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Bethesda Details The Evil Within's PC Performance
With just a week until release, Bethesda reached out to The Evil Within's community today to provide some clarification regarding the game's framerate and requirements on PC. The answers may not be exactly what PC gamers were hoping to hear, but Bethesda is allowing plenty of opportunity to customize the experience.
In a post on the official forums, the company lays out the minimum requirements, recommended requirements, and other details in question-and-answer format. Of particular interest are these bits:
Why does the PC recommended ask for 4 GB of VRAM?
The PS4 and Xbox One both have 8 GB of unified RAM which can be used as both system and video memory. Because our PC version is functionally identical to those platforms, we recommend 4 GB of system memory, and 4 GB of VRAM for the best experience.
What's the status on the game's framerate and aspect ratio?
Shinji Mikami and the team at Tango designed The Evil Within to be played at 30fps and to utilize an aspect ratio of 2.35:1 for all platforms. The team has worked the last four years perfecting the game experience with these settings in mind. For PC players, we’ll provide debug commands on how you can alter the framerate and aspect ratio, but these commands and changes are not recommended or supported and we suggest everyone play the game as it was designed and intended for the best experience.
Can I disable the letterboxing?
The letterboxing (a 2:35:1 aspect ratio) is used for gameplay purposes, as certain elements display in the black areas of the screen. On PC, you can turn off the bars and force the game to render full-screen. However this option is not supported. We’re keeping the ability to turn off bars as a console-only command that we will share at launch
In other words, while the game is only fully supported and recommended to run at 30 fps in the letterbox format, those things can be changed using console commands. The full post has way more details to soak up and mull over.
Our Take
PC players like to take advantage of more powerful hardware if they have it, so the the 30 fps may be a bit disappointing. However, including those console commands is a smart, since it gives players the ability to tinker with the options. Of course, that assumes that removing the letterbox bars or upping the framerate doesn't result in anything that damages the experience.
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