In anticipation of the release of “Heavensward”, the upcoming expansion for “Final Fantasy XIV”, Square Enix have released a benchmarking tool that should help players figure out if they would be capable of running the game properly. This is becoming common practice among some developers and publishers lately, as the high-powered configurations that are so common on the PC market have also led to some seriously technologically impressive games that require strong machines to run.
With the special tool, players can verify that they are capable of running the game properly and that it won’t lag or stutter on their machines before purchasing it. The tool is 1.6 GB as it’s packed full of resources that are used in the presentation, so players should be patient in waiting for the download. On the other hand, this tool is pretty much a one-time use thing so it can be safely deleted once the benchmark has been completed.
Of course, a benchmark tool can never give the full picture when it comes to testing the performance of a game, and there will always be some discrepancies with the final product. That’s because a game is so dynamic in nature that it’s impossible to predict all behaviors that can occur in it. At the same time, a good benchmarking utility will at least test the game in more extreme circumstances, in order to ensure that the user’s machine can handle the average regular scenes.
What will players get with the new expansion specifically? It brings various types of new content to the game, including flying mounts as well as various new other special gameplay features. It’s supposed to be a pretty major extension of the base gameplay actually, and players have been anticipating this release quite eagerly.
It’s also going to include various graphical upgrades for the base game, most notably moving it up from DirectX 10 to DirectX 11, and all the goodies that it brings. This not only means better graphics, but also better performance, as DX 11 managed to make better use of hardware resulting in improved rendering quality for the same specifications.
There is about a month to go until the expansion launches, with the official release date set for June 23, and so far there have been no indications that a delay might occur. Quite on the contrary, Square Enix have been moving forward with the development of the expansion and so far it looks like we’re going to see it on time.