DmC uses visual tricks to look better than 30 FPS, Capcom says

DmC: Devil May Cry will run at 30 frames per second instead of 60, the gold standard of previous games in the franchise. But Capcom told Eurogamer it hopes to work some of the magic it learned with Dragon's Dogma to make the fast-paced title feel just as smooth despite less frames per second when it launches on January 15.

"[At] 30 frames per second there's a technique where you take advantage of the brain's ability to fill in the blanks, said series director Hideaki Itsuno. "So even though you have it running at 30 frames per second, you create the motions and the poses in such a way that the brain will naturally fill in what would have been the extra frames."

Animation is itself a form of trickery: the brain is fooled into perceiving a series of still images as in motion if they are displayed in rapid enough succession. Itsuno said a combination of animations and post-processing effects the publisher first tried in Dragon's Dogma squeezes some more distance out of this illusion while sparing more processing power for impressive environments and visual effects.

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The game, which is being developed by UK-based Ninja Theory, runs on Unreal Engine 3 and is a reboot of the franchise with a redesigned protagonist. Ninja Theory said the game could have run at 60 FPS, but only at the cost of said improved effects.

Itsuno even claimed that too-high frame rates can actually be tiring for gamers, as they seem to "almost shake or flash."

We've never met a high frame rate we didn't like, but what do you think? Would you rather have a flashier game that's a bit less smooth or one with buttery bare-bones visuals?