Dragon’s Dogma 2 is out now, and it’s not without its problems. Despite universal praise from critics, gamers are unhappy with frame rate issues in the PC version.
Capcom has already acknowledged this issue, noting that “a large amount of CPU usage is allocated to each character and dynamically calculates the impact of their physical presence in different environments.” Because of this, the company explains, in situations where there are many characters present at the same time, the CPU load “can be very high,” which in turn can impact frame rates.
Although the developer is already looking for ways to improve performance, Dragon’s Dogma 2 players have taken this information in their own way. How? Even before launch, some began planning to kill innocent NPCs. This is a pretty drastic move, and one that Capcom certainly didn’t propose, having previously confirmed that dead NPCs will stay dead forever (unless you resurrect them). But in the quest to boost frame rates at all costs, some people clearly aren’t put off by this.
On the subreddit, some players have reported plans to create a list of “non-essential NPCs” that can be killed without the risk of missing quests and content, while others have suggested killing NPCs after completing their quests. It all sounds pretty grim, but the idea inspired a lot of memes as players became resigned to the idea of killing for a few extra frames per second.
Meanwhile, others are simply wondering how far it will go:
I can’t wait until a week goes by and someone posts a game that runs at 60 FPS after killing everyone.
I find it funny to imagine Dragon’s Dogma 2 speedruns involving killing certain NPCs as you pass them in order to improve the frame rate as you run.
At this point, it’s unclear whether killing NPCs will actually have a noticeable impact on game performance.
