While perhaps a great number of people have only discovered the Fallout series because of the superb Amazon show based on the property, gamers have been well aware of its excellence for quite some time. Having finished both Fallout 3 and New Vegas, and invested innumerable hours into Fallout 4 in 2 deep dives on PC, I was ecstatic to see it announced for Switch 2, and was very much hoping for a similarly successful port to Skyrim way back in the Switch launch window. Having invested quite a bit of time in this version now, which had me bumping into various things I hadn’t seen before with its Anniversary Edition added content, I’m happy to report that it is perfectly playable on the system.

First, just breaking down the game itself, the Wasteland in Fallout 4 is truly enormous, easily offering the potential to go to triple-digit hours for people who simply want to try to see everything. Sure, you can stick to whatever you may understand as the primary path in the game, ignoring the world all around you and simply trying to see the main storyline to the end. If that’s all you’re looking for though, you’re completely missing out on the constant joy of discovery, the tension of going into random buildings you encounter, unsure of whether you’ll even survive what awaits inside, and the discovery of sometimes game-changing gear. What has always impressed me about this series is the ability it has to tell small stories about people and the way they lived and died, sometimes a little silly, but many times tragic if you take in the details around the many skeletons you’ll find everywhere. That has been a staple of the franchise, and remains one of my favorite aspects of playing through them quite thoroughly.

Of course, one risk you run when you encounter so much, and collect so much gear and experience, is that you’ll decide you’ve had your fill before even finishing the game. That’s happened to me twice with Fallout 4 already, even after finishing 3 multiple times, as well as New Vegas. I guess once I’ve spent some time cosplaying as the Silver Shroud, taking down Super Mutants, and being geared up enough to take out lethal Deathclaws without breaking a sweat, resolving the main storyline (which I won’t spoil) just doesn’t feel as interesting. That journey will literally take you past the edge of the map into incredibly hostile territory, so it’s at least interesting, but for whatever reason I just never saw it through, content with all of the great stories and fun I’d already had elsewhere doing things like re-establishing the Minutemen and trying to make the world a better place again… but if you’d instead rather just see it burn, you can certainly go that route as well. The key to fun is that you have so much flexibility in how you play, and can probably even find a companion who’ll be on board no matter what direction your morality may point in.

Finally getting to the game’s performance, if you’re looking for it to be as pretty as possible, and malleable, the Switch 2 won’t be your best option. Between the availability of a great number of mods and better performance numbers, playing on PC will remain your best option, followed by the other current-gen consoles. That said, I found Performance mode to be perfectly acceptable visually (nothing will make characters talking look less awkward anyway), and that how it performed both in docked and in handheld to be commendable. While I have seen some talk of stability issues, something that has honestly always been a problem with Bethesda games on any platform, in well over 10 hours of play I have yet to suffer a crash or anything resembling a catastrophic issue. While I’d still argue this is a game better played on another platform, if you don’t mind some compromises, or simply think that this will be your new game for playing on the road, it’s still an outstanding choice.