Dragons Dogma 2's performance dips were caused by the most relatable problem yet: NPCs who think too hard

gamesradar.com:

Does overthinking keep you up at night? Does the crippling burden of simply being cognisant stop you from running to the best of your abilities? Don't worry, you're far from alone. Dragon's Dogma 2 characters have been suffering from the same fate, but luckily for them, their psychic ailments can simply be patched, digitally.

Publisher Capcom has been smoothing over Dragon's Dogma 2's performance woes since it launched earlier this year, and the newest update lets players across PC and consoles choose between the expected graphics and performance modes so you can prioritize a hopefully more stable framerate. But in a follow-up interview with Famitsu, translated by Automaton, the development team delved into what was originally causing the performance dips under the hood.  

A new update for Dragon's Dogma 2 is available now on all platforms!- Changed the options in "Graphics" within the Options menu to "Prioritize Graphics" and "Prioritize Performance."For additional resolution and performance info on each option, please reference the chart… pic.twitter.com/qwztLSSd5iOctober 17, 2024

"In Dragon's Dogma 2, CPU power is allocated to process the thoughts of each NPC as well as the effect on character physics," developers said. "Therefore, in scenes where many NPCs appear at once, like in towns, the CPU load would get extremely high, which in some cases affected the frame rate. Since CPU was our bottleneck, GPU-related solutions like lowering the resolution had little effect on improving frame rate."

Capcom developers supposedly focused on "reworking how NPC's thoughts are processed and making small tweaks, including changing the order in which processes are executed."

Obviously, Dragon's Dogma NPCs don't 'think' in the same way that we do. They're not worrying about whether there's a rat in the toilet they're sat on, or if it's too late to turn their life around. Their 'thoughts' are probably just determining their schedule - when should they walk to the next town over