Assassin’s Creed Shadows marks a series milestone as the first entry developed with a total focus on PS5, Xbox Series X/S and PC. It’s a bold transition with a clear pay-off in its technology, as last-gen PS4 and Xbox One machines are left behind to ensure the core gameplay incorporates the latest features of Ubisoft’s Anvil engine. That includes ray-traced global illumination, procedural weather simulation and world destruction physics – all exciting additions that help elevate its feudal era Japan setting, in ways not possible in 2023’s Assassin’s Creed Mirage.
Not all of these new features are universally available though, with developer Ubisoft Quebec opting for a number of modes that trade off between fidelity and performance on each platform. We’ll look at the game’s higher-end features on PS5 Pro and PC in future articles, with this one focusing on the current-gen console experience on PS5, Xbox Series X and Series S.
The questions here are straightforward: how do each of these three platforms compare, especially the least powerful Series S with its single 30fps mode? And out of the multiple modes available on PS5 and Series X, which are worth considering?
The new tech of the Anvil Engine deserves a moment in the spotlight. After all, on console and PC, this is the first series entry to officially adopt ray tracing and it has a big impact on the world’s presentation.
PS5 and Series X run with RT global illumination (RTGI) in their 30fps and 40fps modes across the entirety of the world, adding richer and more realistic ambient light bounce and shading. RT reflections are also included in Shadows, though it’s restricted to the more powerful PS5 Pro and PC versions of the game – and this means the base consoles make do with screen-space reflections (SSR). Meanwhile, the 60fps performance modes on PS5 and Series X trade out ray tracing for a less accurate baked GI method, as we saw in ACs Valhalla and Mirage, though the hideout area forces a 30fps presentation with RTGI enabled regardless of mode. Likewise, Series S only receives RTGI in the hideout, with baked GI used elsewhere across the world.
The advantage of RTGI is that its more accurate simulation is better-suited to Shadows’ dynamic landscapes, with its diverse weather, seasons and destructible environments all affecting light and shadow. The improvement is evident in the richer, more detailed pockets of shade between objects, the shading of character faces in daylight and the interiors of buildings. Diffuse light bounce from nearby scenery also helps to realistically brighten shaded patches with an appropriate hue.
Ubisoft’s classic baked GI method is still respectable, but has clear limitations by comparison. It over-saturates certain details of the world (vegetation especially) in an attempt to match up to the RTGI lighting, while interiors and up-close character detail lack the same richness of shading depth. It’s perhaps not surprising that RTGI isn’t available across the main world on Series S, given that it has a third of the compute power of Series X, but it gives a noticeable fidelity win to Series X and PS5.
Another major Anvil engine upgrade is in its physics. Ubisoft’s efforts are extensive in this aspect this year, with physics-based weather simulation injecting some much-needed energy into the game’s environments. Riding to your next mission, you’ll spot a procedural system, called Atmos, dynamically generating clouds overhead, while the team’s wind simulation uses fluid dynamics to create everything from light gusts to gales. The impact is most obviously seen around forests: fallen leaves swirl through the air, trees sway with the bluster, and even the direction of rainfall is affected.
Destruction physics are also much more widely deployed this time. Impressively, it’s possible to smash your way through the contents of most items strewn across a market stall, or even slice through fabric with the tear line matching the arc of your katana. If you prefer a more stealthy approach, you’ll also catch the way blades of grass flatten in the direction of travel, leaving a persistent trail as you crawl through. It makes the world feel much more tangible, and marks a sea change from the cross-gen AC titles that came before it.
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Given Shadows’ open world is filled with complex hills, valleys and large settlements, Ubisoft has also gone to great lengths to optimise its terrain streaming. To that end, a new virtualised geometry system is added to Anvil, similar in principle to Unreal Engine 5’s Nanite, allowing geometry across a scene to gradually sub-divide into smaller polygonal meshes the further it appears in the distance. This technology helps hide hard LOD steps while ensuring the terrain is packed with detail – though foliage pop in is still visible on PS5 and Series X.
