With Assassin's Creed Syndicate finally in gamers' hands, it is clear that last year's Unity was too ambitious for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Ubisoft used the same AnvilNext engine but decided to scale the game back from its predecessor when it came to some functionalities, such as: the sky high number of NPC simultaneously on the screen, the number of explorable interior locations, the multiplayer modes.
According to Digital Foundry, co-op was probably on the table when the development process of Syndicate began, since there are two twin protagonists. By the way, the latest Assassin's Creed doesn't even support competitive multiplayer.
Talking about the number of characters on the screen, "aesthetically, the streets don't look quite so bare as they appeared in the reveal materials, and the inclusion of vehicles fills up the wide city streets quite nicely. The inclusion of the horse-drawn carriages shows that there is some core innovation added to the game at a technical level, and it's also good to see the return of the series' dynamic time of day", Digital Foundry reports.
Frame rate is way better than Unity's, although they both point to 30fps as the ultimate milestone. PS4 has been better optimized this year, now beating Xbox One in this aspect with certain occurrences:
"Just like Unity, the developer aims for a locked 30fps update, but this time it does a much better job of hitting its performance targets. Assassin's Creed Unity on console was farcical in places, even after multiple patches, often lurching down to 20fps or even lower. Curiously, it was the PlayStation 4 version that disappointed most, easily beaten during gameplay by a faster Xbox One release, though the GPU-intensive cut-scenes could see the Sony platform pull ahead of its Microsoft equivalent. Ultimately though, both consoles failed to impress: sustained sub-30fps gameplay just doesn't cut it.
Assassin's Creed Syndicate shows genuine improvement here. In Unity, we could see extended periods of gameplay where the 30fps target was nowhere in sight. Its successor shows huge improvement on both platforms, but it's clear that the PlayStation 4 takes pole position. We have two videos below outlining the performance differential, concentrating on engine cut-scenes and gameplay. In the former, GPU load is significantly higher than it is during gameplay, and Xbox One's less capable graphics hardware has more of an issue coping with the load, with sustained drops in performance in some areas, dipping beneath the 30fps threshold while PS4 holds firm. In areas where the Sony console does drop frames, Xbox One lags still further behind.
Cut-scene performance is interesting in that it shows us how each console copes under very similar engine loads, but it's often not indicative of the gameplay experience. Unity's Xbox One performance lead has vanished, and this time it's the PlayStation 4 that offers the smoother ride throughout gameplay. Rapid traversal through environments can hit performance on both systems, but where the Microsoft box dips into the high 20s, PS4 has a better lock on its 30fps target - and when the Sony console dips to the 27fps area, Xbox One is a couple of fps further off the pace."
By the way, "One thing that hasn't changed from Unity is the nigh-on identical lock in terms of visual features. We're still looking closely at both console versions of the game, but initial impressions suggest that once again the AnvilNext engine is offering an entirely like-for-like visual experience on both systems from the 900p resolution to the effects work, anti-aliasing and texture filtering settings". So there's not such a great difference between the two console versions.
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