Ray-tracing radical, Turok technophile, Crysis cultist and motion-blur menace. When not doing Digital Foundry things, he can be found strolling through Berlin examining the city for rendering artefacts.
Baldur's Gate 3, Street Fighter and Lost Ark developers discuss.Read our editorial policySome say that Skull and Bones has spent over a decade in development, so just how good is the final release? Well, Ubisoft says it's a game of quadruple-A quality no less, but in our opinion it's very much a mixed bag. There are elements to commend it from a technical point of view, but equally, it falls short in so many ways.
The skies also present very nicely - as they should, bearing in mind that the Anvil Next engine has had this nailed for some time now, with competent volumetric cloud rendering. In fact, all of the things that Skull and Bones does well from a visual standpoint tend to be the things that have impressed for the last half-decade in various Assassin's Creed titles - but to be blunt, that's where the praise comes to an end.
Console quality and performance modes lock to 30fps and 60fps almost without exception. In our testing, sporadic frame drops were noticeable in the hub area on PS5 and Series S, while Series X is unaffected. We've got issues with Skull and Bones for sure, but water and sky rendering are big elements of the game and look terrific, as you'd expect from the Anvil Next engine.
Built off 2013's Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag, enhancements to the Anvil Next engine since shine through - like physically-based materials for example. However, AC4 character animation, texture quality consistency and reflection quality are arguably superior to today's Skull and Bones. Skull and Bones has ray-traced global illumination on PC and console quality modes! A game-changer in titles like The Witcher 3, the effect is barely noticeable here and in fact, RTXGI is only used on the ship. It's not used anywhere else, as best as we could tell.
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