Man, that’s why armored core blew me away. Completed the whole game, at launch, maximum settings and I don’t recall a single frame drop. 3060, with very mediocre other hardware. I know there’s a lot to be said about map sizes and instanced missions, but with as fantastic as that game looks and plays…
Same happened with Doom Eternal. The graphics were a show stopper when the game came out and the game didn’t even stutter. It’s so well optimized that I’m told you can even play it with integrated graphics.
It’s almost like having a giant open world comes with some massive drawbacks. I’m pretty fatigued over open world games tho so that may just be me.
Frankly, open world sucks. I’ve played Far Cry 2 sometime last year because one of my friends spoke so highly of it and I’ve spent more time driving around than actually shooting anything. It served no purpose other than wasting player’s time. Missions were rather basic too. And nothing in the reviews of more modern examples showcase that anything has changed.