Arkane Studios' new entry into the Dishonored franchise released today for people who preordered their copy, but there's a growing number of players that are reporting significant performance issues with the PC version of the game.
Some players affected by these issues have been sharing their experiences with other players in a megathread on Reddit's Dishonored sub. Amongst the issues reported are claims that the game's engine struggles with rendering glass, dropping the performance from a stable 60fps to a rather low 40 fps. The player reporting this also notes that the game's performance improved markedly after he broke one a glass display in the room his character was in.
As soon as I get past it or turn around, everything is good. I guess the glass is the same reason throne room has poor performance, because all of the shattered glass.Reddit user tonebacas notes that this might have something to do with the shaders used on glass objects in the game.
Once SefuVostru broke the glass, there was less surface area which means there's less fragments/pixels to shade with whatever algorithm they use for reflections.Some other users report "unplayable" framerates once they got to the main city Dishonored 2's story is built around.
GTX 1080 here. game still runs terrible. Fps fluctuates like crazy in Karnaka between 30-60 (vsync on). My GPU might be the culprit though (i5 3770k). But still, you would expect far more from a 1080. Doom for example runs at 150-200 fps at nightmare settings which has basically a variant of the same engine.That doesn't sound very good. Hell, it looks even worse in this YouTube video of the game running on a system it shouldn't have much of a problem with running the game decently well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0blYWYHGQo
The Steam Community forums for Dishonored 2 are also full of players complaining about the game's performance and a perceived lack of optimization for the PC version.
At the very least, Arkane Studios and Bethesda are aware of the issues and released a statement stating that they're working on improving the performance of Dishonored 2 on the PC.
We have been monitoring the PC forums and social channels and while we're excited to hear that many of you are enjoying the game, we are disheartened that some of you are experiencing PC performance issues on some systems.They've also released a launch FAQ that lists a few things you can do to improve the game's performance in lieu of an official patch that includes handy recommendations like "lowering the resolution", not alt-tabbing while you're playing the game and making sure you've enabled V-Sync. Makes the whole bit below the tips about the game going gold seem a little less worthy of celebration in hindsight.We are actively working to provide an update to address your concerns. The patch and its release notes will be available in the coming days.
If you're looking to buy Dishonored 2 it seems like the right course of action would be to wait until the major issues have been patched out before throwing down the money. If you want to learn more about the game, you can check out our first impressions of Dishonored 2 and stay tuned for our full review.
Dishonored 2 is out now for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One (which apparently run pretty good comparatively) and the PC.
