Few games manage to get released in a state similar to Batman: Arkham Knight and it's mass pulling from various stores is a first for a triple A game - almost all retailers have removed the PC version of the game from their shelves at Warner Brother's request. Warner Brother's VP of game technology Gary Lake-Schaal has posted what the team working on fixing the game is focusing on - a list that might reassure some people that they aren't going to just do a simple bug patch and walk away. Here is the list of stated goals:
- Support for frame rates above 30 FPS in the graphics settings menu
- Fix for low resolution texture bug
- Improve overall performance and frame rate hitches
- Add more options to the graphics settings menu
- Improvements to hard drive streaming and hitches
- Address full screen rendering bug on gaming laptops
- Improvements to system memory and VRAM usage
- NVIDIA SLI bug fixes
- Enabling AMD Crossfire
- NVIDIA and AMD updated drivers
That covers most of the major issues the game has had - though a couple things might be missing there you're thinking. Well, that's in part because they've released the first of what is likely to be many interim patches while they work on fixing that all up to make the game more playable for those who still are playing it on PC.
- They fixed a crash that was happening for some people when exiting the game
- They've fixed the bug that had auto disabled ambient occlusion and rain effects, meaning that the options here are, regardless of performance, no longer lesser than the console versions
- Fixed the verify game cache causing re-download bug that probably caused at least one person a data overage this month
- Fixed the bug that made turning motion blur off in the BmSystemSettings.ini turn the game into a crash dummy and plan on adding an option to turn motion blur off into the main options menu.
It's a beginning. Rocksteady has pledged to get the pc version working properly before releasing any console updates, Iron Galaxy appears to be working on it and NVIDIA appears to even be chipping in to help. This is in marked difference to the way Warner Brothers treated Batman: Arkham Origins where they infamously said there weren't going to be any more patches as they were focused on DLC for the game.
It's not the patch we need, nor the one we deserve, but perhaps in time with the goals they've set they'll be able to reach there.
