Back 4 Blood falsely advertised ultrawide support (based on beta)
Added 2021-08-06 03:18:22 +0000 UTCIn the PC trailer, ultrawide and multi-monitor support was one of the six key points.
At about 0:53, the video also showed the game go from 16:9 pillarboxed to hor+ 21:9. There was no FOV reduction. Now in the beta the game resorts to the usual Unreal Engine 4 behavior by vert- scaling, which likely makes the game completely unplayable at multi-monitor resolutions given the maximum FOV value of 120 horizontal.
The good news is that there is a solution despite the game being protected by Easy Anti-Cheat. The trusted way of the YFOV command works here. For the beta, you can navigate to %LOCALAPPDATA%\Back4BloodBeta\Saved\Config\WindowsNoEditor\ and create Engine.ini, then have the following as its content:
[/Script/Engine.LocalPlayer]
AspectRatioAxisConstraint=AspectRatio_MaintainYFOV
Alternatively, the value of FieldOfView= in GameUserSettings.ini in that folder can be increased past its in-game limit of 120 to compensate for the vert- scaling in the event developers decide to disable the first solution.
Now to the bad news. The use of Easy Anti-Cheat means that no modding of the game is possible, and so if the vert- scaling is not a mistake and the developers are set on sticking to it, they will surely disable the tweaks I described when they start to spread among the public. This makes buying the game a high risk unless playing it at 16:9 pillarboxed is acceptable. Personally, I would definitely not pre-order, wait for the release, see the users' reports or try the game on Game Pass, then think of whether to pay for it.
P.S. Let me know if you can't get into the beta, as I may have a key or more to spare!
Update: There are now reports of the weapon model also being cropped with no fix in sight. I could look into it the way I did for The Outer Worlds but not with the anti-cheat in place. Oh well!
