A brand new patch for Dragon’s Dogma 2 dropped earlier this week, including choices inside the recreation’s settings to prioritize both graphics or efficiency. The latter ought to assist enhance the recreation’s oft-lamented framerate points, which developer Capcom is now saying had been a direct results of Dragon’s Dogma 2’s many NPCs…considering an excessive amount of.

In a Famitsu interview (by way of Google Translate, which IGN independently verified), the growth workforce was requested about one in every of the purported enhancements in the replace, particularly to “extreme load on the CPU.” In response, the workforce mentioned that CPU energy in Dragon’s Dogma 2 is allotted to course of the “ideas” of every NPC and the way they work together with physics calculations.

A brand new replace for Dragon’s Dogma 2 is accessible now on all platforms!

– Modified the choices in “Graphics” inside the Choices menu to “Prioritize Graphics” and “Prioritize Efficiency.”

For extra decision and efficiency data on every possibility, please reference the chart… pic.twitter.com/qwztLSSd5i

— Dragon’s Dogma (@DragonsDogma) October 17, 2024

“Subsequently, in sequences the place many NPCs seem at the similar time, reminiscent of in cities, the load on the CPU was very excessive, which affected the body charge. Because the CPU was the bottleneck, decreasing the load on the GPU facet, reminiscent of decreasing the decision, had little impact on enhancing the body charge.”

In response, Capcom has been “reviewing the processing of NPC ideas and making effective changes reminiscent of the execution order of every course of in updates since the launch.” In consequence, Dragon’s Dogma 2 now has graphics high quality settings that permit it to be performed at “roughly 50 to 60fps” on PS5 and Xbox Collection X. Steam has the same setting to scale back processing load.

Irritating as the framerate points could have been for gamers, Dragon’s Dogma 2’s NPC complexity is a reasonably important a part of the collection. All the NPCs have common schedules, actions, and even relationships with different NPCs they’ve to take care of. The Pawns are particularly complicated, even when their dialogue makes them appear to be complete dinguses. They continually alter to participant conduct and even study new ways throughout fight, give noisy recommendation, lead gamers to treasure, and uh, homicide them! It is no surprise that with how busy each single character in the world is at any given second, issues acquired a little bit hectic in a few of the recreation’s extra crowded areas.

We gave Dragon’s Dogma 2 an 8/10 in our assessment earlier this yr, calling it “an odd and great action-RPG that bolsters the authentic’s strengths with out addressing its weaknesses.”

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You’ll find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Obtained a narrative tip? Ship it to rvalentine@ign.com.