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You have probably heard about how bad PC version of The Callisto Protocol due to optimization issues caused by shader compilation, and now the technicians at Digital Foundry have added fuel to the fire with a detailed video analysis.
Alexandre Battaglia, one of the contributors to Digital Foundry, explained:
The Callisto Protocol on PC is sadly under-optimized. There are many problems with this game on PC, but the main one is that The Callisto Protocol on PC is an Unreal Engine 4 game that does not have shaders pre-compiled, so like almost all Unreal Engine games in The Callisto Protocol is experiencing terrible lags on PC. Every new object or enemy in the game causes huge stutters. The game’s opening scene was almost comical with the frequency and severity of the shader compilation stuttering. To sum it up, this problem completely destroys The Callisto Protocol on PC and any attempt by the game to create a mood or engage you with its story.
It is important to note that pauses and stutters will be even longer on weaker processors. For example, a huge 400ms hitch on the Core i9 12900k turned into an even bigger 750ms hitch on the Ryzen 5 3600.
If you still manage to deal with stuttering on your PC, you will run into other problems as well. The Callisto Protocol is barely CPU intensive and very similar to Gotham Knights, another extremely problematic Unreal Engine 4 release.
It’s not all that bad, as the game does indeed look very good at max settings, and the sound design is noted as excellent.
However, we can only hope that Striking Distance Studios and all other developers using Unreal Engine for their games will take a cue from Sumo Digital, which promptly fixed the stuttering issues when running Sackboy: A Big Adventure on PC.