The Evil Within - A Poorly Optimized Id Tech 5 Game

Well Bethesda released the system requirements for The Evil Within, and it's another poorly optimized Id Tech 5 game. Here is the list.

Link - http://www.bethblog.com/2014/09/25/t…ements-within/

On the heels of our Gone Gold announcement, we’ve put the final touches on the recommended PC requirements for The Evil Within. These specifications are listed as “recommended” as they are the settings we’ve determined ensure that your gameplay experience plays as intended by the development team.
Note: We do not have a list of minimum requirements for the game. If you’re trying to play with a rig with settings below these requirements (you should plan to have 4 GBs of VRAM regardless), we cannot guarantee optimal performance.

Recommended PC System Specifications

• 64-bit Windows 7/Windows 8
  i7 with four plus cores
• 4 GBs RAM
• 50 GB of hard drive space*
• GeForce GTX 670 or equivalent with 4GBs of VRAM
• High Speed Internet Connection
  Steam account and activation

*It’s worth noting that the 50 GB of space required is for the PC install. When the installation is complete, the game will take up ~41 GB of HDD space.

I'm going to quote one the replies for the requirements.

So let me get this straight, you’re releasing a game with graphics that don’t appear to be any better than comparable titles, running on an engine supposedly designed around the concept of texture streaming, yet it demands an amount of VRAM that 1.64% of users on Steam have? Firstly, are you insane, and secondly, how exactly have you managed this?

And here was Bethesda's reply.

You really should have 4 GB of VRAM to run it.

EDIT: Talking further with folks here, it sounds like you might be able to play with under 4 GB VRAM, but it’s still not recommended.

Talking with folks on the team, you can give it a go with 2 GB VRAM, but it’s definitely not recommended. As mentioned in the blog post, we’re not posting minimum requirements, because we’re looking to share requirements that show the game the way it was meant to be played.

I have a feeling that "Buy it anyway, you might be able to run it with just 2GB VRAM… maybe…" was not the answer people over there wanted to hear.

Surely someone will make a mod or fix to allow it to better function on PC. That sounds like a complete f'up.

The textures should look great if they require 4GB vram.

I'm all for higher specs for pc games but not if there artificially inflated due to poor optimization.

Just more sign it's geared to consoles. now 'next gen' is really next gen and finally is on par with PC top end. It won't last long obviously.

I'm more concerned about the actual gameplay, frankly.

With all the talk in the past of how PS4 and XBone architecture is closer to a PC than a console, the developers tooks this as an opportunity to make games for these 'PC' console machines and, without any hint, thought of how a practical PC works or optimisation, took the exact code from these consoles and dumped it on PC. It is much easier and cheaper for them.

So it turns out that the new PC-like architecture of consoles is a curse to PC gaming rather than a blessing.

Even 100GB of HD CGI rubbish will not help if the gameplay is crap or very short.

From what I've seen of it so far, this game doesn't look worthy of such high system requirements.

Almost as bad as another Unity Engine game that looks like it came from the year 1999, but forces your latest gen video card up to 80 celsius.

Never even heard of this thing till today…..and frankly it doesn't look good. Pass.

It certainly sounds crazy if it needs 4GB VRAM. My main concern is that previous id Tech 5 based games (RAGE and Wolfenstein - The New Order) had severe issues when released due to OpenGL driver bugs. Wolf ran extremely poorly on my 580 SLI system and I had to turn a lot of the settings down to make it playable. My new 980 GTX on the other hand can run it with everything maxed out.