Visually, we’re talking general aesthetics here, Fallout 4 is absolutely fantastic – it exudes atmosphere, portraying a world you’re immediately sucked into.
Technically, however, it’s really rather dated. The Creation Engine simply cannot manage the sort of graphical effects that engines like, say, the Unreal Engine 4, CryEngine 3 or the Frostbyte 3 engine can.
It’s also poorly optimised, causing a number of performance hits in scenarios that really shouldn’t be all that taxing.
Shadows, particularly around bodies; alpha effects; high particle counts – it’s all a bit of a problem for the Creation Engine and Fallout 4.
To address that, Bethesda has released Patch 1.2 for all three platforms. The patch promises improved frame rates, especially in areas like the Corvega Assembly Plant.
Sure enough, as Digital Foundry’s initial testing shows, it does just that.
Unfortunately, rather than optimising the engine, it looks like Bethesda has simply removed some of the more advanced visual effects in those areas, improving frame rates but at the cost of visuals.
The best example we found can be seen at 1:15 in the video above – look at the shadows cast on the wall and floor.
Alternatively, we’ve pulled the image to show you exactly what we mean.
What we don’t quite understand is why a pre-baked, non-dynamic shadow is causing all of the fuss and bother?
And does that mean that Bethesda is going to have to painstakingly tinker with each and every area that demonstrates a poor frame rate?
And how will this ultimately affect a game that really can’t afford to tank in the visuals department.
At least us PC gamers have mods to fix what Bethesda is in the process of breaking, so our sympathies are with the console gamers.
Of course this may just be a glitch associated with the new patch, and not an intentional downgrade on Bethesda’s part.
But we’re not the only ones to have noticed the apparent downgrade. You can see a number of users over at NeoGAF reiterating our concern – many of whom are suggesting a number of additional areas where shadows have been removed entirely.
Come one Bethesda; you can do better than this.
In other news
New Bethesda studio opening in Montreal
First screenshots from The Witcher 3’s Blood and Wine expansion
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I’ll rather have better performance than better graphics while they are optimizing everything. I tend to get pissed off when my performance is shitty even though my settings are low. So don’t get all up in arms about it, you should have known this was coming with Bethesda’s track record.