Assassin’s Creed Shadows is a game with pretty extreme expectations. It’s the first mainline series entry since 2020’s AC Valhalla, the first AC game built exclusively for current-gen consoles, and it’s a game that probably needs to be a big commercial success for beleaguered publisher Ubisoft. We’ve seen how the game meets technical expectations on the original trio of current-gen consoles, but this is a title with some substantial Pro enhancements, highlighted by additional ray tracing. How does AC Shadows fare on Pro? Is this an iterative upgrade, or a revolutionary one?
As the title of this article has already hinted, Shadows has one of the largest PS5 Pro upgrades we’ve seen so far. The key difference here is that the performance mode gets the ray-traced global illumination (RTGI) that the PS5’s performance mode doesn’t.
Having this lavish pass of per-pixel RTGI, bouncing light through each space to capture a realistic indirect diffuse lighting response, totally transforms the game. Shadow detail is greatly improved, diffuse bounce lighting transfers colours from skies or surfaces, and the entire world feels more true-to-life.
The PS5, in contrast, looks overly flat and compressed during these scenes, with a more uniform lighting response. Foliage is a particular sore point, with the baked GI lighting solution on the base PS5’s performance mode failing to capture the subtle occlusion you get from bunches of leafy greenery, giving it a dull, artificial look. Running through forest areas, the difference is unbelievably vast, with a generational divide in lighting fidelity.
Despite the performance mode on base PS5 using an evolution of the baked GI solution from prior Anvil Engine titles, it largely fails to capture the kind of lighting detail that we’ve seen in recent AC games like 2023’s Mirage. This is likely due to the fact that Shadows is a much larger game, and achieving good lighting fidelity without RTGI is therefore more challenging. Shadows’ baked GI also doesn’t adapt to changes in the environment, such as opened doors, unlike the Pro code.
The addition of RTGI is ultimately a pretty huge visual uplift over the base console. In a lot of lighting conditions, the PS5 Pro version almost looks like a totally different game.
One consequence of the inclusion of RTGI is that image quality on the Pro’s performance mode isn’t really improved over the base machine. Both suffer from considerable pixel crawl, even at rest, blocky patterns emerge on moving edges, and transparencies are poorly upscaled, with obvious signs of a low-res source.
Ubisoft stated pre-launch that both PS5 and PS5 Pro in their performance modes would upscale to 4K, and that is reflected in the final code. The upsampling produces somewhat variable results in terms of achieving a sharp, 4K-like appearance. Internal resolutions in light scenes on both consoles hovered around 1080p in my tests, with the RTGI apparently eating up most of the additional margin of GPU time on the Pro.
However, some of Ubisoft’s pre-launch Pro promises haven’t quite materialised in the finished game. Press material published last September referenced PSSR upscaling on Pro, and that doesn’t appear to have happened – the game doesn’t carry the hallmarks of PSSR upscaling in that disoccluded detail is fizzly, not blurred, the edge detail is very sharp, and in general the image has artefacting that is more in line with analytical techniques than ML-based ones.
The most obvious evidence is just that base PS5 and Pro look so similar in image quality terms. In my tests, the PC version with Anvil’s TAAU proves a pretty close match for both PS5s and therefore is likely the solution of choice on both consoles. It’s less stable at rest than FSR, but tends to exhibit fewer issues with disocclusion, and is probably cheaper to run. Presumably, Ubisoft found that this was a better solution for this game than PSSR.
Beyond the RT boost on Pro, the game has very similar visual settings on both machines. Draw distances, shadow resolution, and other common tweakables seemed to be about the same on both consoles.
Frame-rates on PS5 Pro’s performance mode also land at a similarly consistent 60fps to what we experience on PS5. There are some notable drops below that 60fps target though, including some severe dips in the introductory sequence and more minor blips in open-world traversal. Amazingly, cutscenes still run at 30fps on PS5 Pro, as does the hideout area – perhaps to accommodate the potential for greater player-created complexity.
Overall, I think AC Shadows is tremendously improved on Pro when it comes to the performance mode, even if image quality and frame-rates remain imperfect. The addition of RTGI is an absolute game changer here, and Shadows feels like it was built with RTGI tech as a visual baseline.
