When Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End was originally unveiled at E3 last year, people were stunned- the game looked absolutely amazing, it looked fantastic, and Naughty Dog was promising the world: the trailer, running at 1080p and 60FPS in game engine, was absolutely representative of the final game, they said. That is what the game would look like.
That has, of course, turned out to not be the case- Naughty Dog may be talented, but they are limited by hardware resources, and the PS4, it seems, just cannot handle those kinds of graphics at 1080p and 60FPS. So the first thing we saw was a distinct step down in graphics during Uncharted 4’s PlayStation Experience gameplay demo (though it still looked gorgeous, it has to be said); then, Naughty Dog began to dilly dally about whether or not the final game would be 60FPS. Now, they have come out and all but confirmed that it won’t be.
“[It is] really fucking hard [to get 60FPS for Uncharted 4]. I mean, that’s true for any game. It was really hard on The Last of us Remastered. And that’s a game we have finished. And we know exactly what the end result needs to look like. And here we’re trying to push the boundaries of what this game can look, and do real time cutscenes… And trying to do sixty is really hard,” said Naughty Dog’s Bruce Straley in an interview with Game Informer.
“I don’t know. The objective for us is just to make the best experience. Right now we’re trying to push the look. And then we’ll see where we’re at, and we’ll reassess. We’re constantly making choices throughout production though. What’s gonna make the game feel best, and look its best.”
Personally, I am disappointed- it doesn’t sound like too long ago that Naughty Dog was singing the praises of 60 frames, outright saying they they could ‘not go back to 30FPS;’ technical ambition is all well and good, and everyone should obviously always strive to be the very best, but just maybe, they shouldn’t have openly boasted or made promises that they weren’t sure they could keep?
The tragedy is, a lot of Sony studios seem to be prioritizing resolution over framerate. They have their priorities all wrong.
