Assassin's Creed Unity Director: "Who Cares" About Resolution if a Game Looks Gorgeous?

In a new interview with TechRadar, key Ubisoft developers explain why Assassin's Creed Unity runs at 30fps and tackle the issue of resolution and what it really means for a game.

Unity world level design director Nicola Guerin said though Ubisoft was once committed to delivering games at 60fps, the studio has since backed off because the results were "weird."

"At Ubisoft for a long time we wanted to push 60fps. I don't think it was a good idea because you don't gain that much from 60fps and it doesn't look like the real thing," he said. "It's a bit like The Hobbit movie, it looked really weird."

A high-frame-rate version of Peter Jackson's The Hobbit came to theaters in December 2012 running at 48fps, which is typically double Hollywood's standard. Jackson is an outspoken proponent of 48fps, but this version of the movie was controversial, as some viewers were put off by how "real" it looked.

Guerin said he sees the entire video game industry shifting away from 60fps becoming the standard. "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 its not really that great in terms of rendering quality of the picture and the image," he said.

Unity creative director Alex Amancio is also featured in the interview, talking about the game's frame rate and saying resolution is not always the most important element for a game.

"30 was our goal, it feels more cinematic," he said. "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. 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?"

Earlier this week, Unity senior producer Vincent Pontbriand said the game would run in 900p across Xbox One and PlayStation 4 as a means to avoid "debates." Ubisoft has since released a statement that clarified that the final specs for the game have not been confirmed.

Unity launches November 11 for Xbox One, PS4, and PC. Another game, Assassin's Creed Rogue, is coming to Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 also on that day.