Update: And as promised, Capcom has dropped a healthy new update for Dragon’s Dogma 2 on PC and consoles, bringing the game up to title version 1.050.
This new update brings with it a number of highly-requested features, some affecting gameplay – like the ability to start a new game when a game-in-progress already exists, as well as making more appearance-altering items available – while the bigger changes have offered players new options to smooth over performance on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S.
These new settings have arrived to help mitigate some of the fairly-egregious performance issues the game has had since launch, not strictly by optimising anything in the game as-is but by allowing players to turn off some of the game’s ray-traced lighting as well as cap the frame rate at 30FPS.
The former option definitely does boost performance on console (at least in my use on PS5), almost in every circumstance, though the trade-off is a removal of the game’s beautiful ray-traced global illumination that really brings the presentation together. Areas where frame rates suffered most, like intense battles and busy city areas, are still a sore spot even with RT turned off, likely due to these being bottlenecked by the consoles’ CPUs rather than GPU performance. Capping the framerate can be handy for anyone sensitive to massive variation in frames, but also takes away the moments where it goes above 30, which is still fairly often throughout the game, so turning this off doesn’t seem as useful in my eyes. Motion blur is a matter of taste, but the option to switch this off is no doubt welcome for some.
Here’s everything that’s new:
[PlayStation®5 / Steam]
[PlayStation®5]
[Xbox Series X|S]
[Xbox Series X]
[Steam]
Original Story: With Dragon’s Dogma 2 finally launched, and players around the world setting out on their journeys, Capcom has emerged to address a number of issues that folks are having with the game and created a list of planned updates it’s working on to alleviate at least some of them.
The list includes some general bug fixes across platforms, but also speaks to some more specific wants from players, like changes to how save data is handled, a great supply of character-altering items and earlier opportunity to purchase your own residence.
Crucially, the list also contains some proposed changes to graphical settings on the console version of the game, giving players the option to toggle on/off things like motion blur and ray-tracing, and cap the currently-unlocked framerate at 30FPS.
The ability to turn off ray-tracing in particular might sound like the saving grace console players are looking for to improve the game’s quite-shaky performance, but Capcom has already noted that these settings aren’t likely to affect performance by a large margin. The game’s struggles are more on the CPU side as a result of the sheer amount of simulation going in, in particular with Pawns and NPCs in the world, so while some new settings might smooth it over a little more we can’t expect a suddenly uplift to a solid 60FPS when those rays aren’t being traced.
Here’s the list of updates that Capcom is bringing to the game “as soon as they are ready for distribution on each platform.”
*These options will not affect the frame rate significantly. Frame rate improvements are planned for future updates.
We gave Dragon’s Dogma 2 a 9/10 in our review, with James saying “Dragon’s Dogma II embodies the essence of what the original should have been. With its expansive open world teeming with dangerous but delightful encounters, enjoyable combat, and versatile vocations, it’s an enchanting experience from beginning to end.”