Fallout 4 Stress test on consoles

tl;dr: Pick your poison when playing Fallout 4 on consoles. PS4 sucks at gunfights (down to 15 fps big fights) or Xbox One's stutter glitch and over all frame dips while exploring. This is just a bad engine that needs serious fixing in terms of performance.

The engine is over a decade old, it's starting to show at the seams. While I am not one of the people crying for a new engine (I think Bethesda's games can deliver the kinds of experiences that they can precisely because of Bethesda's insistence on using their old engine), I do think they need to make more of an attempt to modernize it- clearly whatever they have done so far has not been enough.

Again I'll say it, Bethesda had 6 years to make this on an old engine, what the hell did they do in that time? The major groundwork was already done for them, this game seems like it had 1 year of dev time put into it.

Wow at the framerate drops during that corridor on consoles. Just wow

I think bethesda should receive some shit for this because using such an outdated engine in their biggest series (or is ES bigger? I dunno but i much prefer Fallout personally) released at the end of 2015 is unacceptable. With its current visuals, this game should be running in 60fps+ on 2010-2011 gpu's and it isn't. Why? How is it that this game runs 'almost' on par with TW3 when tw3 is literally 10x better looking and isn't even known to be well optimized to begin with? I f*cking looooooove Fallout 4, amazingly fun game but no way in hell will i close my eyes and ignore their shitty incompetence. Its especially funny when we knew they had id tech 6 ready...

Elder Scrolls is bigger than Fallout.

As for idTech 6, the reason they can't use it is because it is not optimized for open world gameplay. Honestly, they should just suck it up and license RED Engine from CDPR.

wut

The Creation Engine/Gamebryo engine has been in use in some form or the other since Morrowind, and in that period, it has been used to deliver the kinds of sandbox, free form open world experiences that Bethesda games have come to be known for, and that they sell on the back of. Basically, the reason that I can tackle quests out of order, kill a major story NPC, or enter a king's castle, put a bucket on his head, and then steal all his stuff is because of 15 years of iteration on this engine- starting over would surely lead to a loss of a lot of this, er, functionality.

how is it not? id tech 5 has RAGE, Doom isn't linear and they had all the amount of time they wanted to optimize it for open if IF it wasn't optimized. Hell, five years its a lot of time... if not their inhouse id tech 6 then it should've been UE4 or Cryengine 3. Game would've looked amazing with UE4........... what a failure, bethesda.

They could use a new engine and if they couldn't do something, they could just modify it. I'm sure current engines like UE4 are extremely flexible from the get go though.

But honestly, i'm not sure if there's something about their gamebryo engine that causes their games to be buggy, and if there is, they need to finish their damn tools. Bottom line, they just don't give a **** about Quality assurance.

10 year old engine with many of the same bugs that have persisted through all the games they've made with it. I don't know what Bethesda should do but if they haven't fixed it by now they never will. It does make me wonder how much they actually care about how well their games run on any platform.

For example, I'm playing Fallout 4 the right way (on PC), as much as I'm enjoying the game, it's still a buggy mess. Apart from the random CTD's (which plagued Fallout 3, New Vegas and Skyrim) the most annoying glitch that I'm inflicted with is my character freezing up when I use terminals. That's a blocker bug and should have been caught and fixed long before launch (I know I'm not the only person who's suffering from it), unless reloading and trying again 6 or 7 times before it doesn't lock up is not counted as serious enough to be fixed.

They must employ some of the worst QA people in the industry, if they actually have any QA at all.

Don't forget you can pre-order the DLC now though!

People have been all over the place on this, some saying it doesn't show if you play on an external HDD, some saying you really don't notice on your own, others it just happens in the exact same spots like loading areas or autos Aves on either console just effects Xbox One more. I'll be shocked if anybody talks about how the game actually plays and if they like it for its mechanics and story and whatniot.

