'Dragon's Dogma 2' framerate issues may be caused by NPCs

Some lucky players have gotten their hands on early copies of Dragon’s Dogma 2, but framerate issues are hampering the experience for some.

• READ MORE: ‘Dragon’s Dogma 2’ review: you can’t go wrong with this adventurous masterwork

A Capcom representative told IGN, “a large amount of CPU usage is allocated to each character and dynamically calculates the impact of their physical presence in various environments.” They added that this could be the cause for the framerate issues when “numerous characters appear simultaneously”.

Dragon’s Dogma 2 on consoles doesn’t have the option to switch between a performance and quality mode, so players are largely having to make do with what’s currently on offer. Fortunately for PC players, the representative told IGN, “we are looking into ways to improve performance in the future.” So, a patch could already be in the works and delivered soon, but it’s unclear what the solution will be for console players.

The director of the original Dragon’s Dogma, Hideaki Itsuno, felt “let down” by PS3 hardware, and it seems the PS5 is also struggling to keep up. IGN reports that several of its team members experienced framerate issues on PS5, with one having to switch to PC due to getting motion sickness because of the varying framerate. Apparently, the Xbox Series S is the console that suffers most from memory issues.

NME‘s PS5 review noted “the framerate struggles to keep up with [spells] at times”, but that wasn’t enough to stop a five star rating. “The game runs at an unlocked framerate on PS5, and while it gets a bit chunky during intense battles and in towns, it’s not nearly enough to detract from the adventure.”

In other news, Riot Games has “reset the direction” of its upcoming MMO, leading to a delay that will see the team “‘going dark’ for a long time – likely several years”.