In Ubisoft's blog, the company confirmed the resolution and frames per second for Watch Dogs. It will run at 900p resolution on the PlayStation 4 and 792p on the Xbox One. While the two consoles differ there, both will have 30 FPS.
Some players might be irked by this considering that other titles on the latest generation of consoles can run in 1080p. However, the game's creative director Jonathan Morin told the blog that the team primarily decided to focus on "dynamism" and achieving higher fidelity visuals since it is an open world game.
"Resolution is a number, just like framerate is a number. All those numbers are valid aspects of making games," Morin said. "But you make choices about the experience you want to deliver. In our case, dynamism is everything. Exploration and expression are everything. You want to have a steady framerate, but you want to have dynamism at the core of the experience. The same goes with resolution."
He also pointed out that corridor shooter games and open world games work differently. "People tend to look at corridor shooters, for example, where there's a corridor and all the effects are on and it's unbelievable, and they forget that if you apply those same global effects to an open city with people around and potential car crashes and guys in multiplayer showing up without warning, the same effect is applied to a lot of dynamic elements that are happening in every frame," he added. "So it becomes magnified in cost."
Some might still criticize Ubisoft for not taking the time they had from the delay to boost resolution. Morin countered that the team still wanted to push "dynamism" and to polish the game overall.
Additionally, the previous generation of consoles will have fewer NPCs roaming around compared to the current generation. PS3 and Xbox 360 won't be able to play free roam with multiple players.
Check out the nine minute trailer we posted earlier today that covers all the basics about the game.
Watch Dogs launches May 27 for Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS3, PS4, and PC. The Wii U version is coming sometime later.
