In particular, characters feature intricate skin details on PC, whereas pores, clothing threads or subtle blemishes appear blurred or absent on the 360 and PS3.
Higher resolution textures and normal maps are used on the PC version. However, these elements are more liberally deployed on the PC - and at a higher resolution - further sprucing up fights and large scale naval battles. Particle effects appear as typical alpha sprites across all three platforms.
What's interesting here is that Xbox 360 and PS3 receive the effect too - this wasn't the case with AC4.
Curiously, motion blur runs in higher precision in some scenes, while in others the effect is a close match for the consoles, displaying clear sample patterns that are used to form the distortion. Higher resolution textures and normal maps add more intricate details to environment surfaces and characters, while shadows, texture filtering, surface shaders, and ambient occlusion all receive more advanced implementations. However, the removal of SMAA is more perplexing given the low cost to GPU resources and the generally excellent coverage it provides.īeyond the boost to resolution, Assassin's Creed Rogue delivers all the usual graphical enhancements over the ageing 360 and PS3 consoles one would expect from a modern PC title. We can understand the decision to remove MSAA: the technique doesn't play well with deferred rendering elements, and causes a noticeable impact on performance. While the FXAA set-up holds up quite well at higher resolutions, there's more sub-pixel break up across small details that were greatly reduced in Assassin's Creed 4 via SMAA and as such overall image quality isn't quite as refined as the older game. The in-game menu provides two anti-aliasing options: no AA and FXAA - with MSAA, SMAA and TXAA completely absent despite their appearance in Black Flag. However, options to improve overall visual fidelity outside of upping resolution are curiously limited compared to previous Assassin's Creed titles.
The use of additional effects on PC delivers an extra layer of refinement over the console releases above the obvious gains in image quality by rendering at a higher resolution, allowing for a huge upgrade in clarity and sharpness over the consoles, with fine details and distant objects resolved much more clearly. Assassin's Creed Rogue: Xbox 360 vs PlayStation 3.All of these effects are enhancements to AnvilNext made for AC4's debut on current-gen consoles, added to the PC version by default and very welcome here in Assasin's Creed Rogue. The ocean is also graced with another layer of waves and shader effects compared to the 360 and PS3 versions, more realistically replicating how the water surface appears. Plumes of volumetric smoke flood the screen when cannons and handguns are fired, leaving thick clouds floating across the battlefield (these elements are displayed as flat 2D alpha sprites on consoles), while physics-based foliage reacts with the wind and characters, swaying and bending when disturbed. What's clear is that the PC version of Rogue offers up the most technically advanced Assassin's Creed experience out of the bunch. However, of the existing versions, the Xbox 360 release falls a little short, with some bizarre visual downgrades that lead to poorer image quality, without necessarily bringing about a consistent increase in performance.
Well, to cut to the chase, there's good news and there's bad news here: PC owners get to enjoy all of the engine enhancements made for the PC/Xbox One and PS4 versions of Black Flag - features that simply aren't present on the last-gen releases. Rogue was released late last year on Xbox 360 and PS3, but has only just made its way onto PC - as good an opportunity as ever to revisit a game we didn't have the resources to cover in the deluge of Q4 2014 releases, and to check out the last-gen engine's twilight outing on PC.
Perhaps more importantly, it doesn't suffer from as many bugs - even if it still features a few random glitches of its own, such as enemy characters disappearing in battle. Built using the same technology behind Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag, Rogue may not deliver the same graphical punch as the next-gen Unity, but some might say that it offers a more liberating gameplay experience when freed from the shackles of on-land exploration. Designed with last-gen consoles in mind, Assassin's Creed Rogue slipped under the radar somewhat owing to the controversy surrounding its Unity stable-mate's bugs, glitches and questionable performance.