So the question is, has Ubisoft got the balance right this time? Just like Unity, the developer aims for a locked 30fps update, but this time it does a much better job of hitting its performance targets. Assassin's Creed Syndicate: Engine-driven cut-scene performance analysis.The sequel shows a substantial improvement. Assassin's Creed Unity performance was a profound disappointment. The inclusion of the horse-drawn carriages shows that there is some core innovation added to the game at a technical level, and it's also good to see the return of the series' dynamic time of day. However, aesthetically, the streets don't look quite so bare as they appeared in the reveal materials, and the inclusion of vehicles fills up the wide city streets quite nicely. It also safe to say that NPC count is also somewhat reduced compared to Unity's rioting crowds, and perhaps not quite representative of the 3.2m population that made Victorian London one of the most population-dense cities in the world during the game's 1860s time period. Side mission markers for clearing Templar influence and street-corner pubs with collectibles have interiors, while key landmarks such as the Palace of Westminster are also explorable. On top of that, another major innovation found in Unity - the prevalence of interior locations - has also been pared back, though not removed entirely. Bearing in mind that Assassin's Creed Syndicate features twins as its main protagonists, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, it's not difficult to imagine that co-op may well have been a key factor in the game's design brief at some point. The online multiplayer modes are gone - meaning that the co-op functionality that debuted last year has been discarded. Indeed, there's a fairly compelling argument that Ubisoft has made a play for improved performance this year by scaling back on Unity's giddy ambition. The same AnvilNext engine runs the game, and the same basic compromises we found in Unity are present and correct here - specifically, the utilisation of internal upscaling, with both PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions of Syndicate sporting the same 900p resolution as last year's title. What's immediately apparent as you play your way through the overly long tutorial mission is that Ubisoft has made little in the way of fundamental improvements to the core rendering technology that powers Assassin's Creed Syndicate. Ubisoft simply cannot afford another Unity. The new game has to be solid, it has to perform well, glitches and bugs must be kept to a minimum. Combine that with the multitude of bugs endemic in the title at launch and the challenge facing Ubisoft with Assassin's Creed Syndicate is clear. Unfortunately, on console, it's nowhere near as attractive, blighted by a highly variable frame-rate that's mysteriously worse on PS4 than it is on Xbox One. Play Unity today on a top-tier PC and you'll be pleasantly surprised at just how beautiful it looks. Ubisoft scaled up virtually every element of the last-gen engine, with enormous increases to environment detail (including building interiors), an NPC count pushed into the hundreds and a cutting-edge rendering engine with sensational, physically-based lighting. In retrospect, perhaps Assassin's Creed Unity was simply too ambitious from a technological perspective.
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