For the last week and a half, a good number of PC gamers have been (im)patiently awaiting a patch to fix the myriad performance issues Dishonored 2 had at launch. Friday’s 1.1 beta patch was a mouse-fixing appetizer, but today’s 1.2 patch is more of a main course.
You can now download a beta of the 1.2 patch in the “betas” tab under Dishonored 2's properties menu in Steam. The new patch makes a bunch of tweaks and adds a bunch of new settings. You can find the full patch notes on the game’s Steam page.
Highlights:
- Reduced framerate stuttering
- Added a customizable FPS limiter to reduce the fluctuation
- Framerate capped at 120 FPS to prevent physics issues which occur only above 120fps
- Max pre-rendered frames is now managed by the game
- Adjusted Texture Details settings so settings make a significant visual and performance change
- Added frequency in V-sync UI
- Removed Environment Details settings as it was strongly tied to View Distance
- Removed Fog Quality settings as it was not impacting the visuals or providing performance advantages
I’ve played through several sections in the first few missions and am happy to report that this patch does indeed improve and smooth out performance. I’m playing with a GTX 1080 on a 144hz monitor and have been able to get the game running much better than it had been. My best results have come from leaving my settings on a mix of high and medium, turning Vsync off and turning on a 60fps cap while leaving Gsync running. I’m not getting the most out of my hardware, but at this point I’m more interested in playing the dang game.
I’m still getting some frame-rate drops in open areas in the first couple levels, and there’s still a certain hard-to-pin-down weirdness to the way the game runs. Generally, however, everything is much smoother and the game is happier staying at a consistent frame rate. Most importantly, I’m finding that off-putting frame stuttering has been greatly reduced, particularly at 60fps. Of course, as has been the case since this game came out, your mileage may vary substantially.
I was pretty bummed by how Dishonored 2 launched on PC, but I have to give the developers at Arkane credit for turning around this many fixes in such a short amount of time. I’m hopeful they’re not done patching the game, and that in addition to the other additions they’re making in December, we’ll get some more PC optimization.
For now, I’m gonna start a new low-chaos Emily playthrough from the top. I’m looking forward to it, because as you may or may not have heard, Dishonored 2 is a really good video game.