A Plague Tale: Requiem - The Rats of Us [XBSX|S, PC, PS5, XGP, NX]

[Inuhanyou]

I will proclaim the opposite of Sean here, that there is nothing worthwhile a 30fps only game on the current consoles would offer that can't be made with a good enough representation at 60fps.

People argued plague tale requiem was that until it wasnt. And in that case you get a 30fps mode for higher graphics and res in exchange for temporal stability of 60fps. And everyone is still catered to.

Zelda just came out. And is still more novel and creative with it's physics and systems. This game could easily run on PS5 and series x with much better graphics and 60fps to boot. This says to me that The problem isn't the devs being hamstrung at 60 but other issues for them.

 

[assurdum]

There's nothing more flexible about this current hardware necessarily(outside of maybe being x86 and thus has easier portability with other major platforms). And yes, it really is a choice. If developers have a certain ambition that's not about hitting 60fps and it turns out hardware limitations prevent 60fps, then that was a choice to prioritize ambition over performance. If 60fps was the priority, developers will design their games to ensure they can hit that target, which again, is a choice.

And fair enough if you're talking about anybody who expected this 60fps mode wouldn't come with notable graphics reductions. I haven't seen them, but I have no doubt some will exist.

Can you remind a generation of console which can send 60 fps in almost every of their games? And of course 60 fps it's developers choice who said it's not but 60 fps wasn't so feasible on console on the past aside in the 2d era. Call notable graphic reduction is very opinable especially considered the target achieved. You don't see anybody complained about it probably because you don't read other forum outside there.

 

[Seanspeed]

I will proclaim the opposite of Sean here, that there is nothing worthwhile a 30fps only game on the current consoles would offer that can't be made with a good enough representation at 60fps.

Just not at all true, but I will understand that the vast majority of people have an extremely limited imagination and can barely ever see beyond what they can currently see.

If the first two years of the XB1/PS4 generation was just a bunch of X360/PS3 games at 60fps, people might well have been making the exact same argument you are, unable to recognize what more could be done with the hardware simply cuz they hadn't seen it done yet.

These current CPU's are especially not 'unlimited' in power or anything close. There's no end of ways developers could choose to use that CPU power with the design of their games to tax the hardware to a point where 30fps becomes necessary.

 

[Seanspeed]

Can you remind a generation of console which can send 60 fps in almost every of their games? And of course 60 fps it's developers choice who said it's not but 60 fps wasn't so feasible on console on the past aside in the 2d era. Call notable graphic reduction is very opinable especially considered the target achieved. You don't see anybody complained about it probably because you don't read other forum outside there.

"Who said it's not a choice?" Vast majority of people I talk to about the subject. People really just dont understand that framerate is not tied to the hardware or generation, but on what the developers want to do with the hardware. I constantly see people in disbelief that a game on new console hardware couldn't be 60fps, but that could easily be the case if developers wanted to push the hardware.

I mean, here's John Linneman(of DF) basically making the same point a while back:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1251399507528597505

And also correctly pointing out that it wasn't the XB1/PS4 era with their admittedly poor CPU's that made 30fps common, but the one before that, on console hardware that was generally considered quite impressive for its time.

I am on the side of "We should absolutely accept 30fps games again" because I dont want to see games being limited by some demand of '60fps or die'. I dont think that's a healthy view for the community to have, and I dont want to see these new, reasonably impressive consoles be limited in what they are really capable of. There's always PC gaming for those that want it all...

 

[assurdum]

"Who said it's not a choice?" Vast majority of people I talk to about the subject. People really just dont understand that framerate is not tied to the hardware or generation, but on what the developers want to do with the hardware. I constantly see people in disbelief that a game on new console hardware couldn't be 60fps, but that could easily be the case if developers wanted to push the hardware.

I mean, here's John Linneman(of DF) basically making the same point a while back:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1251399507528597505

And also correctly pointing out that it wasn't the XB1/PS4 era with their admittedly poor CPU's that made 30fps common, but the one before that, on console hardware that was generally considered quite impressive for its time.

