So I had preordered Dark Souls 2 on steam. Now keep in mind I have a semi decent laptop but not great, so I kind of expected Dark Souls 2 to not look great and I can deal with that. My problem is there are certain effects of the game that are not appearing at all and I did not know if other people are having this problem. Things like the fire effect in the bonfire, the glowing white orbs over the items you can pick up, summon signs, bloodstains, the orange player messages, and the fire on the torch are all the things I have found that do not even appear in the game. I was walking around and then I saw a on screen prompt to pick up an item. I did not see any white orb, also when I lit the bonfire, it made the noise of a lit bon fire but it was not actually showing as lit.
Regardless to say, this is a problem that needs to be addressed for me to even play the game. So I was wondering if you awesome gents would have recommendations on how to fix this problem. My my in game video settings are all on medium or low. I have tried toggling with different settings and have seen no change, which is why I think that it is a bug that needs to be fixed as oppose to my hardware. Unless it is my hardware which I would be kinda disappointed with a serious game mechanic is taken out because of hardware.
So any helpful advice would be awesome. I am going to attempt to uninstall and redownload it but I am open to other options.
It could be that you may be using integrated graphics instead of the dedicated GT 610M. However, both those GPUs seem much too underpowered to properly run a PC game at medium, and maybe in some cases even low.
I tested the game on my laptop running a GT 730M 2GB and it runs very decently between 27-35 FPS with everything on medium.
Make sure that you're using the GT 610M instead of the integrated graphics in the Nvidia control panel. You can set the global graphic settings to use the GT 610M instead of the integrated if that indeed is the case.
So like I am not sure where I would be on this actually. My laptop is a Lenovo U410 idea pad. And I must shamefully say I have no idea what you guys are talking about. Sorry only got really interested in computers very recently....
Ok so like I better educated myself on said topic like a civilized human being and I now can answer your questions. For one, My Lenovo has the NVIDIA® GeForce® 710M (1GB) for graphics and is probably part of the problem. I aslo followed Nerodante's advice and put the settings on low (it was set on medium because it "claimed" my laptop had enough balls for that.) but I saw no change in the initial problem. So yeah... what it sounds like to me is the game is basically unplayable until I get a better computer...which kinda makes me mad...
Yeah, the GeForece 710M is on the very low end of graphics capability. It could be that, but also it could be a bad install since what you described seemed like missing graphics, on the other hand, like I said before, the 710M is just not up to the job.
Try a reinstall just to rule out the missing graphics.
It sucks that the game may be unplayable until you upgrade, but it's a lesson that you'll never forget :P
I'm not sure I can help you with your problem but do you remember how large the download size is for that game? Would appreciate it and good luck with your issue!
Thanks for the help guys I did some research and apparently it was a semi-common bug when you preordered it on steam and did the early install. Sorry for not replying sooner. I have been offline for a while. No internet in the boonies.