’s so incredibly bleak everywhere you look, it’s nice to see a bit of joy for its own sake. Honestly, I don’t know what to do about any of that, but stuff like this makes me feel like the industry has a future on the other side of all of it. It’s small and stupid, but that’s the point, isn’t it? In the grand scheme of things, none of this really matters, all it does is bring joy and artistic experiences to people. Maybe we should value that more.
Have some fun for no reason today. Don’t go achievement hunting or 100% completion, just mess around in a game you like. Personally, I enjoy just moving around the world in something like Gravity Rush or going about a normal day in Red Dead Redemption 2. Or, better yet, try and make a game yourself. Just enjoy the process. You could probably use a bit of joy in your life, I know I do.
