Despite being revealed during June 2nd’s PlayStation’s State Of Play event, real heads will remember that Rayman Legends was originally a 2013 Wii U exclusive.
“When we started the project two years ago, we were aiming for the main platforms as PS5 and PS5 Pro,” Montpellier’s technical advisor, Fabien Delpiano tells VGC, “the idea for [Retold] was really for it to be a visual showcase of what we can do with the brand.”
With Legends already re-released on Switch in 2017, the team knew that its technically demanding new remake wouldn’t run on Nintendo’s aging Switch hardware. Yet once Ubisoft was briefed about the existence of Switch 2, the team knew that Rayman Legends needed to return to its spiritual home.
“We heard about Switch 2 a bit before the [console’s] announcement, but it was after we had already started working on Rayman Legends: Retold,” explained Delpiano, “and then we thought, well, Rayman simply cannot [skip] a Nintendo console!”
Unlike the entirely 2D original, Retold reimagines Legends’ sidescrolling levels as fully curved, 3D platform experiences. Filled with new detail, levels, and fully-voiced cutscenes, the ambitious Retold was already pushing the PS5 to its limits. Delpiano tells me that the team initially worried about getting Retold to run on Switch 2. Thankfully, there was another Ubisoft studio already working on the Switch 2 – Berlin’s Ubisoft RedLynx.
“The team in Germany were already aware of [Switch 2] and were already working on the [ Star Wars Outlaws] port so they were much advanced than us,” says Delpiano, “… our assets, our characters, the quality and the detail of those, it’s something that should be hard to fit into the Switch 2, so the first thing we did is contact those guys because we are using the same engine, and their port is really good.. and we’ve been working with them basically for the past year.”
With Rayman Legends: Retold running on the Ubisoft Snow Drop engine – an engine built around rendering vast open worlds – the team had to tweak the platform in order to help Retold reach the same visual quality bar on Nintendo’s hybrid system.
“We develop a thing where the level of detail is not based on distance [from parts of the environment[ but it’s based on ratio and scale, “ explains Delpiano, “ so depending on the size of the character on screen it will change the level of detail accordingly to that… the amount of details that we have on PS5 is approximately the same as on Switch 2.”
Delpiano says that this will be the same even with four players darting about the screen in local multiplayer, ensuring that the Switch 2 version will maintain a solid 60 frames per second performance even when four of you are leaping around and slapping each other silly. “ No matter the number of players, we are always aiming for 60 FPS, and the same resolution.”
“Depending on the size of the character on screen, it will change the level of detail accordingly to that… the amount of details that we have on PS5 is approximately the same as on Switch 2”
Another challenge for the team was employing this console generation’s graphical buzzword, “raytracing”, on Nintendo’s new hybrid system. Yet suitably for their Ray-loving mascot, Montpellier worked hard to ensure that Switch 2 players wouldn’t go without the dazzling lighting tech.
“As you might know, ray tracing is quite costly,” says Delpiano, “ [in Outlaws on Switch 2 ]They deal with it by running at 30 fps, but we are aiming for 60 on all platforms, from the most humble – Switch 2 – to the most high end, a PS5 Pro, or high end PC – so it was quite a challenge… we [had] to really push the limit of Snow Drop from 30fps to 60.”
As the developer places a Switch 2 in my hands, in handheld mode at least – it’s clear that the team has pulled it off. Running at what looks like a solid 60fps, after playing the same level on a high-end PC earlier in the day, I was impressed to see that very little of the game’s detail seems to have been lost in the transition to Switch 2.
“One of the tricks we used to reach that quality is to lower the resolution,” explains Delpiano, “for most of the GPU [resources] it depends on the resolution, so the more we reduce resolution, the less costly it will be.”
As Switch 2 owners will likely be aware, this doesn’t mean that Nintendo fans will be stuck controlling a 480p Rayman in Retold. Thanks to resolution scaling via the Switch 2’s DLSS tech, Ubisoft promises that players will experience Rayman at a 1080p output on handheld, and 4K when docked.
“The DLSS is working quite well, as you can see,” says Delpiano, “When it’s docked, it’s full 4K because we don’t have to care about power consumption, so we can go a bit higher. Essentially, on Switch 2, we are quite on par with the Xbox Series S [version in terms of] quality.”
While Ubisoft Montpellier says it is still working hard to ensure that every level of the Switch 2 version runs at 60FPS, things are certainly looking promising so far. Delpiano also confirmed that there is only one type of DLSS available to developers on Switch 2, and that on PS5 Pro, Rayman Legends: Retold will be taking full advantage of Sony’s recently released new upscaling technology, PSSR2.
While we have yet to see the game running docked on Switch 2, if the handheld version is anything to go by – along with Star Wars Outlaws and Assassin’s Creed: Shadows– Rayman Legends: Retold looks like it will continue to cement Ubisoft’s reputation as one of the most technically adept third-party publishers on Switch 2.
For our thoughts on the new levels, narrative, and new art style, you can read our Rayman Legends: Retold studio tour deep dive.
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