How Dragon’s Dogma Helped DmC Devil May Cry

Some of our readers may recall that, at one point, DmC Devil May Cry developer, Ninja Theory, stated that the game would run at 30 frames-per-second, but would “feel” like a game running at 60 frames-per-second to the player. Recently, Capcom provided some insight as to how this works.

Experience gained from developing Dragon’s Dogma was of great help during the development of DmC, Capcom said to Eurogamer. Dragon’s Dogma also runs at 30fps, and while experimenting with various aspects of that game, Capcom picked up a few techniques on how to make control responsiveness feel like a game running at 60fps.

“60 frames per second is a speed the brain and the eye can catch up with and understand,” Capcom’s Hideaki Itsuno shared. “But at 30 frames per second there’s a technique where you take advantage of the brain’s ability to fill in the blanks.”

This involves making sure that there is no jerkiness during animations, that motion blur is used appropriately, and that poses and motions are created in a way that the brain is able to “fill in the blanks,” so to speak. Locking the game at 30fps allowed Ninja Theory to make the environments less static and more visually impressive.

As previously reported, the PC version of DmC Devil May Cry will run at an actual 60 frames-per-second. However, technical art director, Stuart Adcock, claims that the console versions will feel fluid.

“We still feel like as soon as you stop playing DmC and play other games they feel very slow in comparison and a bit sluggish,” Adcock stated. “At least that’s for me. We’re quite pleased with how responsive and how fluid it feels.”