It's a cinematic gaussian blur obviously. It's the true artistic vision.

What burns me the most about these games needing day one dlc on console networks is that these are band-aids on a larger issue that has no foundation to fix when that infrastructure changes. Right now we may have patches that can bring that out of box retail game to a playable state but this isn't like pc gaming where patches can be freely exchanged and stored, that leaves everyone with a broken game until they get a patch that brings it up to the quality that it should have had right out of the damn box. These servers aren't always going to be here pushing out patches, this pattern of just pushing poorly optimized games particularly from UbiSoft, across all platforms is a disturbing trend. I hope those with the influence can hold UbiSoft accountable because this is quickly becoming their standard business practice.

EDIT: A larger point I am making is that this game can't afford to be broken, The AC bundle is probably the most popular of the 349$ set since most SSO have sold out. MS can't afford to have their bundle game running at 20FPS, this is a disastrous scenario if the right people don't get out infront of it.

@captain_felafel: Mine is at 4 seconds in. Lady on the left walking towards the camera.

Are you for real? How is this not known by the press until the morning the game is released?

The thread title should be changed to all platforms have terrible performance.... for avoidance debates and stuff.

Unless the reports from users that claim the Xbox One version and PC (with high end gpu's) runs below 30 FPS constantly.

Can't wait for Digital Foundry write up

I had to read that twice to make sure I wasn't seeing things...this game is running that poorly with an 850mb patch.

You know, I have come to expect Ubisoft's PC ports to be bad, but I expect their console versions to at a minimum be locked at 30 fps. They managed a locked 30 with Black Flag (even if the Xbone version had to be dropped to 900p to achieve it), so hopefully they can get some patches out quickly and fix this mess.

It was, they were just NDAd. Hell they are still NDAd for another 3 hours.

It's completely disgusting and if this happens with FC4 as well I'm never buying another Ubi product again.

dat parity in terribleness

They achieved their goal, there is no debate all platforms are terribly optimized.

It's a shame performance can be so bad while they claim to be "pushing modern systems to their limits."

Maybe it's because I'm playing the X1 version, but other than a frame rate drop here and there and some pop in it's stayed pretty solid for me so far. I'm really enjoying it. Coop play had some major lag/pop in though.

But of course it will !!!!!

BTW I heard that SMART made this deal with a race organizer so that their cars will be no.1, so I'd be shocked if the SMARTs didn't looked cooler and ran faster than the Ferraris that will be participating!

I can't tell if mcfart was being serious with that Xbox One comment.

I wonder if its the firmware. Polygon reported that Dragon Age had huge problems on PS4 until they played it on a pre-2.0 console, where it ran great. The thing is though that Dragon Age isn't out for another week so they have time to make a fix for it before launch.

It runs like shit on all platformns.

And looks like shit on all of them as well.

TotalBiscuit isn't exactly having a blast on the PC either:

Can't sleep and Unity is out so lemme tell you about my experience so far. I only got access to code yesterday so I'm not that far in but there's a promised Day 1 patch that by the looks of it is SORELY needed. Getting that game to run on max settings is a nightmare, it's a huge resource hog. My 2 980s barely keep up. In the small tutorial area I was looking at some nasty drops one 1 980, prior to Nvidia putting in an SLI profile.

As it stands I can JUST keep it at 60, though it has some drops below at times. The game doesn't really look like it justifies that. It has some killer popin, just like Watchdogs did, actors very obviously and inconspicuously switch between detail levels depending on your distance to them and often just appear out of nowhere and disappear at random.

Lighting is glitchy as hell and overall texture quality is poor. I will say the faces and mo-cap quality is excellent, it actually has a kiss that doesn't look like 2 robots rubbing their faces together, so there's that. The problem that I had yesterday was just the MASS of bugs. Guards spawning in from the sky, NPC actors wandering through terrain and clipping through objects, scripted sequences breaking at random and stealth seems like it's just busted.

I had a guy spot me in a stealth section, run up to me as I was standing and then "lose track" of me. I was right in front of his face, he just wandered off. Thus far the game seems like quite the step backwards. Combat feels much more sluggish than Black Flag, but I admit I have yet to unlock a lot of the weapons and gadgets, I'm not that far in. So I don't have much to say about the gameplay up to this point (its been super standard Asscreed stuff) but this Day 1 patch is sorely needed, because the game without it is a buggy mess.

@kingspeedy: Needing 2 980s to hit 60 fps is FUCKING RIDICULOUS!

Those parkour skills.

@amyggen: ASSASSINO! Wait what's assassin in French? I'm from fucking Quebec and I don't know this what is wrong with me.

Apparently it's just assassin. How anticlimactic.

I had a bad feeling this would happen. But on the bright side, at least they weren't lying about those PC requirements, right?

Yeah, the framerate took some getting used to. But the game is nice to look at once you turn off the insane amount of ugly unnecessary HUD. Cause after all it's still easy as ever, just a different easy combat.

@jesus_phish said:

The hell?! Hadn't seen her before. xD

So is this game going to have a series of hilarious gifs, like Aliens Colonial Marines?