I wouldn't pick poison...15fps for an ugly game? Sigh

So, which version is slightly better? That's the real question.

how the fck can people play games with Frames constantly dropping to low 20s.... that shit would give me headaches in a matter of minutes.

The engine is old but it's not weak. Most of the optimization problems that these games have are actually pretty simple to solve and even amateur modders fix them within 2 or 3 months of the release of the game (e.g. Lighting and object rendering optimization mods).

It is quite clearly Bethesda's fault.

CPU power or at least complexity is yet again a hurdle they have stumbled on when it comes to the new consoles. Though last gen I would say it was both CPU speed and the amount of RAM available. The learning curve might actually be faster this gen.

@walloftruth: That's the plan

This is pathetic on so many levels

Damn that's horrible, there's like 2 places in the game where my game drops below 60fps and it's quite annoying, so my sympathies to all the console folk, that sucks.

Lets hope the modders unofficial patches make their way to consoles for F4, they did wonders for Skyrim and it's DLC.

Edit: To the people saying Beth should've used a different engine. If they did the mod-ability would have gone out the window and Bethesda games sell a lot on how moddable they are and the community that built up around that.

I'm a huge fan of Bethesda but i've never thought of them as coding gods, imagine if they tried to work with an engine more complex than Creation...

They both suck, just one sucks slightly less than the other.

Maybe if Bethesda used an engine built for modern hardware their games would look AND run better. The two consoles aren't exactly powerhouses, but they should be able to handle an ugly looking game like Fallout 4 better than this.

I highly doubt we'll be getting those kinds of mods for the console version of F4. I bet there will be some heavy restrictions on what can be modded.

lol dat extra CPU power seems to be inching forward the X1 according to commander XD

Who can that this game dcouldn't have spawned from the Skyrim port on Xbox One? I doubt they were working on this PoS for 6 years.

I got a headache just watching this video, it doesn't help that it's an FPS game. It's gonna be a long time before I consider buying this game.

I like how it looks (easily one gen ahead Fallout 3), and since it's a slow paced game, i don't mind some framerate dips.

My main complain, though, has to do with the loading times. Just like last gen Bethesda games, every time we enter a town, or even worse, a 5x5 cabin, we face a new loading. That's ridiculous by current standards, especialy after we get massive seamless worlds like The Witcher 3.

It is a Bethesda game, enough said, any1 really surprised?

I remember Skyrim receiving up to 40% fps gain with drivers optimization (on nvidia side) aprox 1 month after the game was released. Would be nice if the same happened.

@blizzard2188: Your post made me cringe.

inb4: any digital foundry is biased for PlayStation posts.

remember, commander was all for digital foundry on that witcher 3 CPU argument XD

@Juub1990: how? Because it actually makes sense for a normal person and not an extreme hermit? Get over your stupid PC master race

Did I even mention Master Race? No.

You make me laugh with your ridiculously egotistical post. As if only you or what you experience matters. Nobody gives a **** you have to drag your PC up and down the stairs, nobody gives a **** about what TV you have and nobody gives a **** about your job or what you do for a living.

The thread is about the horrible, unacceptable performance of Fallout 4. The fact that you see nothing wrong with it speaks volumes about the idiocy of modern gamers. It's a game made by a major studio backed by a major publisher. How does it dip so much despite looking so bad? Why is it still a buggy mess? It's great that you can enjoy Fallout 4 despite these flaws but these are complaints supported by facts. The game has shit frame rate, shit visuals and is choke-full of bugs. People paid for it they have every right to be mad about it especially when what they bitch about is actually verifiable.

They were also rendered at sub 480p resolution. Why don't we go back to that while we're at it? Majora's Mask is my favorite game of all time, I recently attempted to play it on the PJ64 emulator and the frame rate was so bad I just couldn't bear it. Thankfully there is the 3DS remaster. The fact you bring back games from 15 years ago to prove your point is simply pathetic. We're supposed to be better off from 20 years ago, not at the same place.

