Discourse time! Join the discourse circle, dear friends, and come complain about the things you love. I was just feeling like the gaming community needed another injection of superfluous drama, it’s been too long since we argued about difficulty settings or whatever other pointless bickering happened previously.
The latest subject of gamer rage isDragon’s Dogma 2, more specifically its frame rate. Dragon’s Dogma 2 will target 30fps, with an uncapped framerate for consoles and PC. Players aren’t happy with that.
“The game has an uncapped framerate,” director Hideaki Itsuno toldGame Informer. “We’re aiming to go at around or higher than 30 FPS. That is for consoles as well. There are some functions that you’re able to turn on and off, but there aren’t multiple sets of options that you can change at once. But yeah, the frame rate will come uncapped for all consoles.”
Console players are aggrieved that the game will run at such a low framerate, but they’re forgetting the past. Sure, it looks lovely when games play at 60fps, the combat feels buttery and everything looks smooth. I personally don’t see the benefits so much past this point, but some people play their games on 244 Hz monitors for the best possible experience. The jump from 30fps to 60fps is enormous, and I understand that players want more. But players are reaching for perfection that is, in this case, unattainable.
Dragon’s Dogma 2 looks fine. It isn’t running at about 8 or 9fps likePokemon Scarlet & Violeton theSwitch. But it likely would if it was on such a powerless console.
Dragon’s Dogma 2 is being handicapped by the consoles themselves. This is a huge open-world game that pits gargantuan mythical creatures against one another in titanic battles and lets you get in on the action – there’s a lot going on. The developers will have optimised as much as they possibly can, but they can’t change the power of theXbox Series XorPS5.
Consoles are inferior to a top end gaming PC. That’s the whole point of them. They’re a relatively cheap alternative that allows players to play the games they love in a more affordable manner. However, that line has become increasingly blurred in recent years. The PS5 and Xbox Series X have so much power that they can often play games at 60fps, or with 4K graphics. Games that launch on current-gen consoles look and feel amazing, and the performance is plenty good enough for most players.
Then you have gaming enthusiasts. These people will often own multiple consoles, or a gaming PC. PCs are far more expensive than consoles, with the best easily costing upwards of £2,000 – the price of five PS5s. These machines will be able to run the newest games at the best quality, beaming Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth into your eyeballs at 4K definition and 120 frames per second. At least it will whenever Square Enix gets around to releasing its seminal RPG on the platform.
Gaming PCs will be able to cope with far more stressful demands because they contain more expensive components. They also require constant maintenance, both in terms of repairs and upgrading your hardware to keep up with the constant improvements in technology. It’s an incredibly expensive hobby, but if you want high frame rates on the best games, like Dragon’s Dogma 2, it’s the way to go.
Consoles are a compromise. They always have been. You can’t expect the same level of performance from a £400 machine and one that costs five times as much. We’ve been spoiled in recent years by how good consoles have gotten, but the best games always push boundaries. Consoles can’t get 60fps out of Dragon’s Dogma 2 because the developers pushed the game so far. That’s a compromise I’m happy to make.
If you’re still disappointed by the performance of Dragon’s Dogma 2, just think back to Bloodborne. It ran awfully on the PS4, and it still became a cult classic. Games are worth far more than their performance, and can overcome even the most egregious technical issues if they’re good enough. Don’t let this performance – which, I reiterate, is hardly terrible – define Dragon’s Dogma 2. Let the gameplay do the talking.
