When Darksiders 2: Deathinitive Edition was confirmed for release on current-gen consoles, we were told that the game would run at 30 frames-per-second and will be 1080p. Now explaining why the remaster didn’t target 60fps, Gunfire Games’ Design Director, John Pearl, has told GamingBolt that the studio did consider 60fps, but it would have posed a lot of challenges including having to redo some levels from scratch. Additionally, it may have resulted in a poor experience overall.
When we started out, we looked at what it would take to achieve 60fps but we knew it would be a very challenging undertaking. It sounds easy especially as other games have achieved it but it really depends on how the game was built and how versatile the engine is on console. In the end we would have had to redo some levels from scratch to achieve 60fps. Some areas in the game currently run well over 60fps while others run at 30fps. Running the game unlocked allowing the max frame rate would end up resulting in a lot screen tearing and an overall poor experience for the players.
We’re also told that one of the factors that was taken into consideration was the original game’s engine, which wasn’t optimized to run at 60fps.
Additionally, to get an engine running at a solid 60fps on consoles it has to be a goal when creating the engine and the assets or at least a lot of serious work has to be put into it to get it running at 60fps. The engine that both of the Darksiders games run on were not optimized to run at 60fps on console nor was the data optimized for that. There would have had to have been major overhauls to the way things were rendered at the core of the engine and some major changes to some of the visuals. There are technical cheats out there that would allow the game to run at 60 fps at the cost of a variable resolution. We decided a locked 1080p at 30fps was more important to us than the 60fps with major drops in resolution.
Darksiders 2: Deathinitive Edition is available for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. You can check out our review of the game here.
[Source: GamingBolt]
