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Panic Button explains the decision to cap DOOM Eternal's cut-scenes at 20fps, plans to improve performance in the future

DOOMing what you've gotta DOOM
by rawmeatcowboy
14 February 2021
GN Version 5.0

DOOM Eternal really does some impressive stuff on the Switch, but obviously, there's some concessions that had to be made. One of the most notable downgrades comes from the cut-scenes, which are capped at 20fps. In an interview with Digital Foundry, Panic Button lead engineer Travis Archer explains that decision, and also says that they're working to improve things going forward.

“As is typical of most games, the cutscenes are sometimes the most graphically intensive scenes in the game – lots of dynamic lights, lots of shadows, lots of animated complex geometry on screen, and so in this case, the importance to us was not losing that detail for the cutscenes. It’s kind of like a big payoff moment. It’s supposed to look really cool, and we decided it was better to run at a higher resolution in this case because it didn’t affect the gameplay – it doesn’t impact your ability to fluidly move around the game when you’re in the middle of a cutscene. It was less critical.

Now in terms of the end result, I think there are still improvements we can make towards those cutscenes, and we do intend to make some improvements to the cutscenes to improve the performance of those. But that was the decision mostly based on how high the quality bar is for those scenes.”

[Link, Link]