Rebel Wolves and Bandai Namco are doing a bit of light crisis management today, announcing that The Blood of Dawnwalker will receive a 60FPS performance mode for consoles with a day 1 patch.
It came out last week that this open world action RPG adventure currently has a 30FPS Quality mode by default and a 40FPS Balanced mode for those with 120Hz capable TVs and screens. This was confirmed by Rebel Wolves on Friday, but then the outcry that followed has pushed them to announce that they are prioritising a 60FPS mode that was already in the works, but not fully tested.
On social media, the studio has said:
“On Friday, we answered your questions about console performance with what we knew we could confidently deliver at launch.
Performance Mode was already in the works, but it was still being tested. We simply weren’t ready to promise it yet.
We heard your feedback. It was clear how much this mattered to many of you, so we focused on finishing the next round of tests. Those results gave us the confidence we needed to confirm Performance Mode for Day 1.”
The 60FPS mode will be available for PS5, PS5 Pro and Xbox Series X. PC can obviously do whatever they want, and Xbox Series S has no real hope of doing this.
It’s important to note that they describe all the graphics modes as being a “target”, so it’s possible that 60FPS Performance could have more variability than the 30FPS Quality mode.
This generation has really seen performance become a driving factor for console gamers, with the long cross-gen window giving a lot of people more time to get used to 60FPS performance modes and options. Developers will still generally create a game with 30FPS in mind – you really do need it to be able to show off your best graphics on console – but also then have to try to scale the game visuals down to offer up a higher performance mode.
So, a bit of a kerfuffle and one that can hopefully be put to bed now, because Dawnwalker does look like it could be rather special. Coming from Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, formerly of CD Projekt Red and one of the directors on The Witcher 3, it brings together a new fantasy world with vampires in the 14th century.
I went hands on a couple months ago and came away rather impressed. In our The Blood of Dawnwalker preview I said, “In my time with The Blood of Dawnwalker, I only just scratched the surface of what it promises. There’s so many more fantastical elements and creatures to encounter, so much potential within the approach to time and how it can affect the story unfolding, and I’m keen to see just how powerful Coen can get by the end of the game. But most importantly, I really want to see more and am excited for what Rebel Wolves has created.”
Source: press release
