Speaking to Official PlayStation Magazine, Guerrilla Games lead designer Eric Boltjes spoke about the power of the PlayStation 4 for Killzone: Shadow Fall, revealing how 24 enemy AIs can be featured on screen at once with the 25th enemy causing a frame rate drop.
“For me as a game designer what I was really interested in was getting more gameplay elements on screen. More enemy types at the same time, more weapon types. Bigger areas. For me that gives us a lot more ingredients to play around with. Previously we were limited. You could have six or seven guys on screen, only two types, and it had to be at a specific range”
Boltjes was asked about the enemy AI limit and stated, “Yes. It’s about 24 but that’s just enemy AI. And there are other types of enemy AI, lots of destructibility, lots of dynamic objects. Those have much higher limits but the amount of AI is around 24″. The 25th enemy that comes on screen causes “framerate drops” according to Boltjes. He then stated that, “They’re all autonomous, they create their own effects. They’re busy little bees.” He concluded, “as soon as you push it over [24] then we get performance issues”.
Killzone: Shadow Fall releases on November 15th in North America and November 29th in Europe when the PS4 launches.
