Dragon’s Dogma 2 players are killing their NPCs - but it’s for the good of the game
Dragon's Dogma 2 players are feeling bloodthirsty against the game's NPCs, but they're doing it to save their frame rate. Just try not to hurt anyone important, yeah?
22nd Mar 2024 13:50
Images via Capcom
Dragon’s Dogma 2 players are killing their NPCs - but it’s for the good of the game
Dragon's Dogma 2 players are feeling bloodthirsty against the game's NPCs, but they're doing it to save their frame rate. Just try not to hurt anyone important, yeah?
22nd Mar 2024 13:50
Images via Capcom
What a week for games, eh? We're only a few weeks off from Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth, and now we've got Rise of the Ronin and Dragon's Dogma 2 to play through. We've never had it so good, but the latter's NPCs are in for a shock as players boot up Capcom's open-world RPG.
It's a bloodbath for NPCs over in Dragon's Dogma 2 and it's because players have been trying to lower the CPU strain the game causes with its wild array of overlapping systems and characters. The fix is, um, killing the denizens of Vermund and Battahl.
Dragon's Dogma 2 players go on killing sprees to save their game
Perhaps the scariest of all is that players have suggested making a 'kill list'. Over on Reddit, user capnfappin (sigh) said the community should put together a list of "inconsequential NPCs you can kill to boost FPS."
So, whether it's villagers or cat people, the people of Dragon's Dogma 2 should probably be more worried about your Arisen than they should be about the big bad Dragon.
"Bro imagine if Capcom got on board with this and set up an approved kill list," one commenter gleefully said. "We could literally turn this game into an assassin simulator with people making videos on creative ways they’ve wasted some NPCs."
What's causing Dragon's Dogma 2's performance issues?
Capcom recently spoke to IGN about the PC version's performance ahead of launch, noting that the CPU strain comes when "each character and dynamically calculates the impact of their physical presence in various environments."
"In certain situations where numerous characters appear simultaneously, the CPU usage can be very high and may affect the frame rate.
"We are aware that in such situations, settings that reduce GPU load may currently have a limited effect; however, we are looking into ways to improve performance in the future."
As a result, Dragon's Dogma 2 also lacks alternative graphics modes on console, and we noted some performance quirks in our full review.
About The Author
Lloyd Coombes
Lloyd is GGRecon's Editor-in-Chief, having previously worked at Dexerto and Gfinity, and occasionally appears in The Daily Star newspaper. A big fan of loot-based games including Destiny 2 and Diablo 4, when he's not working you'll find him at the gym or trying to play Magic The Gathering.
