This year so far has been filled to the brim with amazing games, coming from both independent studios and massive AAA powerhouses. However, the latter group continues to rack up quite the reputation for launching in semi-finished states, often with huge performance issues.
So, the question is: when will AAA titles, which often cost around $80 for base versions, stop releasing with horrible performance, failing to properly run even on the best hardware on the market?
First, an overview
205 offered us a slew of AAA titles, with more to come as we near the end of the year. Blockbuster games tend to aim for a Fall release window, but I wager we've seen more than enough to draw a conclusion on performance.
Released in February, Avowed was the first major offender in this regard. Over the past half-year or so, the game has managed to rack up about 76% positive reviews on Steam, with both positive and negative comments reflecting on the game's underlying performance issues. One player said Avowed featured “constant graphics and performance issues,” while another wrote that “the performance is unfortunately a bit rough.”
While I found it generally fun, I can't say I didn't run into constant issues like crashing, choppy gameplay, and lag, all of which could only be compensated (barely) by ramping up very unpleasant settings, or relying on upscaling, which itself ruins the image. This will become a common theme in this article, as most of these AAA games rely on Unreal Engine 5, a notoriously demanding and upscaling-reliant engine that's proving a true challenge for even the best PCs out there.
Worse cases were Monster Hunter Wilds and Wuchang: Fallen Feathers, the former still sitting on “Mixed” on Steam, with “Mostly Negative” recent reviews. Capcom's reputation for putting out technically horrific games is not new, but Wilds truly remains its worst release yet in terms of performance.
Though it uses its own proprietary engine, the company failed to properly optimize the title, with players having to rely heavily on using upscaling technologies, which, when paired with lowered settings, turn the game into a mudfest. Stuff is blurry, textures look horrible, and what should have been a visually stunning cinematic experience turns into a mushy PowerPoint presentation—which in many cases remains true to this day, months after release.
The other title, Wuchang, is also an Unreal Engine 5 title, which stressed my own RX 9070 XT to the utmost. Maxing out settings on a $700 GPU barely gave me 60 fps, and even when it did, it led to choppy gameplay. Lowering graphical settings helped improve average numbers, but barely solved any of the stuttering issues I had encountered. On lower-end hardware, which the majority of players have according to Steam's surveys, things get even worse.
The game is also “Mixed” on Steam, despite the devs' constant effort to improve performance, which even went as far as forcing players to use upscaling, therefore blurring out their game without them even having a say in it. Other improvements were included over time, though, but the Unreal Engine 5 platform is simply too taxing for most systems out there, and no amount of optimization can change that.
Last but not least is the most recent drop of this year—Borderlands 4. Though Gearbox advised players who had lower-end hardware to avoid trying to run the game, Borderlands 4 is proving a true headache for even the most capable builds.
“None of my friends can get the game to start past main menu,” said one negative review. “Terrible optimization. Another Unreal Engine 5 casualty,” chimed in another. What's more, the improvement in overall graphical fidelity is rather marginal over Borderlands 3, while none of the games mentioned here are all-too-great-looking, to be completely frank.
There was also the Oblivion remaster, which ran so horribly I cannot even begin to describe it, even on high-end systems, while carrying all the recognizable AI upscaling flaws, from nauseating ghosting to blurry visuals.
The only thing causing this strain on machines is the lack of optimization, proper system implementation, and a faulty engine that cares more about “looks” than performance, and even then doesn't deliver on the eyecandy.
Not every AAA game is the same
Some AAA launches did fare well, though. Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater, also built on Unreal Engine 5, has had great reviews and few complaints about the performance. Its heavy reliance on upscaling technologies, especially on consoles, is probably the saving grace, though I can't fault Konami for optimizing its game.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, even if not a proper AAA, is an Unreal Engine 5 title that runs beautifully on most machines—but also one blurred to all hell with in-built upscaling methods ruining the vibes, but not always. Hell is Us, also more double A than triple, generally ran fine for me, with minor hitches here and there—without any forced upscaling.
We are yet to see how The Outer Worlds 2 will perform, a game also created on the Unreal Engine 5, as well as Silent Hill f, though what I saw in my preview of the former does warrant some concern. Forced ray tracing via UE5's Lumen technology is bound to have detrimental effects on lower-end hardware.
We'll have to wait for the full release to judge, however, but the very fact that it's using UE5 is enough to make me worry, as I anticipate every game on the engine to run poorly. Even when they do work well, it's usually at the cost of visual fidelity, blur, upscaling, and AI artifacts that cannot be ignored.
So, when does it stop?
Even if we put the blame on Unreal Engine 5, someone had to have made that program to allow devs to use it in game development. Whoever is ignoring basic optimization and performance in favor of anything else is the one responsible, and in AAA corporate environments, the bureaucratic hierarchy doesn't allow us to pinpoint who truly is at fault.
Whether it's developer incompetence or men in suits making the wrong calls and not allowing designers to finish their work on time and properly, matters little. The latter seems to be the more likely, as we see examples above of small studios and AA-sized projects making tremendous strides even when using the bogeyman engine, so if small teams can do it, so can the big ones.
The AAA industry needs to step up its game and stop the unbroken chain of less-than-stellar launches with little to justify them. Meanwhile, the consumers need to reevaluate which games they buy and stop spending money on games they cannot play or run, which, as it turns out, are numerous.
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