Assassin’s Creed Shadows has received glowing technical performance reviews from Digital Foundry, though there is an interesting detail.
On their general review for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, they claim that Ubisoft has now deftly demonstrated the current generation capabilities of their internal Anvil Engine.
The big highlight of the game is ray-traced global illumination (RTGI), which is present on all consoles and enables that huge visual leap for the game in total. This is not the same Ubisoft that released Assassin’s Creed Unity or Assassin’s Creed Syndicate with launch bugs anymore.
Subsequently, Assassin’s Creed Shadows also has an impressive physics engine, which brings the forests of feudal Japan to life in its destructible environments and weather cycles.
Moving on to the PlayStation 5 Pro technical review, DF calls it the “most transformative PS5 Pro upgrade we’ve seen so far.” To be specific, DF came out impressed with the fact that Assassin’s Creed Shadows can run on PlayStation 5 Pro’s performance mode with full, uncompromised, ray-traced global illumination (RTGI).
There is actually little or no difference in visual or performance quality between the PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 5 Pro. Granted, the game already looks great on the base PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. The framerate and resolution will not always be stable, but it will stay at 30FPS, 40FPS, or 60FPS consistently enough that most players won’t notice.
And all versions of Assassin’s Creed Shadows upscale to 4K. So DF’s assessment of PlayStation 5 Pro’s generational upgrade are based on what they actually observed on screen, not just number crunching. But with all that praise, DF made some interesting observations. For one, PlayStation 5 Pro’s Performance Mode drops ray-traced reflections in favor of screen-space reflections, making for slightly less accurate reflected lighting.
But what may be a bigger deal is that, contrary to Ubisoft’s claims, DF found that they did not use PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR) for the game at all. Given that multiple third parties have struggled to make use of the upscaler, one might opine that this is precisely the reason why Assassin’s Creed Shadows turned out so well at launch.
As reported by MP1st, Ubisoft Technical Architect Nicolas Lopez actually responded to a fan asking about this on Twitter. Without getting into details, he simply replied; “I’d stay tuned (:” If you’re a PlayStation 5 Pro owner, and you wanted to play this game, we would advise not to worry too much about PSSR, when the technology is not mature enough for developers to know how to make the most out of it yet. Assassin’s Creed Shadows is already getting good reviews on its own merits, so if you’re a huge fan of the franchise, this is definitely your opportunity to show your love to it today.
