‘Fallout 4’ PS4 Players Report Severe Frame Rate Issues

Gamers lucky enough to get advance copies of the hotly anticipated Fallout 4 PS4 version are reporting serious frame rate issues, with the rate sometimes dropping to single digits in certain situations. The usual collection of YouTube stars and game reviewers have copies of Fallout 4 ahead of the official release this Tuesday November 10, and a couple of players have noted that in indoors and some combat situations, the frame rate drops significantly. This is reportedly true even for those who are playing the day one patch (V1.01) version.

A dedicated topic for these kinds of reports has been created over on the Neogaf message board, with some players posting video evidence of the slowdowns. As far as we can make out, the issues occur in any areas that have a loading time to get into. This would include buildings, some individual rooms within those buildings, and cages. Unfortunately, some players are reporting that these problems also affect the much touted combat of Fallout 4. PS4 previewers are saying that the frame rate problems get particularly bad when enemies are firing on the player, with one gamer complaining that their experience was seriously degraded by the fact that aiming and movement were seriously hampered by the frame rate problem.

According to industry insider, Tidux, the frame rate during some passages of gameplay on Fallout 4 PS4 can sometimes drop to single digits.

the graphics are oki. Unfortunately, there are places in the game where there are framedrops, sometimes they go down to single digits

— Tidux (@Tidux) November 8, 2015

Tidux, responding to a tweet from Bethesda marketing VP Pete Hines, mocked Hines’ assertion that Fallout 4 maintained a “solid 30 FPS.”

Lol #Fallout4 #PS4 pic.twitter.com/2kSelNa1Nl

— Tidux (@Tidux) November 8, 2015

Problems like these are not entirely unexpected. Bethesda has a far from spotless history with the Playstation platform. Similar problems with the Playstation ports of Oblivion and Skyrim achieved a legendary level of notoriety among gamers, but many fans were hoping that these problems would be left behind with the last generation of consoles, as the hardware of the PS4 is much more similar to its Microsoft counterpart than its previous iterations. There is a widespread belief among gamers that, for Bethesda, Fallout 4 PS4 is viewed as a sort of poor cousin next to its Xbox One and PC versions. Many gamers are blaming Bethesda for simply not prioritizing Fallout 4 PS4 and are venting their anger online.

There are others, though, who feel that all this criticism is a little bit harsh. Bethesda’s games are generally known to be buggy early in the release process, and many gamers are happy to accept this as a consequence of the sheer vastness of the studio’s ambitions when it comes to game and world creation. There are a number of optimistic voices online who believe that the frame rate problems will be patched ahead of the release date, but considering that this is two days away, this seems like a big ask. Nevertheless, a game the size of Fallout 4 is bound to have teething problems, and there are high hopes that Fallout 4 PS4 will have most of its major issues fixed very soon.

Fallout 4 PS4, Xbox One, and PC will be launching on Tuesday, November 10. It is being touted by various gaming magazines as one of the biggest and most complex gaming offerings ever made, and there has even been an article in Newsweek exploring the idea that the size and complexity of Fallout 4 could see game creation take significant steps toward being recognized as an established or mainstream artform in its own right. Of course, for long time fans of the franchise like this reporter, the status of Fallout as a work of art has never been in doubt.

https://youtu.be/GE2BkLqMef4

[Image via Bethesda]