The Order: 1886 runs at 30fps because 24fps doesn't "feel good"

When it's released next year, The Order: 1886 will run at 30 frames per second on the PlayStation 4--and that's by design, as its developers are seeking to deliver a "filmic look" and found lower framerates didn't "feel good."

It was already known that The Order would run at 30fps with a widescreen-movie-style aspect ratio of 2.40:1, but in a new interview with Kotaku, director Dana Jan explained exactly how Ready at Dawn arrived at its choice of framerate. "60 fps is really responsive and really cool. I enjoy playing games in 60 fps," Jan said. "But one thing that really changes is the aesthetic of the game in 60 fps.

"We're going for this filmic look, so one thing that we knew immediately was films run at 24 fps. We're gonna run at 30 because 24 fps does not feel good to play. So there's one concession in terms of making it aesthetically pleasing, because it just has to feel good to play."

Because of the way the game looks, Jan said running at 60fps--the framerate many developers boast about their games running at--would cause the game to "end up looking like something on the Discovery Channel, like an HDTV kind of segment or a sci-fi original movie maybe. Which doesn't quite have the kind of look and texture that we want from a movie. The escapism you get from a cinematic film image is just totally different than what you get from television framing, so that was something we took into consideration."

He went on to talk about the game's visuals--its lighting effects, in particular, as the world is filled with numerous candles, fires, and other light sources--and the lack of pre-rendered cutscenes as reasons why other developers likely won't be able to have a game that looks like this running at 60fps anytime soon. "So [to make] all those lights [work] with this fidelity means, I think, until the end of this system most people won't have any clue how to make that run 60 and look like this," he said.

We learned today that The Order, which we recently got a short, surprise look at, has been delayed until next year. It had been scheduled for release this fall but will instead now be coming out in early 2015. For more on the game, check out our just-published preview.