All of these technologies are included on all consoles, though there is one omission on Series S: strand-based hair. It’s a beautiful addition that affects most major characters sporting tresses of some kind. Individual strands of hair – as on our shinobi heroine, Naoe – animate dynamically, with each one interacting with its neighbours as the character moves or the wind blows. This is again exclusive to the 30 and 40fps modes, with the 60fps mode falling back to a simpler card-based system outside of the hideout and cutscenes. Indeed, this is the approach taken on Series S too, which goes even further, and removes strand-based hair for the hideout area outright.
In a three-way comparison between the 60fps performance, 40fps balanced and 30fps quality modes, it’s clear that RTGI and hair physics are the main factors to consider, but there are resolution differences too (as shown in the table below). Each mode upscales to a 4K output via TAAU on PS5 and Series X, while Series S scales to 1620p.
Beyond the native resolutions, shadow quality is degraded slightly on performance mode on Series X and PS5, though texture quality, draw distance and physics-based extras remain the same regardless of mode. Series S sees more significant cutbacks however: it runs with lower quality texture assets and lower quality shadows, though thankfully other areas like foliage draw distances match the higher-powered base consoles.
In terms of performance, the 30fps quality mode is well optimised and locks to its target frame-rate nearly always. Much like other recent Assassin’s Creed titles though, occasional drops are possible where dynamic resolution scaling takes a moment to adjust = should the rendering load change rapidly. You can force this by looking straight up and then at some complex geometry, then back again, but in more realistic gameplay only a few combat scenarios cause drops on PS5 or Series X.
Frame-rate stability is similar in the 40fps balanced mode for 120Hz displays, with a good lock to the target frame-rate. If you want to keep the visual niceties but get a more responsive experience at the expense of a softer image, this is a solid choice. Curiously, the hideout area and cutscenes still run at 30fps, with the frame-rate switching abruptly once you pass the threshold to that region.
Rounding out the selection is the performance mode, which offers a more fluid experience that benefits combat, notably in timing ripostes, but the visual downgrades are worth considering. Frame-rates are less stable here, too, with semi-frequent drops into the 50s – though this is well within the range of VRR on both PS5 and Series X. Cutscenes and the hideout area continue to switch to 30fps in this mode, which is all the more jarring coming from a 60fps baseline. Interestingly, it’s necessary for the game to fade to black in this transition for this mode, presumably to engage the otherwise disabled RT and hair physics, while it’s seamless in the 40fps mode.
The Series S version presents the least stable 30fps mode. Despite its many cutbacks to RTGI, hair physics and resolution, it’s not quite as watertight as you might hope. Frame-rate dips are noticeably more common than on Series X or PS5 in their equivalent 30fps options, with battles and cutscenes being the most frequent cause of disruption as resolution bottoms out at 720p. The hideout area at least locks to 30fps with RTGI enabled, but it’s safe to say that the overall experience is noticeably less smooth on the junior Xbox machine and you don’t truly get the generational leap that Shadows is offering elsewhere.
The outlook is a positive one overall though: Assassin’s Creed Shadows is the series’ most exciting new entry in years, with PS5 and Series X at last showing off their mettle via new Anvil Engine features. Simply put, the physics-based, ray-traced nature of its feudal Japan setting is the absolute star of the show. The drawback is that only the 40fps mode on PS5 and Series X really offers a satisfying blend of fidelity and responsiveness, with the 60fps mode perhaps cutting too many of its new features – while Series S suffers further cutbacks.
Still, Ubisoft deserves praise for putting out a game with such clear technical ambition, married to an undeniably compelling setting. Having reviewed a great many Assassin’s Creed games for Digital Foundry over the last 14 years, Shadows is a real highlight – and above all, shows the promising direction the series is headed.
