Dishonored 2 noted to have severe performance issues on PC

Dishonored 2, a highly anticipated title from Bethesda, was released on Friday for XBox One, PS4, and PC. While console versions have received widespread praise for the engaging gameplay and captivating graphics, the PC version has been getting mixed reviews due to inconsistent performance.

Many reviewers and early players are complaining of frame rate stutters, poor graphical quality, and crashes. While these problems may be common for players running the game on older hardware, some customers are noting these problems occur on their higher end gaming PCs. Kirk Hamilton at Kotaku says, "[I] can’t get a stable frame rate even if I lower everything to Medium.” Hamilton’s PC is powered by an Intel Core i7 CPU clocked at 4 GHz and an Nvidia GTX 1080 which far surpass the recommended specs for the title.

Other reviewers have reported differing experiences. Running the game on a system with an Intel Core i5-6600K, Nvidia GTX 1070, and 16 GB of RAM, Phil Savage from PC Gamer said the game "[averaged] around 80 fps, with dips to 60 fps on city streets” at a “mixture of High and Very high options” and a resolution of 2560x1440. He said the game was “perfectly playable.” However, on another PC equipped with an Intel Core i5-3570K, an Nvidia GTX 970, and 16 GB of RAM, Savage played the game on Medium settings at 1080p. He noted that the game ran anywhere between 40 and 60 fps, with inconsistent frame drops.

Early players are upset that their high end gaming rigs can’t seem to keep up with comparably weak PS4 and Xbox One. Even PCs with enthusiast graphics cards like the GTX 1080 or AMD’s R9 Nano coupled with sufficiently powerful CPUs can’t seem to hold steady frame rates like their console counterparts.

These problems aren't helping Bethesda's already controversial stance on releasing review copies the day prior to launch. Some people see Dishonored 2's performance issues as validation that Bethesda's prior-day review policy was put in place to hide shoddy development. Bethesda is aware of the situation and has responded through their blog. They are expected to release a patch to fix these performance issues sometime this week.

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