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The Evil Within update enables 60 FPS without any "glitches"

The Evil Within

I was baffled by the decision to release The Evil Within with a 30 FPS cap. Why should my (admittedly hypothetical) blisteringly-fast PC be artificially limited to a frame rate it's easily capable of exceeding? Didn't I spend hours back in the day benchmarking Quake, trying to squeeze as many frames out my hardware as I possibly could? Whatever the reason for the cap, it's academic now, as today's Steam update has officially done away with it.

It was actually done away with in mid-October when the debug console commands were revealed to the world, but sidestepping the cap in that fashion was not without risks: Bethesda warned that playing with frame rates and letterboxing could result in "quirks," although it added that it would fix them eventually.

And so it has. The patch released today adds a "frame lock setting," allowing players to toggle between 30 and 60 FPS, and also to toggle the letterbox bars on and off. More importantly, it takes care of the aforementioned gameplay and visual glitches associated with changing the settings through the debug console.

The patch also ensures that achievements will work properly when the console is enabled, incorporates a fix for starting the game in windowed mode on its first run, and makes "minor localization fixes," none of which is terribly sexy as updates go. But being able to play at a decent frame rate without having to worry about "issues?" That's good stuff, should it all work as promised.

Andy Chalk