I am on the side of "We should absolutely accept 30fps games again" because I dont want to see games being limited by some demand of '60fps or die'. I dont think that's a healthy view for the community to have, and I dont want to see these new, reasonably impressive consoles be limited in what they are really capable of. There's always PC gaming for those that want it all...

Good for you. But I don't understand what it has to do to my previous post... personally I'm glad developers find a way to continue to push 60 fps this generation and hope they never abandon such attitude because gameplay is far better with such output.

 

[Inuhanyou]

Just not at all true, but I will understand that the vast majority of people have an extremely limited imagination and can barely ever see beyond what they can currently see.

If the first two years of the XB1/PS4 generation was just a bunch of X360/PS3 games at 60fps, people might well have been making the exact same argument you are, unable to recognize what more could be done with the hardware simply cuz they hadn't seen it done yet.

These current CPU's are especially not 'unlimited' in power or anything close. There's no end of ways developers could choose to use that CPU power with the design of their games to tax the hardware to a point where 30fps becomes necessary.

Did you just say I have no imagination?!

I'm telling you, there is no "PBR" or "photogrammetry"(the things that made last gen what they are) waiting in the wings of this generation unlike like last gen.

Something that fundamentally transforms a game from a 60fps counterpart will not be something possible. This is what diminishing hardware returns literally is.

Unless you count raytracing. Even ML techniques like muscle deformation on characters have been proven to work with minimal cost to 60fps. Destruction physics more advanced than what we are getting now were done on 7th gen hardware, something like old battlefield games could easily run at 60. It's not a matter of lacking the grunt but how games are created fundamentally

 

[Karamazov]

maybe next gen will introduce something like DLSS 3.0 so 30fps will disappear for ever, even if it's not "real" 30fps, but tastes like it.

and with wide adoption of VRR etc... maybe locked framerates will also be a thing of the past.

 

[davis.anthony]

30fps will never disappear on fixed hardware as long as consumers expect to see the absolute cutting edge visuals.

If you give a console DLSS3 some developers will still aim for the game to be 30fps with DLSS3 enabled and crank out stupid visuals.

 

[trinibwoy]

Did you just say I have no imagination?!

I'm telling you, there is no "PBR" or "photogrammetry"(the things that made last gen what they are) waiting in the wings of this generation unlike like last gen.

Something that fundamentally transforms a game from a 60fps counterpart will not be something possible. This is what diminishing hardware returns literally is.

Unless you count raytracing. Even ML techniques like muscle deformation on characters have been proven to work with minimal cost to 60fps. Destruction physics more advanced than what we are getting now were done on 7th gen hardware, something like old battlefield games could easily run at 60. It's not a matter of lacking the grunt but how games are created fundamentally

RT will be a pressure point for 30fps but there are lots of other things devs can do to smack down the hardware. We’re certainly no where near graphics nirvana especially on consoles.

 

[Karamazov]

good ol' days

the later circuit edition was 30fps though.

 

[Inuhanyou]

RT will be a pressure point for 30fps but there are lots of other things devs can do to smack down the hardware. We’re certainly no where near graphics nirvana especially on consoles.

I didn't say we were at the peak of graphics in totality...I keep mentioning diminished returns for these consoles specifically because they are not powerful enough to gain anything significant from going down to 30fps beyond slightly higher settings that PCs struggle with with much greater power.

Of course with increased power comes more things you can do But your going to need much stronger hw than what's in the current consoles to see a worthwhile seachange nowadays even at 30fps.

As they can do most things we are used to at 60 already unlike previous gens when they needed to be 30 to even viably do some of the genres that devs wanted to create.

Ps2 just would not have been able to make gta3 with the scope it had without barely being 30fps. Same with shadow of the colossus and many other titles. PS3 definitely would not be able to have done far cry 3 at 60fps regardless of reduced graphical settings.

We are now in a generation owing to the properly balanced hardware that's easy to use, where you can take a current gen only game that was supposedly pushing the hw and make it 60 with some tweaks. That's significant and shows it's not a matter of strictly being CPU limited or GPU limited in your game, especially compared to last gen when games had to be engineered specifically to be GPU limited from the start to even work on the consoles due to the weak cpus not being able to do most things.

