I know some people will think this should be in Sony discussion, but frame rates apply to every system with Nintendo ironically despite having the weakest hardware having the most consistent 60fps support so I've put it in General.
I read a lot of "30fps is fine" on here with people complaining that 60fps means the graphics aren't as good as they could be. So I found it interesting to see Naughty Dog's take on the difference 60fps makes to the Last of Us and how they hope 60fps will become the future now. Could this be a hint that 60fps is the target for Uncharted 4?
Why is 60fps important?
"It was a toss-up before; people were saying that you lose quality and graphics and what not," Gregory said when asked why Naughty Dog feels that it's such an important component for the game. "But being able to compare apples to apples like we have now with The Last of Us, going back and playing the 30 Hz version feels, to quote some people in the office, 'broken.' There's something that can't be captured in screenshots and playing an adventure game where you just walk around and experience the world at the smooth 60 Hz. [Editor's note: throughout the interview, the Naughty Dog team used fps and hertz interchangeably] You really just have to feel it."
"There was an internal debate just over the artistic-ness of going 30 or 60, and whether or not it would feel weird. Pretty much every person who had said, 'I'm a 30 Hz person, I don't know if I could play it at 60.' When they finally saw it, they said, 'Nevermind, I'm convinced.' We do so much with the animations of the character to convey emotion to the player so when you talk about what's going on with Joel and getting the player to empathize with him. At 60 frames, seeing his breathing change, or when a Clicker shows up and you hear that sound and the way he moves changes, because all the animations are that much more fluid, I think that comes across even more now. That's going to change the play experience just a little bit in the way the players experience that."
You'll be able to see the difference yourself soon enough. In addition to the stream of comparison videos we'll be putting together, Naughty Dog director Neil Druckmann mentioned on Twitter, "Since some people asked for it, we added an optional 30fps mode (gameplay & cinematics). My pref is 60fps all the way."
Will 60fps become the new standard in games?
"We hope so," Gregory said. "It used to just be that first-person shooters were 60 by default, but a lot of other games didn't feel the need for it. I think we're showing that it does make a difference even in a non-FPS type game. And one question that's been fielded on Twitter as a follow-up to the 60 Hz, is whether or not we're always at 1080p. Some games have been doing the whole adaptive resolution where they change the resolution based on what's going on. We are always at 1080p."
Full article discussing other aspects of the Remaster in the link.
Will point out one thing though, 30hz? um... the number of times your image refreshes on your TV remains constant regardless of a game's frame rate. Hope that's just dodgy GameSpot journalism :p
http://www.gamespot.com/articles/the-last-of-us-remastered-devs-discuss-making-60fp/1100-6421147/
RIP Dad 25/11/51 - 13/12/13. You will be missed but never forgotten.
