Getting Uncharted 4 to Run at 60fps "Really F**king Hard," Naughty Dog Says

Naughty Dog said previously that it was targeting 60fps for upcoming PlayStation 4 game Uncharted 4: A Thief's End. But the studio has since backed away from that objective somewhat, saying it wants to do what's best for A Thief's End, even if it means sub-60fps.

Now, Naughty Dog has yet again spoken about 60fps for A Thief's End. Game director Neil Druckmann says achieving that frame-rate is no simple task. Naughty Dog will keep pushing and optimizing to make the game look as best as it can, he said, though he wouldn't say if 60fps is a benchmark the developer is hoping to achieve overall.

"Really f**king hard," Druckmann said when asked by Game Informer how difficult it would be to get the game running at 60fps. "That's true for any game. It was really hard on The Last of Us Remastered, and that's a game we had finished and we knew exactly what the end result needs to look like. And here [with Uncharted 4] we're trying to push the boundaries of what this game can look like; and do realistic, real-time cutscenes; and trying to do 60fps is really hard."

Asked directly if Naughty Dog is targeting 60fps for A Thief's End, Druckmann said the game remains a work-in-progress, and nothing is nailed down right now.

"I don't know," he said. "The objective for us is just to make the best experience. And right now we're trying to push the look. Then we'll see where we're at and reassess. We're constantly making choices to our production about what's going to make the game feel best and look its best."

The gameplay video above, from December's PlayStation Experience event, is running at a locked frame-rate of 30fps, even though current builds of the game are running higher.

Game director Bruce Straley said previously that Naughty Dog won't push for 60fps if doing so negatively impacts the overall experience.

"We're going to do whatever it takes to make the game we want to make," he said in January. "If it means we could go for 60 but lose something that would really impact the player's experience, then it's our choice as developers to say, 'Well, we're going to go for the experience [instead of] the 60 frames.'"

Regarding the general technical abilities of the PS4 itself, compared to the PS3, Straley said, "It's actually pretty amazing, to tell you the truth."

"There's things that have been issues in the past that aren't issues at all right now," he said. "And it's funny because how quickly you forget that that used to be an issue. That being said, just like every piece of tech, what Naughty Dog does is we push the limits to anything and everything that's in our eyesight, in our reach."

Druckmann interjected: "There's always limited resources."

Straley continued, "all the problems that used to exist are pretty much gone at this point; we've just come up with new problems."

A Thief's End, which is aiming for 1080p resolution, launches later this year exclusively for PS4. Sony has not yet announced an official release date.