Dishonored 2 is a spectacular game that fumbled its steps on PC on account of some glaring performance issues. On pretty much anything less than an expensive high-end rig, players would frequently experience frame-rate drops, mouse stutters, and worse is that these issues persist even when running at settings that are lower than the recommended level.
Post release patches have addressed a few of the issues but memories of launch-day frustrations always tend to linger and history is an undying witness. The upside, as Arkane co-creative director Rafael Colantonio stated in a recent interview with Game Informer, is that some crucial lessons have been learned, and the studio’s next game, Prey, will be in a much better shape at release. Colantonio said:
We had a rough launch on the PC [with Dishonored 2]… In development you never exactly know what you’re going to see, most of all with PC because there are so many different configurations and stuff.
Unfortunately, it’s what it is, it shipped, then it got patched, and now it runs really well. So of course, we are paying double-attention to making sure that this time, the PC version is really flawless when we ship.
When asked how Arkane will avoid those launch-day pitfalls with Prey, he responded:
There’s a little bit more QA time, also it’s a different engine, so the constraints are different. In the case of Dishonored, we created a new engine, really, even though it’s based on idTech, most of it has been redone…
In the case of Prey we’re using the CryEngine, so it’s an engine that has already shipped things before. So it’s not the same configuration. Nevertheless, we are of course aware of [PC issues] now, and were back then already, but it caught us by surprise a little. This time we’re paying more attention for sure.
Though of course, promises are no rock-solid guarantee of results, but it’s good to know that Arkane is keeping a closer eye on things this time around.
