Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced Review: Great on All Consoles, But Best on PS5 Pro

[00:05] technical triumph as we detailed in our tech focused video last week, but we didn't have time to break down the game's performance on consoles with a total of 10 different console and mode configurations. So, how does Black Flag

[00:18] fare on current gen console hardware? Does it swim or does it sync? on PS5 with a very typical performance, fidelity, and balance split. Comparing

[00:34] the performance and fidelity modes, the biggest feature level excision is the removal of the RT reflections, which add perspective correct reflection detail to the world, even when screen space information isn't available. The RT

[00:47] reflections bring out the detail in the ocean surface, highlighting the rough tested formations on water. In a lot of games, that wouldn't be a huge deal, including in last year's Assassin's Creed Shadows, which didn't feature RT

[01:00] reflections on PS5, owing to frame rate concerns. But in the Caribbean set, Black Flag, their use adds much more to the game's visual signature. Getting their required substantial overhauls to Anvil's TAU, and Denoising, and the

[01:14] resolution, but in the end, reflection quality is fine, even on base PS5 hardware. Lighting elsewhere in the game is also dialed back. PS5 in performance mode dials back the use of shadow maps for distant structures and foliage,

[01:28] leaning on a screen space solution instead. The difference should be obvious in this comparison shot. When we olude the tree line at the top of the screen, shadows beneath disappear, and if we do the reverse, shadows gradually

[01:40] draw in. The fidelity mode also makes use of screen space shadows, but their use is more additive in that mode. It's an interesting solution that typically looks fine enough on PS5. Head to heads and city areas reveal little visible

[01:53] difference between the two modes, but areas replete with vegetation can have a performance mode in some instances, though GI downgrades may be implicated at times as well. Shadow map resolution also gets a bit of a haircut in

[02:07] performance mode with more obvious cascading behavior. The game's RTGI is thankfully, which means the performance mode has a pretty satisfying indirect lighting presentation on the whole. AC Shadows dropped RTGI on the PS5

[02:22] performance mode entirely, relying on a baked probe-based solution that produced less than satisfactory results. In Black Flag, you can expect a broadly similar appearance across the two modes. That's not to say that everything's exactly the

[02:36] same. I sometimes noticed some differences in color temperature between the two modes, even on identical saved games. And there are some fairly minute differences in the appearance of shade in some areas. I'd also expect the

[02:49] performance mode may be a little bit more prone to RTGi artifacting owing to its lower resolution, though in actual gameplay, both look quite stable. Then there are some more iterative cuts. Foliage detail seems to take a hit.

[03:01] Round detail seems a bit less pronounced in performance mode. Strand-based hair is still used in cutscenes, but during gameplay, hair seems simplified and doesn't exhibit the artifacts associated with the strand hair. Cloth also takes a

[03:15] docked ships exhibit coarser, less lively movement than their fidelity mode counterparts. Ubisoft confirmed that cloth sims should be a little bit simpler in the game's higher performance configurations, an optimization to ease

[03:29] CPU strain. But I think I'm just scratching the surface. The Black Flag team mentioned thousands of settings that can be tweaked on a granular basis across consoles and modes through their platform manager. Settings are also

[03:42] adjusted depending on gameplay context. So on foot gameplay and naval sections use different settings. For instance, I'm really just getting at the big picture general differences. Image quality is the last key visual

[03:55] divergence. Internally, PS5 in performance mode is usually good for about 1080p or slightly lower, while fidelity mode seems to be around or a bit below 1440p typically. The output imagery in performance mode is also

[04:08] quite a bit rougher and has the appearance of a lower output resolution. The aliasing presentation in both modes is fine enough though, and the developers told me that substantial revisions to their TAU, including the

[04:20] addition of an anti- flicker technique, was required to correctly resolve the game's micro polygal details, and that rendering resolution should be somewhat higher than in Shadows, again, to mitigate flickering issues. Frame rates

[04:33] here are pretty boring, and that's a good thing. Basically, as far as I can locked 30 fps throughout, and the performance mode is a locked 60 fps. There may be some variance later in the game, but in my experience in capture,

[04:47] this is a very stable experience. Cut scenes are 30 fps on all modes, though. still doesn't feature RT reflections in these sequences despite the identical update. Cutscenes do drop frames sometimes on camera cuts, but that's not

[05:01] unusual for a modern game. There's a third mode here, balanced mode, which targets 40 fps at 120 Hz output. It's pretty boring from a visual perspective, though, in the sense that it targets largely the same settings as fidelity

[05:14] mode and looks very similar on the whole. Shadow resolution may be cut back here and there, but I don't think there are very many obvious differences. Resolutions are actually very similar here to the PS5 performance mode,

[05:29] clocking in at about 1080p internally, though obviously visual features are superior in balanced mode. It does a good enough job of aping the fidelity mode just with somewhat smoother performance and worse image quality.

