The Last of Us Remastered Edition includes a 30fps lock

Eurogamer and a bunch of other sites recently ran this story in addition to announcements regarding future DLC content and other improvements to the re-release:

The Last of Us Remastered lets players lock the game's visuals to 30 frames per second.

In an event attended by our friends at Eurogamer Spain, Naughty Dog's Arne Meyer delivered a presentation in which he confirmed the graphics toggle.

By default the game runs at 1080p60 in single-player and multiplayer, but the addition of the 30fps lock may indicate occasional drops below 60. If you are locked at 60 you get no judder. If you aren't, you do get judder (or tearing), and so locking to 30 produces a more consistent experience (for more on this subject, check out Digital Foundry's article "Do higher frame-rates always mean better gameplay?").

The Last of Us Remastered isn't the first PS4 game to let you lock frame-rate to 30. Guerrilla's first-person shooter Killzone: Shadow Fall and Sucker Punch's open-world action adventure inFamous: Second Son also include the feature. Neither of those games sustain 60fps.

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This is kind of perturbing for me. I was considering picking up the remaster simply to own the best possible version of the game but the inclusion of the 30fps lock really made me think twice. A big part of why I wanted to play through the game again was the promise of a silky smooth gameplay experience, something that the original game sorely lacked. TLoU already looks phenomenal, if a bit rough around the edges, and updating the textures and shadow maps aren't going to make it look on par with proper current-gen titles like inFamous Second Son.

If all we're getting is a game that runs at an inconsistent 40-60fps that looks slightly better, I don't think I'll double dip on this one. If you're purporting to have made a "Remaster" for current-gen systems then I expect an experience comparable to loading up a 5 year old game on a modern PC.

Does this affect your purchasing decision in any way? I'm certainly quite a bit more wary but I'll wait for digital foundry to deliver a verdict.

@adam1808: The 30 fps toggle is for Vsync, if you don't mind not having Vsync then you get 60fps.

The verbiage surrounding the press release specifically uses the word "unlocked" regarding the 60fps option. Also the notion of optional vsync is equally perturbing. I have a 60hz TV, I shouldn't have to pick between no tearing and smooth gameplay. Give me both in your supposedly definitive remastered edition.

Shouldn't you really expect an experience comparable to loading up a 1 year old game on a mid range PC?

You're complaining about this on a theoretical basis? How about waiting for the reviews to see if it really hits 60 or not?

Most 1 year old games won't run at 1080p60 on mid-range PCs unless you dial down the settings. I'm speaking from experience as someone who was a PC gamer for the past year on a mid-range machine. Yes you can expect a lot of games to run flawlessly, but if you're talking 1 year old games like Tomb Raider and Metro Last Light not so much. Hell Far Cry 3 has yet to run smoothly on my gtx 670.

I don't think it's actually official its 60 fps unlocked. It's entirely possible that it's locked at 60, but they added the 30 option because some people actually prefer 30 fps (like me). Either way, Im not spending 50 bucks on this when I already payed 60 for the ps3 version. If they dropped it to 20 or even 30 for people who already own it on ps3 it would have been a day one purchase for me. Sony dropped the ball on this one.

You don't include that option unless the frame rate is a bit all over the place. I know there are crazy people who say they prefer games at 30, (I don't actually mean that, just a joke), but if it's 60 all the time there wouldn't/shouldn't be an option to lock it at 30.

This is what I thought. The same option was in inFamous Second Son which was all sorts of juddery if you didn't opt in for the 30 fps lock.

I recall the console version of BioShock 2 having the option to turn off V-Sync, that was kinda strange seeing on a console game. I say more console games need that option, I barely notice screen tears when I play with V-Sync off.

@rongalaxy said:

Keep in mind that the $50 gets you the main game with a higher resolution and framerate, plus all the DLC. If you didn't get the $20 season pass for the PS3 version, getting all the DLC will cost you a lot of extra money.

The two map packs both cost $10 each, and Left Behind cost $15. You'd also have to pay $6 for the new weapons pack, $4 each for the two new skills pack, and $5 for the Grounded difficulty mode. Just the total price of all the DLC already costs more than the PS4 edition. This isn't a bad deal at all if you never got any of the DLC.

I also payed 15 bucks for left behind (forgot to mention that). Dont care about the multiplayer.

more options are almost always better, especially in console games

@adam1808: That's Far Cry 3's fault not your rigs. It's a terrible port yet is somehow still the best version of it because the console version is THAT BAD.

I kind of disagree. The reason I prefer console gaming over PC gaming is precisely because I start the game up and it works. No messing around in settings or rebinding keys, the game is the game. When playing console games I'm looking for that curated, walled-garden experience.

The Lego Games have also included a "framerate" lock option too, and those still ran at 60 FPS the entire time it was turned off

So did the original Bioshock

This shouldn't be an issue

I'm using a 7870, which isn't as good as your 670, but Tomb Raider and Metro Last Light both ran at a solid 60 for me, at 1080p, on high settings. Far Cry 3 has problems running at max for anybody.

If the PS3's now-pitiful specs can run The Last of Us at a generally good framerate for a late-era console game, then surely there's something they can do to make the PS4 run it at a solid 60? We're talking about a game that needs nothing more than some AA to look stunning, so clearly there was some good optimization going on with it in the first place. Like the OP, I might have paid to play The Last of Us again at a solid 60 FPS, but I'm not paying again to get a load of screen tearing and a frame rate that isn't 60, all the time, no exceptions, on a game that debuted on a system from 2006.

@rangers517: That's kind of reassuring but then again it's the devs saying it so I'll wait and see. More interesting (or perplexing) is the idea that people asked to have an option to play the remaster with half the framerate that all games should run at.

Yeah, I'm with you on that. I have definitely seen a lot of people saying 60 fps will make it look weird in cinematics and stuff. I don't agree with that at all , but I guess giving an option can't hurt and hopefully they're right about it not dipping from 60

My copy arrived this morning and I spent some time playing through to Joel and Ellie reaching Joel's apartment. As far as I can tell the game runs at a perfect 60fps, I haven't noticed any dips. I tried switching to the 30fps limit, and going from 60 immediately to 30 looked awful (and as a console player I'm used to putting up with some pretty nasty framerates - my preference is 60, of course, but yeah), the relatively small improvement to shadows definitely wasn't worth capping the framerate.

Rejoice, the game is pretty beautiful. Some shadows can look a little rough, and there's a little more aliasing than I had hoped in spots, but overall it looks fantastic. Dem textures, holy god dem textures.