 

[trinibwoy]

I didn't say we were at the peak of graphics in totality...I keep mentioning diminished returns for these consoles specifically because they are not powerful enough to gain anything significant from going down to 30fps beyond slightly higher settings that PCs struggle with with much greater power.

Hopefully DF revisits the 60fps mode but at first glance it seems most of the gains were due to significantly lowering resolution. if that’s indeed the case then there’s clearly plenty of untapped CPU power available and GPU resources could have been redirected to other things besides pixel count.

 

[Inuhanyou]

Hopefully DF revisits the 60fps mode but at first glance it seems most of the gains were due to significantly lowering resolution. if that’s indeed the case then there’s clearly plenty of untapped CPU power available and GPU resources could have been redirected to other things besides pixel count.

The resolution lowering definitely helped but I also saw things concerning more agressive lod management and npcs animating at half rate depending on the distance among other nips and tucks.

Iirc the resolution drop was to around 1164p on ps5

 

[Globalisateur]

It shows how different this gen hardware is compared to previous gen hardware. The Zen 2 CPU changes everything. Almost any game can run at 60fps (or more) with some simple settings changes.

 

[davis.anthony]

It shows how different this gen hardware is compared to previous gen hardware. The Zen 2 CPU changes everything. Almost any game can run at 60fps (or more) with some simple settings changes.

For now.......

 

[Inuhanyou]

Unless some significant gameplay innovation is found that requires it, hopefully it will last for the rest of the gen

Now we have ue5 with Nanite that essentially solved the actual graphics portion of game rendering which allows for many times the amount of polygonal detail for the same amount of rendering budget. Even at 60fps on the consoles, that's still more than enough for a generational increase in graphical rendering. And with TSR upscaling, rendering resolution matters less and less. Although probably should definitely not be aiming for 720p or below obviously

 

[davis.anthony]

Unless some significant gameplay innovation is found that requires it, hopefully it will last for the rest of the gen

Now we have ue5 with Nanite that essentially solved the actual graphics portion of game rendering which allows for many times the amount of polygonal detail for the same amount of rendering budget. Even at 60fps on the consoles, that's still more than enough for a generational increase in graphical rendering. And with TSR upscaling, rendering resolution matters less and less. Although probably should definitely not be aiming for 720p or below obviously

You're forgetting physics.

Having RTGI and techniques like Lumen means developers can now have more physical interactions in the game worlds as they won't be held back by baked lighting any more.

 

[Below2D]

Hopefully DF revisits the 60fps mode but at first glance it seems most of the gains were due to significantly lowering resolution. if that’s indeed the case then there’s clearly plenty of untapped CPU power available and GPU resources could have been redirected to other things besides pixel count.

There’s a lot more than just resolution cutbacks in certain scenes. Entire trees are missing, grass density takes a huge hit, draw distance is decreased, it also seems that AO and shadows take a hit as well. Textures also seem worse but that’s probably due to the lower resolution. It looks like the game went from high/ultra to medium or even low in some cases.

 

[Inuhanyou]

There’s a lot more than just resolution cutbacks in certain scenes. Entire trees are missing, grass density takes a huge hit, draw distance is decreased, it also seems that AO and shadows take a hit as well. Textures also seem worse but that’s probably due to the lower resolution. It looks like the game went from high/ultra to medium or even low in some cases.

Can't wait for DFs video. I wonder how stable the 60fps is. With these cuts it feels like they wanted to make sure the 60fps lock was assured and not just an "unlock the frame rate" sort of thing

 

[Jay]

Can't wait for DFs video. I wonder how stable the 60fps is. With these cuts it feels like they wanted to make sure the 60fps lock was assured and not just an "unlock the frame rate" sort of thing

Or simply it needed to make those cuts to get to 60 regardless if stable or not.
Meaning it may not be 'let's just cut everything to get to stable 60'.
Believe animation is also halfed at points.

All the cuts shows that it wasn't simple to get a 60 fps mode.
With enough cuts you generally will be able to get there though, but as gen goes on that may need to be factored in from start of development.