[05:41] Moving on to PS5 Pro, the game leverages the Pro's faster GPU and more efficient RT acceleration to add RT reflections to the performance mode. It's a neat addition, though the reflections are a bit chunkier and more prone to aliasing

[05:54] than in the base console fidelity mode. Strandbased hair also makes an that the game's advanced rendering tweakables are present on Pro in performance mode. Shadows and contrast retained RTGI in its Proformance mode,

[06:09] but dropped both strand hair and RT reflections. Unfortunately, the PS5 Pro performance mode still relies heavily on screen space shadows, which is an imperfect solution for the game's dense forested environments. In most areas of

[06:22] the game, though, on open seas or in dense towns, it's barely noticeable. The fidelity mode is pretty similar between both machines. In overall presentation, the RTGI does appear to be running at a noticeably higher resolution, producing

[06:36] sharper, more defined indirect diffuse lighting. But outside of that, any differences seem quite minor and hard to notice. Image quality is also improved hugely on PS5 Pro, especially in the performance mode, which resolves a crisp

[06:49] 4K-l like image with excellent anti-aliasing. Sony's enhanced version of PSSR is largely to credit here, which is used on the Pro in all modes. Fidelity mode doesn't improve as much in image sharpness and detail over the base

[07:04] console, but it deals with aliasing and flickering much more effectively than that machine. This game is pretty hard to pixel count, but I think internal resolutions between all the modes are pretty similar to PS5. Frame rates in

[07:17] all PS5 Pro modes are just about identical to the base console, which is to say that they generally hit the game's performance targets. Cutcenes are 30 FPS while gameplay is 30, 40, or 60 FPS depending on the mode. But there's

[07:31] one wrinkle here that I have to bring up. My initial testing indicated that PSSR was not in use in this title because the game exhibited significant pixel crawl and anti-aliasing broke pretty harshly when we rapidly rotated

[07:45] the camera. These characteristics seemed more indicative of the game's TAU than PSSR, which tends to anti-las imagery effectively, even when we break the game's temporal history. I brought my findings to Ubisoft and asked for

[08:00] comment, and several members of the game's technical team ended up spending quite some time trying to find the root of the issue. After some testing, they found that saves imported from base PS5 to PS5 Pro wouldn't engage PSSR, leaving

[08:15] the game with degraded image quality, which was the root of the problems in my own testing. To remedy the issue, you have to delete all save data for Black Flag Reynct in the console menus and start fresh on PS5 Pro, as starting a

[08:29] new game in Reync itself isn't sufficient. Ubisoft told me that this post-release patch, which should arrive in the next week or two. But for now, users who have both PS5 systems should be wary of this issue. And if you want

[08:44] the best possible image quality, you may have to start fresh on PS5 Pro.

[08:59] essentially identical visual experience to the PS5. Head-to-head comparisons suggest broadly unaltered visual settings between the two machines. Resolutions are also about the same. It's possible there's a slight

[09:11] resolution advantage in favor of Series X based on my counts, but if so, it's relatively small. None of this is a bad thing, mind you, but PS5 experience is very good. So, Series X offers a similarly satisfying experience. Frame

[09:24] rates are also solid, again, hitting stable performance levels in typical play. The Series X spec was mooded as a big Microsoft advantage at the start of this console generation. But in practice, whether to unique hardware

[09:37] bottlenecks, worse tools, or some mix thereof, Series X rarely offers a substantially elevated experience over Sony's base console and usually falls well short of PS5 Pro. Series S is a different story. There's only one visual

[09:51] mode here offering 30 fps performance. Thankfully, RTGI is retained unlike in AC shadows. Indirect diffuse lighting quality is broadly similar between Series X in performance mode and Series S. Though, Series S does sometimes look

[10:06] a touch coarser and noticeably more bright. On Series S, Strand Hair doesn't seem to be featured in the game at all, including in cutscenes. expect much poorer card-based locks instead with a flat, shallow look. Aside from those two

[10:22] tweaks, the two machines don't really look that different. RTJI was targeted on Series S and PS5 and Series X performance modes from the start of development, and the game was optimized around that target. The primary unique

[10:36] challenge on the S came down to RAM, as the BVH acceleration structures don't scale in memory usage according to the game's rendering resolution. But Ubisoft was able to ship RTGI on the S in the end, which gives the game a very

[10:50] consistent overall look between platforms. bit lower than the Series X in performance mode, but not hugely so. The actual resolved imagery is a bit softer and less detailed on Series S, but it

[11:05] enhancement. Frame rates, thankfully, are very stable with little variation over my time playing, just like the senior consoles. Overall, I'm very satisfied with Black Flag Reync on consoles. All consoles run well for

[11:19] their respective specs with sensible upgrades on Pro and a perfectly respectable appearance on Series S. The game offers enough modes to cater to specific tastes and display setups without burying users with endless

[11:32] choices or poisoning the selections with some substandard configurations. There's not much to complain about here at all. So, Black Flag Reync is a solid experience across all console platforms. Ubisoft's ambitious remake sails

[11:47] smoothly on current gen systems. If you enjoyed this video, please like, YouTube notifications. Check out the Patreon at patreon.com/digitalfoundry for exclusive and early access content. And to get in touch, use social media.