Dragon's Dogma 2's PC frame rate struggles are being looked into, but some fans already have a plan: casually kill innocent bystanders

Dragon's Dogma 2 is a big game and one that’s pretty demanding on your hardware. For PC players, the most noticeable problem looks to be struggling frame rates, something Capcom’s already said it’s looking into. It’s ok though, some fans have got their own morally dubious plan.

Yep, after the whole 30 FPS on consoles discourse, we’re now into a new stage of performance-related patter, with those of us who’ve invested far too much money in big boxes wondering just how little we’ll have to pay for heating over the next few months. The good news is that some big brains - both official and very much unofficial - are already thinking about how to help out your ailing CPU.

First of all, the official help, you know, from Capcom itself. In a statement to IGN, the publisher has said that it’s aware of the issues, which it says may well be linked to how the game handles rendering NPC characters.

Basically, each of them demands a lot of CPU attention in order to look as good and act as dynamically as they do, so if you get a bunch of them appearing together, the combined effect can limit your frame rate numbers. Obviously, how much of an effect this has will depend on the exact specs of your hardware, but the good news is that Capcom says it’s “looking into ways to improve performance in the future”.

So, even if fiddling with the current settings on offer doesn’t help, hopefully you won’t have to wait too long for more solutions. That said, informed by those comments about NPC crowds possibly being a limiting factor, some prospective players have already started discussing their own solution - thinning out the NPC populace via some, well, tactical murdering.

Thankfully, they’re joking (although, this is the internet, so you never know), but yeah, the game’s subreddit is currently host to a lot of memes about the inherent stresses of feeling like you’ve got to unalive a virtual bloke because it might boost your FPS. Seriously, one’s even gone as far as suggesting people band together to create “a community made list of inconsequential NPCs you can kill to boost FPS”.

A couple of people have even taken them up on it, with one casually outlining: “For [starters], I guess any non shopkeeper NPC can definitely go. Maybe you can keep your beloved. Guards can go too. Who are they gonna protect after [we’re] done optimising the game? Exactly.”

Thankfully, just in case you were getting concerned or starting to think this might actually be a good idea, someone else has helpfully pointed out: “Honestly, [it] just seems more ideal to wait for the patch than kill NPCs just for performance.”

While you do just that, rather than, you know, planning something that you’ll probably regret later because a meme told you to, you can read our very comprehensive Dragon’s Dogma 2 review.