When it comes to DriveClub running at 30fps, Game Director Paul Rustchynsky has already defended this decision by saying last month, “I suspect a lot of people think we may have compromised the gameplay experience by choosing 30fps, but we’ve spent a huge amount of time minimizing the latency between the pad and what happens inside the game so you never feel disconnected, and you never feel like you’re getting a sub-par experience.”
As part of a new interview with Red Bull, Rustchynsky once again discussed 1080p/30fps in DriveClub, asking skeptics to play the game before making any final judgments about it:
I can see why players assume that a higher frame rate means better quality, because in pretty much every other technical statistic the higher numbers directly translate to better performance and more detail. With high frame rates though, you’ve got to sacrifice a lot of detail, and ultimately we’re really satisfied that we’ve got a great balance of a racing game that looks stunning and plays beautifully.
The real acid test for us was when we let thousands of gamers play our demo at E3 in Los Angeles this year, because everyone who cares about frame rate came away surprised and pleased with how fluid and responsive it feels when you’re driving. I’d encourage any skeptics to give it a go, because we’ve spent a lot of time and effort making sure that the game never drops a frame and that your inputs have no noticeable input latency, which even some of the games running at 60fps can’t guarantee.
With the PS4 still early in its life-cycle, Rustchynsky believes games will only look better as time progresses:
The PS4 is fantastic to work with because it’s been built in collaboration with studios like ours. We’ve been able to provide input into the hardware and system software design to make sure we get the best tools to make the greatest games we can imagine. Looking back at what we’ve been able to do in the past two years, and how we’re continually finding new ways of getting even more performance out of the hardware, I don’t think we’re anywhere close to reaching the limit of what the PS4 can do yet.
After DriveClub launches exclusively for the PlayStation 4 on October 7 in North America and October 8 in Europe, Evolution has “lots of innovative ideas to extend the experience and we’ve already announced the powerful dynamic weather system we’ve been working on, which is just one of the ways we’ll be expanding the game. We have more lined up to unveil in the coming weeks and months, too.” As for what the post-launch DLC will be, Rustchynsky said we can expect “new cars and tracks, along with lots of surprises and exciting events.”
We already know Evolution Studios isn’t adding Project Morpheus support to DriveClub, but as Rustchynsky revealed, the development team has been working with it for some time. “Project Morpheus is a fantastic piece of hardware and it’s something that really excites me as a gamer,” he said. “Evolution has a dedicated team who have been working on it from day one, so we have a keen eye on it – but it’s not something we’re looking at for DriveClub just now.”
