Dragon's Dogma 2 Apparently Had Framerate Troubles Because the NPCs Were Thinking Too Hard

A new patch for Dragon's Dogma 2 dropped earlier this week, adding options within the game's settings to prioritize either graphics or performance. The latter should help improve the game's oft-lamented framerate issues, which developer Capcom is now saying were a direct result of Dragon's Dogma 2's many NPCs...thinking too much.

In a Famitsu interview (via Google Translate, which IGN independently verified), the development team was asked about one of the purported improvements in the update, specifically to "excessive load on the CPU." In response, the team said that CPU power in Dragon's Dogma 2 is allocated to process the "thoughts" of each NPC and how they interact with physics calculations.

A new update for Dragon's Dogma 2 is available now on all platforms!

- Changed the options in "Graphics" within the Options menu to "Prioritize Graphics" and "Prioritize Performance."

For additional resolution and performance info on each option, please reference the chart… pic.twitter.com/qwztLSSd5i— Dragon's Dogma (@DragonsDogma) October 17, 2024

"Therefore, in sequences where many NPCs appear at the same time, such as in towns, the load on the CPU was very high, which affected the frame rate. Because the CPU was the bottleneck, reducing the load on the GPU side, such as lowering the resolution, had little effect on improving the frame rate."

In response, Capcom has been "reviewing the processing of NPC thoughts and making fine adjustments such as the execution order of each process in updates since the release." As a result, Dragon's Dogma 2 now has graphics quality settings that allow it to be played at "approximately 50 to 60fps" on PS5 and Xbox Series X. Steam has a similar setting to reduce processing load.

Frustrating as the framerate issues may have been for players, Dragon's Dogma 2's NPC complexity is a pretty vital part of the series. All the NPCs have regular schedules, activities, and even relationships with other NPCs they have to maintain. The Pawns are especially complex, even if their dialogue makes them seem like total dinguses. They constantly adjust to player behavior and even learn new tactics during combat, give noisy advice, lead players to treasure, and uh, murder them! It's no wonder that with how busy every single character in the world is at any given moment, things got a little hectic in some of the game's more crowded areas.

We gave Dragon's Dogma 2 an 8/10 in our review earlier this year, calling it "a strange and wonderful action-RPG that bolsters the original’s strengths without addressing its weaknesses."

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.