After a 12-year wait, Dragon’s Dogma 2 is right around the corner. Although visually stunning and even more rich with depth and detail than its predecessor, that also comes at the cost of CPU demand—so much so, even, that PC players are taking drastic measures to reduce the load on their systems.
These measures largely involve killing every NPC in sight in the hopes that the game no longer having to run their complex simulations will free up more FPS. The logic is sound and is supported by official Capcom comments identifying NPCs as using a large amount of CPU resources, but slaughtering NPCs en masse just to render the game a little better doesn’t seem like the kind of thing a legendary hero would do.
It all started with comments to IGN in response to early backlash about Dragon’s Dogma 2‘s performance, where a Capcom representative explained that “a large amount of CPU usage is allocated to each character and dynamically calculates the impact of their physical presence in various environments. In certain situations where numerous characters appear simultaneously, the CPU usage can be very high and may affect the frame rate.”
Naturally, the next logical step was clear: raze Vermund to the ground with such force and totality that they forget all about the dragon, solely in the name of squeezing a few more frames out of your overworked CPU. The community quickly rallied behind this idea, with proposals like a communal kill list racking up endorsements on the Dragon’s Dogma subreddit. Ideas such as targeting city guards, NPCs that aren’t shopkeepers, and even turning on quest-giving NPCs after finishing their tasks have all been suggested, proving that all it takes is an FPS dip to turn paragons of virtue into mass-murdering monsters.
For some, this brings back memories of Baldur’s Gate 3, which also launched with poor optimization in its third act and required similarly cutthroat methods to bring FPS back into acceptable ranges. Fortunately, that game got some much-needed post-launch fixes, so it’s not outside of the realm of possibility for Dragon’s Dogma 2 to get the same treatment.
Indeed, Capcom has already expressed its intention to investigate the game’s subpar performance ahead of launch, so keep an eye out for a patch addressing these issues in the future. Depending on how extensive these eventual changes prove to be, you might just be able to put your murder plans on hold for the time being.
