Bethesda Game Studios’ recent expansion to Fallout 4, entitled Far Harbor, has received a barrage of criticism due to the performance problems that players seem to be encountering on console. Well, on PS4 at least.
While the Xbox One version does see a hit in performance with drops to the mid-20 FPS mark in some occurrences during some sections that use the radioactive fog used in the exterior locations of Far Harbor, it is nowhere near as bad as the PS4 version of the game.
According to Digital Foundry, this is all due to the use of a double-buffer V-sync only on PS4, Sony’s machine seems to suffer extraordinarily in the exterior locations of Far Harbor. While Xbox One does reach near the 30fps mark quite often, PS4 can see drops to below 15fps on occasions due to the use of this particular V-Sync solution.
The PC version also seems to have seen drops in framerate during Far Harbor although the obvious benefits of PC gaming can mean that users with the appropriate hardware won’t see any issues with this. The problems behind the performance of Fallout 4, however, are either down to poor optimization or the old, creaking Creation Engine bursting under pressure. Hopefully, Bethesda’s next title can finally utilize a new engine so that we can have a Bethesda title that performs suitably for a modern console game.
Bethesda are aware of the issues on both consoles and PC and are currently working on a fix for the title with an unannounced release date.
Lewis is a games journalist, freelance gaming and consumer-tech journalist. They contributed 344 articles to ICXM between 2015–2017, focused on opinion pieces, game reviews, Windows and PC, and Xbox news: has since served as Editor-in-Chief at StealthOptional and Gaming Editor at MSPoweruser, with bylines at Gfinity Esports and FRVR.