Why DmC runs 30 FPS on consoles, according to Capcom
DmC is capped at 30 FPS on consoles, but according to director Hideaki Itsuno, the game will feel like it's running at 60 FPS – and it all comes down to mind games.
"60 FPS is a speed the brain and the eye can catch up with and understand," Itsuno tells Eurogamer. "But at 30 FPS there's a technique where you take advantage of the brain's ability to fill in the blanks. So even though you have it running at 30 FPS, you create the motions and the poses in such a way that the brain will naturally fill in what would have been the extra frames."
Of course 60 FPS "would be better," Itsuno says, but DmC's button-response design and visual style make 30 FPS just as good. DmC features living, moving environments that would have been forced static if Capcom and Ninja Theory pushed for 60 FPS on consoles, Ninja Theory technical art director Stuart Adcock adds. Remember, the PC version of DmC does run at 60 FPS.
Previous games in the series, such as Devil May Cry 4, run at 60 FPS on consoles. Devil May Cry 4 was built with Capcom's MT Framework engine, while DmC uses Epic's Unreal Engine 3. This engine swap contributes to the 30 FPS cap, Adcock says: "We were limited a little bit by the engine capabilities."
"We did a lot of work trying to simulate the effects of fluid motion even at 30. We simulated more motion blur and made sure the animations had solid in-betweens and nothing that might feel too jerky," Adcock says.