Edit: Yep

It would have been better if they were lying, then I would have been able to run it. Unfortunately I do not have access to the second 980 required to hit 60.

Assassin with a french accent just sounds right to me. So that doesn't surprise me.

Assassin

Neither do I. Nor do probably like 99% of PC gamers. Such a disappointment. Maybe this topples Destiny for the crew's Most Disappointing Game of 2014.

@corevi: There are reports on Reddit about being unable to hit 60fps on a GTX760 at ~660p with the lowest settings, but by far my favorite thing is the people saying the refresh rate defaults to 24hz on PC.

Also, here's NVidia's take on performance tweaks. Shame that a 780 can only pull off FXAA and the 780Ti can only manage 2xMS.

I hate to be the potentially douchey but.... I don't really get the big deal. Occasionally the frame rate stutters and occasionally something pops in. Games have been like this since the original playstation.

The story is pretty good and it's pretty fun to play. Is all this really the end of the world?

I doubt it. Nobody on staff seemed that excited for it. If Far Cry 4 has similar problems however then that might have a shot.

Really glad i picked up the Sunset Overdrive Bundle over the AC one, this game looks like a mess.

The pre-release hype for Unity was nowhere near that of Destiny, though. I'm not sure anything could topple Destiny for most disappointing since it looks like Inquisition is getting fantastic scores all around already.

Well, that's disappointing. I will wait until Noon to see the official reviews but a lot of what I've read has made this game sound like it's garbage on a lot of levels. I was a long time AC fan up until 3 and was very lukewarm on Black Flag, but I was very excited about this release. I was half tempted, given all the shit Ubisoft has been touting to the press, to simply drive down to the store and pick it up this morning. I'm glad I didn't reading all of these reactions.

Ouch. Sounds like I'll wait a while to play this then.

The PC version seems to be not-too-bad from what I've been reading

@corevi: @mb: I don't know. I see this from the perspective of AC4 breathing new life into the franchise after the huge letdown that was AC3. That game gave me and I'm sure plenty of other people hope that 5 would be another big step forward for the series, especially since Ubi was out there talking about how they built this game for the new consoles from the ground up. Maybe it's not as disappointing as Destiny, but I wouldn't be surprised if it at least makes the list.

Ugh, sounds like maybe I should just hold off on this for now. I'm still backlogged on games from October and the EA Access version of Dragon Age: Inquisition launches Thursday, so I'm not exactly in need of another game to play.

Embargoes! Hmm!

That Rogue game looks pretty sweet though. Unity might have better assets but I think the Art Design in Rogue trumps it.

I am embargoed until noon eastern from saying anything too specific about Unity, but let's just say I've had some issues with the Xbox One version as well.

If that is the case, what the hell did we need new consoles for?

@totalbiscuit on the PC port at Twitlonger:

http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sica1s

Can't sleep and Unity is out so lemme tell you about my experience so far. I only got access to code yesterday so I'm not that far in but there's a promised Day 1 patch that by the looks of it is SORELY needed. Getting that game to run on max settings is a nightmare, it's a huge resource hog. My 2 980s barely keep up. In the small tutorial area I was looking at some nasty drops one 1 980, prior to Nvidia putting in an SLI profile.

As it stands I can JUST keep it at 60, though it has some drops below at times. The game doesn't really look like it justifies that. It has some killer popin, just like Watchdogs did, actors very obviously and inconspicuously switch between detail levels depending on your distance to them and often just appear out of nowhere and disappear at random.

Lighting is glitchy as hell and overall texture quality is poor. I will say the faces and mo-cap quality is excellent, it actually has a kiss that doesn't look like 2 robots rubbing their faces together, so there's that. The problem that I had yesterday was just the MASS of bugs. Guards spawning in from the sky, NPC actors wandering through terrain and clipping through objects, scripted sequences breaking at random and stealth seems like it's just busted.

I had a guy spot me in a stealth section, run up to me as I was standing and then "lose track" of me. I was right in front of his face, he just wandered off. Thus far the game seems like quite the step backwards. Combat feels much more sluggish than Black Flag, but I admit I have yet to unlock a lot of the weapons and gadgets, I'm not that far in. So I don't have much to say about the gameplay up to this point (its been super standard Asscreed stuff) but this Day 1 patch is sorely needed, because the game without it is a buggy mess.

I have no idea who this dude is other than Alex retweeted him but if he's right... I might have to close my eyes for this one.

I think the issue is slightly overstated. I'm a few sequences in and it hasn't detracted from my enjoyment of the game whatsoever.

The framerate chug is rare for me and when it happens it is not prolonged.

The game is stunning to look at. The art, architecture and lighting is probably some of the best I've ever seen. I'm really enjoying it, probably more than any since II.

@euandewar: He works at Joystiq.

To be fair to other commenters, I haven't come across one of the major glitches yet, maybe that will change my opinion.

@euandewar: Kotaku isn't painting a great picture either.

Ten studios working on a game and they can't optimize it for consoles. Amazing.

@kingspeedy: bah nvidia can go spit.. like hell I'm playing it without AO... my poor poor 680....