Okay, so what we have now is a situation where going to Low on mostly everything leads to console-equivalency. But, this perception really only tells half the story, and it’s why I believe Rockstar should have been more transparent about performance, both in the game and outside of it. Hell, anyone with a high-refresh rate monitor will likely walk away from this port grinding their teeth, considering it takes a 2080 ti at 1080p and low settings to break above one-hundred frames-per-second. If you go into this game expecting at least Medium settings with dramatic performance gains over console you will be disappointed. At a glance it is indeed easy to write the game off as a lazy, rushed port. In the Air Force we were often told that, “perception is reality.” It was to remind us that, despite what may actually be the truth, what people saw quickly became the definitive story. Pair this perceived discrepancy with the launcher failures, game crashes, generally obtuse graphical settings, and a benchmarking tool that provides jack-all in terms of information (you get framerate data, and that’s it) it’s little surprise to see the subreddit and forums decrying Red Dead Redemption 2 for PC as a poorly optimized port. Going into launch, most players were surprised to find that the same assumed mix of Medium to High settings in Red Dead did not deliver the expected results: performance on even high range cards like the 2080 ti felt decidedly neutered. Most PC ports seem to settle around the Medium-High settings range for console equivalency, with mid-range PC hardware delivering similar visuals but vastly better performance. Nor does it help that it wasn’t truly until the weekend after launch we finally had a definitive list of console-equivalent settings. Sure, the usual resource dumps are here chewing up frames as you’d expect (shadows and volumetrics come to mind), but other settings can eat upwards of fifteen-percent or more of your performance with a single slide to the right in quality. While the game may feature thirty-nine different graphical settings for players to tweak, and a preset slider with 21 options based around your specific GPU, it doesn’t exactly communicate the exact performance impact of each. It can also be a bit disingenuous, concerning what sort of performance you should expect at certain settings. Red Dead Redemption 2 for PC is a resource hog, if you allow it to be. Red Dead was a technical showcase one year ago, and with its debut on the much more capable PC platform, Rockstar felt this was as fine a time as any to allow the game to punish whatever hardware you threw at it.Īnd trust me when I say punish is the right word. Of course, there were all sorts of tricks and technical wizardry employed by Rockstar to get this massive of a game looking so damn fine, like the intelligent use of depth of field to mask the game’s level of detail pop-in, or using reduced shadows and volumetrics that still managed to give each environment a distinctly realistic look while maintaining a mostly stable thirty frames-per-second across the breadth of the experience (though, the bustling city of Saint Denis often strained even the Xbox One X). Even on a base PS4, the world of Red Dead Redemption 2 planted its feet firmly on the ground, and screamed far and loud it was the best damn looking world ever crafted in a video game. Stampeding across the open plains of the Heartlands into the foggy swamps and bayous of Lemoyne upon horseback often felt transcendent, as the wide landscape of wild grass and rolling hills gave way to muddy trails and dense fog in what felt natural in transition. Last year Rockstar reaffirmed its continued dominance as the best developer of open-worlds in the industry, with Red Dead Redemption 2 not only being one of the most graphically beautiful games on console, but featuring a world that was slavishly, if not a touch over-indulgently, detailed. Red Dead Redemption 2 for PC is the best way to play, if you have the hardware to run it. After spending the last week with Red Dead Redemption 2 for PC it has proven itself the premier way to experience the game, but there are a few caveats. But, the flames have been largely quieted via multiple updates, and it seems more people are able to get into the game and see for themselves if this port is worth their time and money. And, to be absolutely honest, the first week essentially was. From issues that kept people from opening the game, the new Rockstar launcher imploding and pulling folk out of the game, the game itself crashing, and general confusion and debate over the overall optimization of the game, you’d be forgiven for assuming Red Dead Redemption 2 for the PC has been a dumpster fire. Like the Van Der Linde gang fleeing east, Red Dead Redemption 2 for PC has had a rocky, if not tumultuous, start.
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