Assassin’s Creed Shadows marks a major milestone for the series, as it’s the first entry developed exclusively for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC. With a departure from last-gen consoles, Ubisoft has fully utilized the new Anvil engine’s capabilities, such as ray-traced global illumination (RTGI), procedural weather, and destruction physics. Unlike in Assassin’s Creed Mirage, these upgrades bring the feudal Japan setting to life like never before.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows Showcases Stunning Anvil Engine Upgrades on PS5 and Xbox Series X for Next-Gen Gameplay

However, these features are not all available across platforms. Ubisoft Quebec chose to include different graphical modes in order to provide a balance between fidelity and performance. On PS5 and Xbox Series X, you have a choice between multiple modes, including potentially 30fps and 40fps with RTGI – but the Xbox Series S is confined to one 30fps mode while slashing back on graphical features. The PS5 Pro and PC editions, meanwhile, feature ray-traced reflections while base consoles use screen-space reflections (SSR).

The benefits of using RTGI are readily apparent in the game’s live light, making it possible to do complex shading of objects, the bounce of light around an environment, as well as how it interacts with the environment. It does, however, apparently switch to a baked global illumination method on both PS5 and Series X in its 60fps performance mode, which provides a favorable comparison to past Ubisoft products like Valhalla and Mirage with RTGI as its global illumination method. Unlike the hideout area which applies RTGI even with other options chosen.

Another big improvement is physics-based weather. With the help of the Atmos system, Clouds are generated procedurally, and realistic wind effects influence trees’ movement in a way that blows leaves into a swirl. Destruction physics is too impressive, so items can break, you can slash your katana in fabric, and flatten the grass when crawling. A virtualized geometry system, akin to Unreal Engine 5’s Nanite, ensures smooth level-of-detail transitions and has also improved terrain streaming. Series S doesn’t support strand-based hair physics, which animates individual hair strands at the rate of frames per second in the 30fps and 40fps modes on PS5 and Series X.

In terms of performance, both PS5 and Series X offer stable 30fps quality mode gameplay, with 40fps balanced mode providing a good compromise. However, the 60fps performance mode is plagued by frame-rate drops. The cutdown Series S can’t hold 30fps solidly, thus making it the weakest console version. Overall, Assassin’s Creed Shadows showcases the series’ most ambitious technical advancements, delivering a visually stunning and immersive open world.