A few weeks after Ubisoft unveiled the PC system requirements for Assassin's Creed Shadows, the publisher is now providing some details on exactly what differences you'll see between the game's different spec levels. I've been staring at this comparison shot for 15 minutes straight and I'm still not entirely sure what the difference is supposed to be, and that's pretty much by the developer's design.
"One thing we tried with Shadows was to be as scalable as possible," technical architect Pierre Fortin says in a new Q&A blog. "We want the game to cater to the high-end of the spectrum without putting the bar too high in terms of requirements. As such, we believe that our minimum required specs reflect this commitment. A GTX 1070, the minimum required GPU, is quite old at this time, yet we made efforts to support pre-RTX GPU (GTX 1070, GTX 1080TI and equivalent) that are still competent today but lack hardware level raytracing capabilities."
The devs additionally "want to highlight the fact that the game will look stunning even on the lowest settings," and if the comparison shot they've provided is any indication, they're not far off the mark. The image is admittedly a little too small for any robust comparison work, but the character looks effectively identical at low, high, and ultra specs. The one visible difference is that the shadows on the rooftop outside are slightly darker as the specs go up, but it's tough to say that any version looks genuinely better here.
I'm sure there will be some distinct visual differences between the game's different configurations, as the official specs released in January range from the aforementioned GTX 1070 all the way up to an RTX 4090, which is no small upgrade. Here's hoping all this emphasis on scalability means that low-spec players will also get a good experience in the end.
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