The Evil Within Designed for 30fps, But PC Players Can Juice It Higher

The Evil Within, the upcoming horror game from Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami, has been purposefully designed to run at 30fps across all versions, publisher Bethesda has confirmed.

"Shinji Mikami and the team at Tango designed The Evil Within to be played at 30fps and to utilize an aspect ratio of 2.35:1 for all platforms," Bethesda said on its forums. "The team has worked the last four years perfecting the game experience with these settings in mind."

PC players will, however, be able to juice The Evil Within to a higher frame rate, but Bethesda doesn't recommend it.

"For PC players, we'll provide debug commands on how you can alter the frame rate and aspect ratio, but these commands and changes are not recommended or supported and we suggest everyone play the game as it was designed and intended for the best experience," the studio said.

Regarding the "letterboxing" 2:35:1 aspect ratio, Bethesda said this is "used for gameplay purposes, as certain elements display in the black areas of the screen." The developer further explained that "on PC, you can turn off the bars and force the game to render full-screen. However this option is not supported. We're keeping the ability to turn off bars as a console-only command that we will share at launch."

The Evil Within launches October 14 for Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, and PC. Its release next week is just the beginning for the game, as Bethesda plans to support it with multiple expansion packs, which let you experience the horror from a different perspective.

The topic of video game frame rates has frequented headlines of late. Just recently, Assassin's Creed Unity developers said they went with 30fps for the game because 60fps feels too "weird." The studio also maintains that 60fps is no longer the standard for games.