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.
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.