Since DOOM, Betheda’s new review policy is to release review copies just one day before the release date (although Skyrim-loving YouTubers have received copies much earlier). With Dishonored 2, Bethesda also allowed any customer who purchased a pre-order to play the game one day early, rendering the review process useless to any gamer who wants to play the game as soon as possible.
This becomes unfair to the customer when the PC port of Dishonored 2 is having performance issues. Perhaps a gamer with multiple platforms would have bought it for PS4 or Xbox One instead, or maybe they would put that money towards Titanfall 2 while waiting for Dishonored to get its shit together.
A selection of comments
On my GTX 1070, i5 4690k, and 16 gig of ram in 1440p and 1080p, i have massive framerate fluctuations. When i mean massive, im talking 120fps in the tutorial, and now in the second city outside areas cant even hit 50 fps. The entire thing looks like a slideshow when you step outside, the frame-timing is off because 60+fps does not feel like it at all. There is mouse smoothing issues, antialiasing issues (as there is only TXAA and FXAA, the TXAA is tanking performance and the FXAA just doesn’t work that well.) and of course the framerate issues.
Jambalam of Astora:
tl;dr: poorly optimized release for an otherwise seemingly fantastic game.
So far it comes across as exactly what I was hoping for in a game. The only problem is that the FPS plummets to below 15 in open areas and in those Dishonored mini-cutscene things where you’re kinda hiding in the shadows or on a chandelier while watching/listening to story dialogues.
My specs are:
AMD Radeon R9 390
AMd FX-8350 4.0GHz
16GB RAM
– and I can’t even run this game on very low settings.
Not everyone is having problems of course. Rock, Paper, Shotgun didn’t mention any issues but I would hazard a guess that full-time PC reviewers are using a beastly system.
PC Gamer’s Phil Savage ran a few tests and said:
“On my home PC, using a GTX 1070, i5-6600K and 16GB RAM, things work pretty well. I’m playing at 2560×1440, and the auto-detect has suggested a mixture of High and Very High options. Using those suggested settings, I’m averaging around 80 fps, with dips to 60 fps on city streets. It’s perfectly playable”
However:
“Things were less rosy on my work PC: a GTX 970, i5-3570K and 16GB RAM, playing at 1920×1080. This is below the recommended settings, and it shows. Auto-detect recommended mostly Medium settings, with a couple on High. Performance kept steady at 60 fps indoors, but could drop to around 40 fps in the streets. This was inconsistent. Looking in one direction, I’d get 60 fps. Turning around, it’d drop back down. Killing everyone in the level didn’t make much difference”
The bottom line is that Bethesda’s new review policy didn’t allow day-one buyers the chance to be informed. Dishonored is a big name due to its past success and Bethesda figured that reviews could only hurt their sales. That may be true in this case, but how many times can this happen before Bethesda loses the trust of their fans? They already have a reputation for releasing buggy games (especially at launch), and this isn’t helping.
Does this change your thoughts on Bethesda? Why do I sound like a market research firm?
Dishonored 2 runs pretty great on my PS4. Check out the first hour here:
