A Word of Warning! You’re going to want to back up both your saved game files and your config files before you start making adjustments, just in case anything goes belly-up. The config files are located here:
C:\Users\[Your User Name]\Documents\My Games\Dishonored\DishonoredGame\Config
Back up that file before you start messing with it; mess with it at your own risk.
To adjust the files, you’ll need to open them in a text editor, preferably something like Notepad. Another general tip: Notepad only searches in one direction at a time with its “Find” feature, so if you can’t find a line, make sure you try searching “Up” as well as “Down.”
Disable Startup Movies
First off, you can get rid of the corporate logos when you boot up the game pretty quickly.
Open DishonoredEngine.ini and find the following line using the “Find” function:
bForceNoStartupMovies
Set the value to “TRUE” and the game will automatically skip the movies. The line should look like this:
bForceNoStartupMovies=TRUE
Alternatively, you can disable each of the movies individually. In DishonoredEngine.ini, find these lines:
StartupMovies=Black_266ms
StartupMovies=ZenimaxLegal
StartupMovies=ZenimaxLegalFR
StartupMovies=LogoBethesda
StartupMovies=LogoArkane
StartupMovies=UE3_logo
StartupMovies=Legal
StartupMovies=Loading
You can disable any line in a .ini file (or add comments that won’t be read as part of the code) by adding ; to the front of any line. So in order to disable the startup movies, you can just change them to look like this:
;StartupMovies=Black_266ms
;StartupMovies=ZenimaxLegal
;StartupMovies=ZenimaxLegalFR
;StartupMovies=LogoBethesda
;StartupMovies=LogoArkane
;StartupMovies=UE3_logo
;StartupMovies=Legal
;StartupMovies=Loading
Adjust Field of View
Dishonored allows you to adjust your field of view settings in the options by default, increasing it to as high as 85. It’s possible to access higher fields of view, however. The quickest and easiest way to do this is to bind field of view shifts to different keys. Below, we’ve bound the controls to the F10 and F12 keys, because they’re not used elsewhere (you may need to disable Steam from taking screenshots with the F12 key, however).
Open DishonoredInput.ini, and find the group of commands starting with “m_PCBindings”
At the bottom of those commands, you can add your own binding key commands. For our example, we’ve added two. The first, bound to F10, switches the FOV to 85, the maximum available in the in-game options menu. The second, bound to F12, switches FOV to a value you can name — just replace X with whatever value you want. For a pretty intense FOV, go with 105 or 110.
m_PCBindings=(Name=”F10″,Command=”FOV 85″,Control=False,Shift=False,Alt=False)
m_PCBindings=(Name=”F12″,Command=”FOV X”,Control=False,Shift=False,Alt=False)
Now, when you press F12, you’ll be able to switch to a much larger FOV than what’s available in the game, and you can switch it back on the fly by hitting F10. You can do this in reverse, too — if you’d like to have an instant zoom function, you can replace “X” with a lower FOV (the game’s binocular zoom feature is set to an FOV of 35), then use that key to zoom in. However, note that there’s an in-game upgrade you can locate and purchase that gives you the zoom option; if you want to play Dishonored as a purist, you should know that making your own FOV zoom is technically cheating.
Higher-Resolution Shadows
In DishonoredEngine.ini, find the following lines:
MaxShadowResolution
MaxWholeSceneDominantShadowResolution
And set their values to 4096. The result should look like this:
MaxShadowResolution=4096
MaxWholeSceneDominantShadowResolution=4096
Keep in mind that this might affect your performance.
Disable Framerate Smoothing
This might help you get better performance if you’re having some graphical issues. In DishonoredEngine.ini, find this line:
bSmoothFrameRate=TRUE
If it’s set to TRUE, you can disable it by setting it to FALSE, like this:
bSmoothFrameRate=FALSE
Disable Shadows and Lighting to Boost Performance
Dishonored doesn’t seem to be too graphic-intensive, but just in case you’re looking to turn down any flashy visuals in favor of performance, you may be able to squeeze some more power out of your machine with a few graphical downgrades.
In DishonoredEngine.ini, find these lines (all of which are under [SystemSettings] but not all of which are together):
DynamicLights
DynamicShadows
bAllowLightShafts
Set them all to “False.” The lines should look like this:
DynamicLights=False
DynamicShadows=False
bAllowLightShafts=False
If you’ve already knocked your graphical settings down to the minimums and are still having troubles with framerate, turning off those settings may help.