So because all of Bethesda's games have been like this we should just suck it up and try to do like you and pretend there is nothing wrong? I'm sorry but shitty performance, bugs and poor visuals DOES affect my enjoyment of a game. Just like bad controls, bad gameplay or bad music does. It seems we've gotten to a point where people think graphics aren't part of a game. Graphics are as much a part of the game as gameplay, story or anything else that makes a game. They shouldn't be overlooked.

Yes you pissed me off because all you did was spewing your egotistical crap. That doesn't invalidate the abysmal performance and visual crime that Fallout 4 is.

PC Master Race? I never asked for the game to be rendered at 4K and 144fps. I simply want a decent visual experience with a stable frame rate and the least possible amount of bugs.

Turn god ray down for better fps on pc

You are literally the reason why gaming today is sub standard. You accept shit being stuffed down your throat, and shrug it off like it's nothing. It's not about PC's and consoles, it's about companies getting away with releasing unfinished games, and you seeming to be fine with it. Beta. Save your long ass wall of texts about your TV, your job, your apartment and your mums dog. No one gives a shit.

@Juub1990: Right, but by now you should have come to expect that it's BETHESDA, Bethesda never changes. All their releases are like this. If you don't like how it performs then don't buy it. I bring up timeless classics because I'm trying to point out that if the game is fun then a few fps dips aren't going to kill anyone. Sure who wouldn't like it to have the visuals of DA:I or W3, but Bethesda games pretty much look much worse compared to Bioware, CD Project and other WRPG studios who employ more competent artists. Bethesda's quality assurance room is probably a single computer with cobwebs on it and a monkey in front of it. Bethesda has had all these jokes around them for years, so it's kinda amazing how people still seem to have higher expectations from a company who never gave a reason for these expectations. If you like the game you just have to deal with everything else that comes along with it being a Bethesda game.

I purchased Fallout 4 well knowing it's probably going to be full of bugs, the animations are going to look off, and it looks alright, it's serviceable and the performance unstable. Just like Skyrim, Fallout 3/NV, Oblivion, Morrowind. Can't say about any before Morrowind as I never played them.

I guess to sum it up just color me shocked people haven't come to figure out Bethesda games are glitchy, poorly programmed, unstable games after so many releases. But, they are fun and that's why they sell.

It's ok guys, it's bethseda. Lets give them 9s and a pass!

I'm close to the 20 hour mark on the XOne version, and aside from a few clipping issues, I have not encountered any bugs or noticeable framerate issues, game runs fine to me....maybe because I didn't get to the problem areas I don't know. But after 20 hours in, I wouldn't say this is a glitchy game....past Bethesda titles that had glitches those would show up quickly within a few hours of play.

Yep this setting wrecks FPS on pretty good computer hardware. went from 35-40 fps to 60+ everywhere once I turned this down.

can't imagine playing this game on low 20 FPS...

the idiot at bethesda who set the shadow distance at high = 3000 and ultra = 20000 needs to be fucking fired, thats a 5 fold increase from high to ultra, I had to set a middle ground in the ini files because this wrecks FPS aswell

What did you set the shadow distance at? Also, god rays may be an fps killer but anything under Ultra you notice some severe pixelation around your weapon, on trees etc

Any other developer and any other series besides TES....and this game would have been 5's across the board in reviews.

How ppl are ok with this is beyond me.

It's sad when I run AC: Unity a damn sight better than this game. I'm usually 60fps, but if you hit a city, or hell even an area with a couple buildings, the fps can drop suddenly.

@silversix_: Gotta pick your poison, I rather have silky smooth FPS and a few graphical oddities than the jerky/stuttering experience you get of FPS going up and down constantly. Plus it's not really noticeable unless you look directly at the sun in angles. as for shadows, 7000 is where I settled. It renders shadows far enough out of your vision with the least amount of FPS hit unlike that fcking monster of ultra=20000 setting.