Assassin’s Creed:Black Flag Re-synced PS5 v PS5 Pro Technical Review – A new game built on Stone or Sand?
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Sail away with me Honey
Edward Kenway was, and remains, both a popular pirate figure but also one of, the favourite Protagonists of the Assassins Creed franchise. Black Flag in a Resynced version, thanks to Ubisoft UK sending me review code on both the PS5 and the PC versions. This newly improved and updated game, powered by the In-house Anvil Next engine, has been crafted by the Ubisoft Singapore team. PS5 and PC share many options, one of them is how you wish to play the game, on PS5, Series X you can pick from 3 modes, (Series S gets a single 30fps fidelity mode) much like prior Anvil Assassin’s Creed games such as AC Shadows which I reviewed last year on the same platforms.
Fidelity mode targets the highest graphical settings and Resolution but lowest frame rates of 30fps.
Performance targets the lower graphical settings and resolution but the highest frame rates of 60fps.
Balance is the medium level that requires a 120Hz screen to maintain a 40fps output offering the blend of sharper visuals of quality but faster response of performance.
All Three modes use Anvil next’s own TAAU, just like Assassin’s Creed: Shadows, to reconstruct back to 4K from a lower base, Performance operates between 900p-1080p, Balanced around 1280p and Fidelity is approximately 1440p as a base. Series X is very similar levels of resolution in my counts and Series S targets a 1620p output from a lower base, approximately 810p as a low.
Skull & Crossbones
PS5 and Xbox Series X Fidelity and Balanced modes use both Ray Traced Diffuse and Specular lighting, i.e. Irradiance and reflections, to improve the games visual identity. Performance mode culls the specular reflections and just leaves Ray Tracing Diffuse and Ambient Occlusion(AO), although both of these are reduced in coverage and quality in performance reducing occlusion levels further into the frustum depth leaving more “glowing” areas on characters, buildings and objects in the game.Level of Detail(LoD) is lower in performance mode with reduced objects, debris grass, shrubs, shadow casting objects and clutter all popping in more as you walk. The Micropolygon Nanite does help but not all assets use it, such as grass, vegetation, shadow casters, etc so pop-in still happens even on the Ultra settings on PC. Shadow resolution and filtering is also reduced in the Performance mode over the other two modes. All modes use screen space shadows, but the Balanced and then Performance mode rely/swap more objects to Screen Space Shadows over shadow maps and hair strands are removed in the performance mode. PS5 Pro keeps Ray Traced Reflections and Hair Strands active in all three of its modes, but does reduce the FX quality such as shadows, LoD and Reflection quality in its performance mode. Which offers a benefit in cutscenes with RT reflections being disabled on PS5 performance mode they are also disabled in those cutscenes with a lower GI bounce as the engine renderer requires a restart to change settings, and they remain at 30fps.
PS5 Pro, again like AC Shadows added earlier this year, uses Sony’s Proprietary PSSR2 Upscaler across the same modes and it operates on similar or slightly lower base resolutions. But PSSR2 offers a more stable, higher resolve, sharper textures, cleaner geometry and an image quality in excess of PS5s quality mode, almost, even in its performance mode. Reducing shadow, specular and Ray Tracing(RT) flickering over all PS5 modes. It also maintains a higher level of RT and shadow quality over the base PS5 and keeps RT specular in all three of its modes. Impacted slightly due to the higher RT Refections, AO, and more in its performance mode, meaning it can render around 840p at its lowest base resolution and this causes slightly more shimmer on specular elements over the PS5’s performance mod
Shipshape And Bristol Fashion
The Anvil Next engine is largely based on the same engine that AC Shadows shipped on, with enhancements to Hair Strands now being more refined and across more NPCs during cutscenes but in gameplay only Kenway has them enabled, RT Reflections, Improved textures, materials, world and geometric density is significantly increased. Global Illumination via RT, micropolygon almost lodless scaling alongside robust changes to the gameplay, flow, level design, pacing, camera, art, combat and much more, character models, materials and lighting have been completely recreated in some instances and are aligned to current rendering quality targets. This is not a remaster, although many aspects have been remastered, they have also been changed, updated, augmented and even extended with far more to see, do, hear and play. Levels are all familiar but not the same, tress, rocks, areas, grounds and more have been changed to keep them fresh. You can now dive anywhere in the game, again taking from later AC games but the increase here to be able to dive under the oceans in caves and such without the diving bell, although still needed does open up and change many aspects of the game. Ditto the combat system which has seen some big changes also with time based parrys opening up multiple takedowns, insta-fail stealth is gone allowing mistakes to be simply eradicated with extreme prejudice. This alters how the game feels, the team have made a great deal of updates to the game not just in the visual side but also the content side. And that includes new side and extra story content, new missions, cutscenes and more.
The extra polish on the visuals really helps seal your minds eye version of how the game looked back in 2013, but as you can see from my comparisons with the OG XboxOne version and the PS5 Performance mode, the changes are abundant in every aspect of the games identity helping bring the old AC gameplay into the modern mix and match style action vs stealth that is has been evolving into since Black Flag originally launched. However, it also highlights the huge change in game production, design, tech and most of all art. Objectively the new game has more realistic, detailed and better animated characters, locales, materials and lighting. The real time GI adds more surface radiance and irradiance, far better Occlusion, grounded objects and dynamic interaction with everything. Wood bobs on the sea, crates, fences break, grass is cut down and enemies bend, fold and die with a visceral intensity. But subjectively it is not a better looking game overall only a more physically and technically accurate one. The 2013/2014 game was built at the end and for the x360 and this came from a pre PBR materiel Engine world. Something ushered in most dramatically by R@D The Order 1886 I again covered in detail at launch, but others had also start to move to BRDF pipeline which Ubisoft did not until Unity. Black Flag comes from an art and technique first ethos, craft the shot, hand place the lights, tailor the textures and balance the tech with those aims within the frame time budget. You can see more detailed examples and comparisons in the video on the page/YouTube channel.
Final Thoughts
As the modern Remake-X-Remaster period of gaming is now into full swing, largely thanks to Capcom’s commercial success in remaking old classics in RE2Remake. Ubisoft has now leaned into that space which will soon become very crowded in the years ahead of us, as I discussed in detail many years ago now in my gaming bubble video. The benefits here of being able to externalise and commercial remakes with the core game logic, sound, art, animation and more already done and full access to source code makes them a very attractive way to reskin an old game for new money. Black Flag is a great choice with such a big change to the AC game loop back then, but this is almost a like for like improvement that AC Unity was to Black Flag, even my original 2014 Unity preview video covers the same increases in animation fluidity, parkour traversal, combat and stealth changes and visual upgrades thanks to more memory, faster GPUs and dedicated HDs. It works well because the 2013 game can feel very dated in design, stealth, the Abstergo dull sections now gone, new missions, returning characters and much more, but it plays it safe rather than pushing onwards as much as Capcom. It has many bugs, even the performance mode using the mix LoD from the original code as detailed in the video. Many of these come from the systemic, generative code-based systems it runs under, such a building with inaccessible staircases, the same terrible AI also remains making combat and stealth less enjoyable than it could have been. Sadly the physical Xbox disc versions confirms that, like First Light, it is another game with disc based DRM as you can only play the game once you connect and download a patch, pointless. However, if you are looking to get back into the glory days of pirating and assassination, to set sail on the seas of high adventure that has that same old school, fun focused GameFirst that looks, plays, scales and improves on the original on PS5, PS5Pro and PC and Xbox consoles. It offers bootyfull treasure trove treats and feels less of a choir to play and much more of a pirates life for thee.
