For the single-player campaign, anyway
While Gears of War 4 is coming to both Xbox One and Windows 10 PC, the experiences across the two platforms won’t be identical. With the Play Anywhere functionality, players will be able to hop between the two versions freely to make the most of their preference or convenience. However, it’s on PC that people will find more options.
Speaking with Eurogamer, Gears of War 4‘s technical director Mike Rayner gives the mission statement for how developer The Coalition is tweaking the game for PC players. “Our focus on PC is to deliver a highly optimized, customizable experience first and foremost,” he said.
One of the highlights is that the single-player campaign will have an unlocked frame rate. Crank it up as high as you can. Rayner explains “Support for v-sync tearing has recently come to UWP and we will be able to offer proper unlocked frame-rate support that gamers expect on day one. With Unreal Engine 4 and our own custom modifications, we can take much better advantage of multiple CPU cores, alleviating the game from being CPU-bound and allowing more room for the GPU to shine with enhanced visual quality or higher frame rates. Single-player will not be locked to 30fps on PC.”
Other PC-only features in Gears of War 4 are: dynamic resolution support, increased texture resolution (up to 4K resolution for select texture groups), a benchmark mode, full keyboard/mouse input remapping, and far more comprehensive video settings.
By Rayner’s omission, it seems as if multiplayer will be locked to 60fps, the same frame rate that it targets on Xbox One. And, it’s unknown if cooperative campaign play will also be unlocked, or if it’s a perk that’s just for the lone wolves. Regardless, PC players now know that they have more options to make the most of their setup and that they won’t be restricted to the exact same experience that’s on Xbox One.
Gears of War 4’s PC-exclusive features detailed [Eurogamer]
