A God of War Ragnarök artist has defended Starfield’s 30fps frame rate

A senior artist who worked on God of War Ragnarök has defended Starfield’s locked 30fps frame rate, following social media claims that it suggests the game is being released in an “unfinished” state.

Earlier this week Starfield director Todd Howard confirmed that the game will run at full 4K resolution on Series X and 1440p on Series S, but that the frame rate has been locked to 30fps.

As reported by Game Rant, YouTuber DreamcastGuy posted a (now deleted) tweet in which he suggested that this was an indication that the game is unfinished.

This suggestion was then challenged by Dannie Carlone, a senior staff environment artist at Sony Santa Monica who recently worked on God of War Ragnarök.

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“Wanted to clarify, it’s not a sign of an unfinished game,” Carlone replied, “it’s a choice.”

He added: “60fps on this scale would be a large hit to the visual fidelity. My guess is they want to go for a seamless look and less ‘pop-in’. And of course [it’s] your right to dislike the choice.”

Responding to another follower who then asked him if the game needed to be 4K resolution, Carlone replied that while some games offer a Performance mode which drops the resolution in favour of a higher frame rate, Bethesda has seemingly decided that visual detail is its top priority.

“It doesn’t need to be 4K (which is expensive),” he replied, referring to the processing power needed to render games at native 4K resolution. “It could be 1080p at 60fps or another variable resolution at 60. They want to keep it locked at 30fps 4k and push the visuals to a high level on this scale.”

Game dev here, big fan btw. Wanted to clarify It’s not a sign of an unfinished game. It’s a choice. 60fps on this scale would be a large hit to the visual fidelity. My guess is they want to go for a seamless look and less ” pop in”. And of course your right to dislike the choice

— Dannie Carlone (@Corgiboltz) June 12, 2023

DreamcastGuy then backed down, apologising for his tweet and saying: “I still wish the game was 60fps on consoles but now I understand why it isn’t, at least not yet.”

In an interview with IGN earlier this week, Howard said the game was locked to 30fps to provide more solid performance.

“I think it’ll come as no surprise, given our previous games, what we go for,” he explained. “Always these huge, open worlds, fully dynamic, hyper detail where anything can happen.

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“And we do want to do that. It’s 4K on the X. It’s 1440 on the S. We do lock it at 30fps, because we want that fidelity, we want all that stuff. We don’t want to sacrifice any of it.

“Fortunately in this one, we’ve got it running great. It’s often running way above that. Sometimes it’s 60fps. But on the consoles, we do lock it because we prefer the consistency, where you’re not even thinking about it.”

Starfield received an extended 45-minute Starfield Direct presentation as part of the Xbox Games Showcase, and will be released on September 6 on Xbox Series X/S and PC.