Some might say that the game was too ambitious for the intended platform. In 2014, Ubisoft’s epic Assassin’s Creed Unity pushed technical limits in many directions. The revolutionary portrayal of Paris is densely packed with details, and in a city that not only adds more detail outdoors, but also introduces highly detailed interiors, hundreds of residents are displayed on the screen at any given time. It was. Unity has all the elements of a masterpiece, combining significant advances in character rendering with an incredible global illumination system that is still incredible today. The problem was that it didn’t work at all.

Ubisoft itself Admitted that the focus on technology is too strongAt the expense of the final product, which didn’t work well on both PS4 and Xbox One. Even on a PC, it took years for the CPU and GPU to run this game well. Curiously, in the console build, Unity worked better on a Microsoft machine that wasn’t really that powerful, even though both had a 900p resolution locked. This demonstrates the extraordinary CPU load on the console and the small clock speed benefits that the Xbox One enjoys. Patches have been applied and the game has been improved, but PS4 Pro and Xbox One X with higher frequency CPUs are now available to run the game at speeds close to locked 30 frames per second.

Now, with the advent of the Xbox Series X, you can finally play games on the console. 60 frames / sec..And with one very small exception, it Locked 60fps. This is one of the most transformative experiences I have ever experienced through the backward compatibility features of the new console. Games that are famous for their suboptimal play are basically perfect in terms of performance. But in reality it’s not easy to break the 30fps limit of the game. Users should access the original disk release and block attempts to download patches. This OG code is different from all patches after they are actually run at an unlocked frame rate. The situation wasn’t good for console users at the time, but it’s essential to be able to take advantage of the huge CPU power provided by six years from now. Zen2 processor in next-generation machines.

With the introduction of the Xbox One X in 2017, Microsoft’s backcompat system could solve many of AC Unity’s GPU-related issues, and even simpler scenes could actually reach 60fps. But when I went out into town, the frame rate collapsed. Even with a 30% upclock compared to the original console, the AMD Jaguar core couldn’t get close to the 60Hz refresh of the display. Series X does it, runs it stylishly, and provides an almost perfect experience. Only if you move near a co-op mission marker will the game momentarily lose its solid performance level and still only momentarily. It’s pretty good to see the Zen 2 core do this. Especially considering that what is played here is the original non-optimal code, not a significantly improved patch update, it’s a significant achievement.

Series X AC Unity not only looks good (and benefits from forcing 16x anisotropic filtering to clean the texture of the ground), but also improves playback. I think this is the last view of what could be considered a classic Assassin’s Creed. A city that thrives at the most important moments in history. Many of its breakthrough enhancements have been removed for syndicate follow-up. It’s no exaggeration to say that Assassin’s Creed as a franchise has taken a completely different direction since the introduction of AC Origin in 2017. Playing Unity at locked 60 fps today, if Ubisoft decides to revisit and enhance the classic method, the CPU horsepower is finally there, regaining the huge cityscape and crowded crowds. You can lose yourself in.

If you have pre-ordered the Series X console, be sure to find an old disc copy of the game. However, do not install the patch when prompted. We hope that Microsoft can make everything official by introducing a “double fps” backcompat feature in this title. It’s clear that the game code itself can do that, opening the door to exactly the same experience that’s running on the Xbox Series S. Yes, AC Unity is CPU limited on existing machines, so I’m not entirely sure why the experiment here doesn’t work just as well on the junior next generation console, but ironically, its all-digital Due to its nature, it is not possible to install disk code. Perhaps you can find a workaround that involves copying the OG code to an external device? Anyway, it’s good to have this work without hassle.

Last footnote. Running the original release code back-compat can lead to various bugs that caused a strange mix of entertainment and frustration at the time. After a few hours of sinking into the Series X OG release, my problem remained in the shadow of a gradual NPC and some glitches in one room. Of course, mileage can be different, but I remember that Eurogamer’s former reviewer Tom Bramwell was playing the game relatively unaffected by the issue. But still, from my point of view, Unity still sets aside the nasty traversal problem (why Arno struggles to climb the most accidental bric-a-brac?) Xbox Enhancements by the compatibility team can be of great help-Series X can certainly offer 1800p60-but it may be when Ubisoft officially intervened to get things right. The next generation opens the door to the beautiful Assassin’s Creed Unity Remaster, and I want to see it happen.