Ubisoft has added a key feature that players will want to test to Assassin’s Creed Shadows.
As they say in the latest title update:
“Added PSSR support for PS5 pro
- Please note that players who have been playing on PS5 Pro prior to Title Update 1.0.2 will need to manually enable PSSR in the video tab of the pause menu.”
The update also states that Balanced Mode now adds Raytraced specular, bringing the graphics closer to Quality than Performance Mode.
As we all well know by now, PSSR (PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution) proved to be something of a catch-22 at the launch of the PlayStation 5 Pro. If a developer didn’t use it, could they have justified taking the extra effort to enhance the game for the PlayStation 5 Pro? On the other hand, if developers use PSSR, will it really make games better?
Ubisoft certainly chose prudently in not releasing Assassin’s Creed Shadows on or close to the launch of the PlayStation 5 Pro. Many games that promised better performance turned out to do worse on the newer, more expensive PlayStation 5 model. And as it turned out, a lot of the games that had problems with performance could mitigate, if not completely eliminate, those problems, if they reverted from PSSSR to AMD’s FSR upscaler.
Digital Foundry found in their performance testing and review that Assassin’s Creed Shadows received and exceedingly satisfactory port on PlayStation 5 Pro. They observed that even in performance mode, the game makes full use of ray-traced global illumination. As a result, the lighting throughout the game exceeds expectations, and that’s on top of the brilliant work Ubisoft did to make the game a visually pleasing spectacle on all platforms.
But Digital Foundry figured out that this version of the game didn’t actually use PSSR, something that an Ubisoft developer confirmed. In spite of all the bad news surrounding PSSR, when it is used properly, it does provide what appears to be a generational upgrade over the base PlayStation 5, the sort of performance improvement you would see on a newly built mid-range PC. With the extra time Ubisoft took before adding PSSR, expectations are now high that they were able to use PSSR that well as well.
On the side, Ubisoft also added a really nice QOL improvement for all platforms that may change the gameplay experience completely. Auto-Follow is back, so when you ride a horse, it will automatically follow any roads in the path until you reach your marked destination. Subsequently, when you are in a city, horses will move faster. So even if you didn’t have a PlayStation 5 Pro, this may be an upgrade you’ll want to check out if you’re still playing Assassin’s Creed Shadows.
