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curl-6 on 06 April 2025
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h2ohno said:

I'd be shocked if high-end late-gen PS4 games like LOU2 and RDR2 were not pushing way higher polygon counts, texture resolution, advanced lighting, etc, than Prime 4 is on Switch 2. In terms of the base assets, the main difference between the Switch 1 and Switch 2 versions of Prime 4 is that Switch 1 is using the original textures while the last-gen version had to compress and downsize the texture to run on the older hardware. The polygon count, level design, and lighting were designed with the Tegra X1 in mind using the same engine as Prime 1 Remastered, which is itself still largely based on the 2002 engine.

In terms of early PS4 games, I think the comparison works better for Prime 4, as Retro's wizardry does get a lot more out of the Switch 1 than 99% of other developers, and adding better textures on top of that plus 4k and 120 FPS support make for an all-around amazing-looking game. The art is still going a long way in making of the difference in things like polygon count.

The Nintendo game that shows off the Switch 2's capabilities the most is Mario Kart World. That is not an improved version of a Switch 1 game, it's a game that truly could not be done on the Switch. The size of the levels, the amount of stuff that needs to be loaded at once, the chaos of 24 racers at a time. It may not seem like the kind of visual leap MK8 was over MKWii if you only look at the road textures, but it's doing a huge amount beyond that and is a true "next-gen" game compared to what was possible on Nintendo consoles before.

The game I'm most interested in seeing footage of is the new Fast game. That's a series that always pushes Nintendo hardware and compares a lot more favorably to the current-gen Playstation and XBox offerings. I really want to see what a generational leap over Fast RMX will be like.

Retro's in-house engine R.U.D.E. is only a "2002 engine" in the same sense that Unreal is a 1999 engine; it's been updated so greatly in the last 23 years to support the kind of stuff we see in Prime 4 that it'd be nothing like the 2002 version.

Totally agreed on FAST Fusion, that series has been putting Nintendo hardware through its paces since the Wii, and RMX is still one of the best looking games on Switch, so I can't wait get a better look at what they've cooked up for Switch 2.