I had the chance to sit down with Bethesda Game Studios Associate Art Director Dan Lee as well as Studio Director Tom Mustaine ahead of The Elder Scrolls Oblivion Remastered launching on Nintendo Switch 2.
In addition to finding out about the game and how it runs on the Nintendo Switch 2, and getting to learn about all the bells and whistles including the game supporting mouse controls and touchscreen controls, I was eager to know more about the game fitting onto a physical cartridge.
Not only has this been a talking point since the Switch 2 released with Game-Key Cards being primarily used for third-party games, but I thought it was even more important of a topic with PlayStation set to go digital next year.
Speaking about the game running on Switch 2, Mustaine said: “The fact that we were able to get Oblivion Remastered, which is hundreds and hundreds of gigs of assets — actually terabytes of assets at the source resolution — onto the Switch 2…”
I immediately asked him about how early in the process it was discussed about wanting to put it on a physical cart: “One of our first initiatives was to try and say, like, ‘Hey, can we get this to fit on an actual physical cart?’” said Mustaine
“What can we do to address and keep the fidelity and make it look as good as humanly possible from a lighting and mesh perspective and still get it on a cart where someone can just put it in and play it and not have to do anything else?” continued Mustaine.
One of the main barriers is the physical limit of cartridges, which Lee spoke about “There’s only one size — or at least it was, I don’t know if they finally changed that — but it was just a 64 gigabyte card. So we knew that was a limit we had to hit.”
“We were like, ‘Oh, we’re cutting up right against the edge.’ But we pushed and pulled to make sure it was there.” added Mustaine.
In terms of how they did it, it came own to pick and choosing what was reduced in game whilst keeping the fidelity on part with other platforms “Just the nature of reauthoring the assets to work on the Switch 2 and using Nintendo’s compression algorithms, it made it fit.” said Lee.
It came so close to the point that it was originally going to be code in a box. “There was definitely a time it was like, ‘We might have to go, you know, code in box,’ which I think is how we originally announced it. Because we weren’t sure we were going to be able to fit [it] on the card at the time.” said Lee
I really wanted to prod further though, because whilst size is one thing, there’s been a lot of talk around the expense of printing on a cart, and also how things like performance are affected, and the pair gave a lot of great insight around why it’s a lot more challenging than people might appreciate.
“Performance is different on a cart versus if it’s digital. That’s something you have to account for. Load times are a little different, for example. The certification process is different with Nintendo. And then there’s, like, lead times for manufacturing.” said Dan Lee.
“Physical preservation is pretty important to me. And, you know, I wanted it from day one.” continued Lee
“You have to have the time to do the optimisation work, which is really just get it on device, put it on a test cart, and test it and make sure that everything behaves.” said Mustaine
“With the lead times here, it requires a lot more planning. And I think that was a big piece of it.” added Mustaine when asked about if this would have been possible if the game was releasing simultaneously on all platforms.
The Elder Scrolls Oblivion Remastered is available now on the Nintendo Switch 2. It’s available from JB Hi-Fi for $99 with free shipping HERE.