Despite the addition of RTGI though, PS5 Pro doesn’t get RT reflections in its performance mode. That means screen-space reflections (SSR) are used instead, with (poorly aligned and lower resolution) cubemaps used as a fallback. RT reflections are instead limited to the quality mode on PS5 Pro, though the effectiveness of these reflections is a little limited – with little evident detail, no foliage animations and no distant geometry. These RT reflections also suffer from a fair amount of pop-in, which can be distracting. Therefore, Shadows uses a hybrid approach in its quality mode with SSR still enabled to fill in specular detail, though having RT means that you do fall back to a perspective-correct technique when screen-space information isn’t available.
Outside of the RT reflections divergence, other visual settings appear fairly similar. RTGI is present on both machines and generally looks comparable. You can notice some improvements in terms of specular detail on Pro from the additional RT. Other PC tweakables seem pretty similar across both consoles, without an obvious divergence in my tests.
Image quality is also generally comparable across both machines. Neither is perfect, though both offer a less artefact-ridden image than their performance mode counterparts. I expect TAAU is again in use here, owing to the similar image quality quirks between the various mode and console configurations. Resolution is similar between the two machines, though some shots exhibited a slightly higher resolution on PS5 Pro.
Performance is very good in quality mode. Expect a locked 30fps in the vast majority of gameplay, including cutscenes, battle sequences, traversal and the hideout. The game can drop a frame in some circumstances, but it’s generally a very consistent performer. Base PS5 offers essentially the same update here, with strong performance as well.
If we circle back to the performance mode and compare these two PS5 Pro modes directly, there are some obvious settings differences. Shadow resolution is upgraded in the quality mode, as is foliage density. Performance mode also appears to drop the game’s strand-based hair during gameplay, though it is present in cutscenes in both modes. RTGI is present at a similar quality level in the two modes, but only the quality mode features RT reflections as we mentioned earlier. Image quality is another key area of divergence, as the quality mode is sharper in some scenes and generally less prone to pixel crawling, serrated edges, and other visual gremlins.
Of course, there’s one final mode available on PS5 Pro: a 40fps balanced mode for users of 120Hz displays. In a lot of games this would function as a slightly downgraded quality mode, but here it’s more like an extended performance mode. RTGI is in, but RT reflections are out. Interestingly, this is another shift from some of the pre-launch press materials, which said that the balanced mode on Pro would feature both RT effects. Elsewhere, fidelity come in somewhere between the other two modes. Quality mode and balanced mode both use strand-based hair during gameplay, for instance, but shadowmap resolution in balanced mode is similar to the performance mode.
Relative to the balanced mode on the base PS5, we’re basically at parity here in terms of visual settings. Both have RTGI, no RT reflections, and fall on the same side of the hair rendering and shadowmap divide. I can’t really compare image quality directly, owing to capture limitations on my HDMI 2.0 system, but pixel counts do suggest a higher resolution on Pro, and it does look cleaner as well. Both are upsampling to 4K, so they produce a sharp final image. Both consoles also basically nail their 40fps updates here, with a consistent 40fps in typical play, with the usual 30fps limits for cutscenes and the hideout.
| Console/Mode | Shot 1 | Shot 2 | Shot 3 |
|---|---|---|---|
| PS5/Quality | 1584p | 1512p | 1404p |
| PS5 Pro/Quality | 1656p | 1584p | 1548p |
| PS5/Performance | 1152p | 1080p | 1008p |
| PS5 Pro/Performance | 1080p | 1080p | 1008p |
I came away from AC Shadows impressed with the technical package that Ubisoft has assembled. There are so many neat technical touches here – from the dynamic wind and particle systems that make the world feel alive, to the Metal Gear Rising style environmental slicing, to the headlining virtualised geometry and RTGI effects. Shadows presents a beautifully realised open world environment that really draws you in, and is up there with the most convincing worlds in video games. It’s a lot of fun to play as well, with simple but satisfying combat that is delightfully visceral.
The PS5 Pro upgrade here is pretty enormous in its 60fps performance mode, which honestly looks generationally improved over its base console counterpart. The RTGI does seem to have a considerable performance impact here, but it’s absolutely critical for lighting in this particular title. It’s hard to overstate how diminished the game is without the technique.
Quality mode and balanced mode get more moderate boosts. The headlining change here is the addition of RT reflections, which do make reflections look more accurate when screen-space information isn’t available, but this isn’t quite enough to recommend these less responsive modes over the excellent 60fps option. It has a compelling combination of visual quality and good frame-rates that’s hard to beat, and I suspect that’s what most players will prefer. In that context, this is quite possibly the most transformative PS5 Pro upgrade we’ve seen so far.
