14 DAY TRIAL // After causing quite a heated debate yesterday over the performance figures of Assassin's Creed Unity, which are 900p resolution and 30fps framerate, developer Ubisoft Montreal defends the 30fps figure, saying that 60fps is needed only in shooters and other such titles.
Unity is set to deliver quite a lot of changes to the core Assassin's Creed franchise, with developer Ubisoft Montreal overhauling the combat, the stealth, or the freerunning mechanics.
Unfortunately, all these tweaks have affected the game's performance, with the studio revealing yesterday that Unity runs at 900p and 30fps on both the PS4 and Xbox One.
Due to the massive controversy that ensued, Ubisoft has mentioned that the figures aren't final and that things could change.
Ubisoft now defends the 30fps framerate
Now, a new statement from Ubisoft Montreal's World Level Design Director, Nicolas Guerin, arrives via Techradar, in which he defends the 30fps framerate and even believes that Unity in 60fps would look as weird as The Hobbit movie in 48fps.
"At Ubisoft for a long time we wanted to push 60 fps. I don't think it was a good idea because you don't gain that much from 60 fps and it doesn't look like the real thing. It's a bit like The Hobbit movie, it looked really weird."
The industry is moving towards 30fps, apparently
Guerin even says that there's a trend in the industry for games to run at 30fps instead of 60fps, as it allows for a higher visual quality.
"And in other games it's the same - like the Rachet and Clank series [where it was dropped]. So I think collectively in the video game industry we're dropping that standard because it's hard to achieve, it's twice as hard as 30fps, and it's not really that great in terms of rendering quality of the picture and the image."
60fps is for shooters
Ubisoft Montreal's Alex Amancio, the creative director on Unity, also defends the 30fps framerate, saying that only shooters need 60fps, and even then it's just a number.
"30 was our goal, it feels more cinematic. 60 is really good for a shooter, action adventure not so much. It actually feels better for people when it's at that 30fps. It also lets us push the limits of everything to the maximum," he explains.
"It's like when people start asking about resolution. Is it the number of the quality of the pixels that you want? If the game looks gorgeous, who cares about the number?"
Ubisoft's position is certainly an intriguing one and after the backlash from fans, it's unclear just what it will do when Unity launches in November for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
