Fallout 4 is reported to feature Nvidia's GameWorks graphics effects, fueling speculations among the gaming community that the inclusion of Nvidia's technology into the hotly anticipated post-apocalyptic role-playing game could possibly ruin the experience for them.
WCCFTech reports that Fallout series developer Bethesda Studios has teamed up with Nvidia to bring the GPU maker's graphics technologies to the PC version of its upcoming game. GameWorks is a program that provides developers access to Nvidia's CUDA tools, GPU profiling software and other resources, including a set of optimized libraries to allow developers to create certain graphic effects in their games.
"We've learned that Nvidia has been working with the studio to implement effects from the GameWorks library into the game for some time," WCCFTech reports. "These will include things ranging from ambient occlusion to shadowing and lighting effects."
It's unclear if all the effects will be added to the game all in one go at launch or if they will be added in smaller increments rolled out via post-game patches. Considering what happened to other GameWorks titles such as Assassin's Creed Unity and Batman: Arkham Knight, which both saw borked launches for the PC, some gamers believe it will be safer for Bethesda to introduce the effects in later updates to prevent what happened to other games.
GameWorks has a rocky history marred by scandals since launch, with some developers accusing Nvidia of taking control over the technical quality of their game by using its libraries to tip the scale of performance in favor of its own GPUs over those made by other manufacturers such as Intel and AMD. Electronic Arts' Johan Andersson, technical director of Frostbite, at one point even called it an "unusable black box."
@BartWronsk @JJcoolkl @thinkinggamer @TimothyLottes @kenpex Nvidia has lost huge amount of respect w/ the unusable black box GameWorks
— Johan Andersson (@repi) April 6, 2014
Oddly enough, the PC requirements for Fallout 4 call for different levels of performance. Bethesda says at least an Nvidia GTX 550 Ti 2GB or an AMD Radeon HD 7870 2GB are required for optimum graphics performance, even though the HD 7870 is faster than the GTX 550. It is actually more at par with the GTX 580 or the GTX 660. Still, it's not always the case that a game's minimum specs requirements match those of real life, so it is advisable not to pass judgment until the game has dropped.
WFCCTech also notes that, while GameWorks has been the subject of controversy in the past, Nvidia has clearly taken steps to work with developers and mitigate the problems brought about by its program. For instance, Nvidia opened up the option to license its source code in response to developer requests. More recently The Witcher 3 received improvements to its GameWorks implementation to add a slider for HairWorks and, in general, more graphics options for gamers.
Earlier this week, Bethesda announced that all 27 versions of Fallout 4 has been completed and ready to go. The game launches for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC on Nov. 10.
