Obsidian art director argues 60FPS isn't needed for first-person, single-player games

The general rule of thumb when gaming is the higher the frames-per-second the smooth the in-game experience will be, particularly if the game you are playing has a lot of objects moving quickly on-screen.

Examples of this are found all throughout the gaming landscape, such as competitive first-person-shooters, MOBAs, third-person-shooters, and even fighting games. However, where a high frame rate isn't necessarily needed is in games that's content is much slower in speed, such as RPG titles with thick stories and high amounts of detail.

The current generation of consoles on both the Xbox and PlayStation fronts were marketed to consumers with a performance jump in the framerate department, with the PS5 and Xbox Series X being capable of 120FPS in select circumstances. However, Obsidian Art Director Matt Hansen doesn't believe this framerate headroom is necessary when building a first-person, single-player game, especially when the goal is to crank digital fidelity to the highest it can possibly go.

Hansen made these comments on the Iron Lords podcast where he stated Obsidian was "targeting 30 frames per second" for its upcoming title Avowed, and this has been FPS target since the early stages of game's development.

Personally, I would consider this to be a hot take from Hansen, especially considering the smoothness gamers feel at 60FPS versus 30FPS, particularly in first-person titles, which are conductive to motion issues. Hansen suggests that a decision had to be made between graphics and performance, which while being a tough choice should more often than not fall to the latter. Make the game feel nice to play before adding the eye-candy.

Additionally, I would also agree with Kitguru which argued that a higher framerate would be more necessary for a first-person game versus a third-person game as the field of view is much smaller. There are also other points such as the PlayStation 2, Nintendo 64 and other now-ancient consoles being capable of 60FPS and the games released during their times actually taking advantage of those capabilities.

This also isn't the first time we have seen a game target 30FPS at launch and then succumb to community complaints only to add a 60FPS mode later down the track. Starfield did this at launch. There is also the point of implementing frame-generation, which doesn't technically add "real" frames to the total FPS count, the generated frames still result in a much smoother in-game experience overall. AMD's FSR is available on consoles.

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With all of the aforementioned reasons why increasing FPS above 30 is warranted in almost every case, I don't believe there is any reason why a developer/publisher should release a AAA title with a 30FPS cap without any additional options, especially if the reason for the 30FPS cap is to make the graphics of the game better so it's more easily marketable.

30FPS caps in games released on current-gen consoles capable of 120FPS (besides handhelds), shouldn't be happening in 2024. Gamers want to play games, not tech demos, or at the very least be given the option to choose.