Dishonored..1?

See that screenshot above? Go ahead, click it. It's full 4K resolution and it's from the 4 year old game, Dishonored. The game is a smooth, polished, stunning adventure  and runs like a champ on our gaming rig. Wait a second, you came for Dishonored 2 didn't you? Well, here's a sample of the beginning of that game right here

Yep. That's a sample of what you get with the latest title in the series. With the launch of Dishonored 2, an otherwise excellent game all fans have been awaiting is marred by having little to zero optimization on any platform, especially PC. Even on our overclocked system with the fastest watercooled GTX 1080, the game struggled to stay steady at 1440p, let along 4K resolution. Where games like Battlefield 1 launched with an absolutely gorgeous engine that runs like butter, it makes me wonder why developers continue to use engines that are clunky and slow, and as a further discredit, they don't optimize said engine.

Hope..?

Supposedly a performance patch is in the works but why is it taking so long? NVIDIA drivers have been out for weeks but the latest does nothing to alleviate our woes. We did gain a small increase in FPS by applying this on our NVIDIA cards:

On NVIDIA: Go to the NVIDIA Control Panel -> Manage 3D Settings -> Go to ‘Program Settings’ -> Select Dishonored 2 -> Override the default and change ‘Maximum pre-rendered frames’ to 1.

Don't get me wrong as Dishonored 2 is not a bad game or even an ugly game but it's definitely got it's warts. While the game is playable in most parts, some areas run smooth while the majority of the parts we've played, especially outdoors drop down into low FPS that definitely affects gameplay and experience. Is performance and optimization issues enough to hold off on a full review or should said issues affect review scores? It's a challenge that we see more and more as games are rushed to market. For now, we'll hold off on our full review until our performance is improved and we can do the game it's full resolution justice.