How to unlock The Evil Within’s framerate, and cheat

Sebastian? Um, crouching doesn’t make you invisible. Pretty sure it still knows you’re there. Just saying.

Bethesda have released a list of console commands and cheats you can employ in The Evil Within – most notably detailing how to remove the 30FPS cap and change the aspect ratio.

If things are a little bit too spooky and difficult for you, then fear not: the following list of console commands should give you an edge. Be warned that Bethesda’s description for one might constitute a minor spoiler, so I’ve changed the description. Just bear that in mind if you venture over to the official forums to read these direct from Bethesda.

First things first, you need to activate the console. Here’s how:

1. In Steam, right click on The Evil Within and select “properties” then under the General tab, hit “set launch options.”
2. Put this in to unlock the console: +com_allowconsole 1
3. Once the game has launched, hit the Insert key to bring down the developer console.

Done? Right, now you’re good to remove the framerate cap (or cheat your way to victory).

Framerate first. Open up the in-game console and type “R_swapinterval” (without the quotation marks). Follow this up with either -2, -1, or 0.

R_swapinterval -2 is the default, locking the framerate to 30FPS. R_swapinterval -1 sets the FPS limit to 60, although be warned that “there may be quirks”, which Bethesda is promising to fix. Finally, R_swapinterval 0 will fully remove the framerate limitations – but this will likely cause a lot of issues, and Bethesda has absolutely no intention of fixing these.

But maybe you just want to cheat. Well, God enables god mode – this effectively makes you completely invincible, and prevents certain enemies from using their instant-kill moves. Noclip lets you walk through walls. G_infiniteammo gives you unlimited ammo, as long as you have at least one bullet when you type that into the console. G_stoptime 1 completely stops time, although this apparently causes a bug with a UI element appearing on the screen (which Bethesda intends to fix). You can restart time by typing G_stoptime 0.

The rest are a little less major. Toggledebugcamera separates the camera from Sebastian and lets you freely look around the environment, which I guess might be nice for fancy screenshots. R_forceaspectratio followed by a number will set the aspect ratio to that number – R_forceaspectratio 2.5 is the default, while 0 is full screen, “but not ideal.” Bethesda reckons “1.8 or 2 is probably most comfortable for those who don’t want bars.” Com_showFPS turns on id’s native FPS counter, Startslowmotion 2 slows down time, and Stopslowmotion disables slow motion.

And that’s your lot. You can have a look at the list over on the Bethsoft forums if you want to, or if you don’t feel I’ve adequately explained them. It’s cool. I won’t cry.

The Evil Within is due out today. We still don’t have review code (despite expecting it a few hours ago), so we’ll likely have an impressions piece on the PC port tomorrow, with a full review to follow.

Update: The PC impressions piece is now up. There are also a couple of methods for fixing the game’s FOV out there.