Killzone: Shadow Fall's Multiplayer Will Run at 60FPS 'a Lot of the Time'

Killzone: Shadow Fall’s multiplayer component will run at 60 frames-per-second “a lot of the time”, Guerrilla Games has confirmed. Lead designer Eric Boltjes revealed the snippet during a developer session at the Eurogamer Expo earlier today, explaining that it’s “tricky” to maintain a solid frame-rate all of the time.

“Running at 60FPS has become this Holy Grail,” he told Eurogamer.net after the panel. “Suddenly people think that if you run at 60FPS that your game is better. Technically, that's not really true. But what it does do is it makes decisions go from input to on-screen a lot easier. So, having a constant 60FPS is not actually better than having a 'lot of the time' 60FPS. It sounds weird, but it's actually true.”

Boltjes continued that the PlayStation 4 launch title is only likely to drop frames in outstanding situations – such as when all players lob explosives into the air. He also admitted that the developer is comfortable sacrificing some smoothness in order to push the visual detail in the game.

“We didn't want to make any graphical concessions,” he continued. “We can run at 60FPS constantly if we just half the resolution and take out all the destructibility and remove all of the glass, for example. We didn't want to do that. We wanted to keep it really pretty and try to make it 60FPS.”

For this reason, the single player campaign will actually be limited to 30FPS. "Graphically the single player is even a step above multiplayer," he added. "There's even more destructibility. We analysed what 60FPS brings. In multiplayer it’s really important because your reaction time is a lot shorter. In single player it's actually a lot longer. That’s not because our artificial intelligence is stupid, but because you simply have more time to react. We said we don't need 60FPS, and we want the graphical push.”

Do you think that the Dutch developer’s made the right decision? Would you be happier if the studio had locked the framerate at 60FPS, or are you comfortable with the sacrifice in favour of the visual bump? Let us know in the comments section below.