Another day, another Skyrim port – this time The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim – Anniversary Edition released on Nintendo Switch 2 after the Shadowdrop – and even Bethesda sees its comical side.
The release of Skyrim on Switch 2 has brought back to delicate jokes about Bethesda squeezing the life out of its open-world fantasy RPG by releasing it on every platform under the sun. Skyrim has been ported and remastered so many times that it has become one of the most enduring memes on the Internet.
“It’s kind of a joke how often we release Skyrim, but it’s a great game,” said Bethesda’s Matt Carofano, original director of the Switch 2 version, while speaking to Nintendo Life. “We want everyone to be able to play at their best.”
And that seems to be the crux of Skyrim’s numerous ports. With each fresh generation of hardware, Bethesda has the opportunity to reach a whole fresh generation of gamers who have the opportunity to experience its RPG for the first time. This time it’s Switch 2, giving the development team a chance to “use the new hardware.”
A few years after Skyrim’s release in 2011, Bethesda was working on a “remastering process” to improve lighting and graphical features. Now on Switch 2 he can take advantage of things like volumetric lighting and better weather conditions, fog and clouds.
“We had previously made a Switch version, so we went back and made improvements,” Carofano said. “So it was a really easy development process and actually quick in terms of our time frame. It takes many years to develop a game, but porting it to the new console was a much, much faster process.”
However, Carofano says he’s most impressed with the overall performance, as the game “runs better, runs smoother, and loads faster. It just makes the game better on Switch 2.”
Wondering why so many people are still playing and enjoying Skyrim over a decade after its release, lead designer Bruce Nesmith recently said: “I think Skyrim created an open world in a way that no one had ever done before, and since then, very few people have really tried to do it. In fact, a year later, some other game should have eclipsed it. And then two years later, three years later, five, 10. The question: ‘What the hell is going on here?’
Bethesda is obviously working on Skyrim’s hotly anticipated sequel, The Elder Scrolls VI, but has said almost nothing about it. We know will feature a character designed in memory of a much-missed fanfollowing an extraordinary charity campaign that raised over $85,000 for the Make-A-Wish Foundation.
Interestingly, most recently Todd Howard refused to rule out the possibility of an Elder Scrolls TV adaptationbut it suggested a post-apocalyptic sci-fi series Fall — the second series of which debuts on December 17 — was better suited to an adaptation.
Vikki Blake is an IGN reporter, critic, columnist and consultant with over 15 years of experience working with some of the world’s largest gaming sites and publications. She is also a Guardian, a Spartan, a Silent Hillian, a Legend, and an eternally High Chaos. Find her on Blue Sky.
