How Does Assassin’s Creed Valhalla Work on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S?

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is perhaps one of the most anticipated games of this year. This is one of the first games to experience the next-gen of gaming at the hands of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and Series S. Since the consoles from the houses of both Microsoft and Sony dropped about a week ago, a comparison between the gameplay experience was inevitable.

Further reading: PS5 Claims Its Home Turf As Xbox Takes a Backseat in Japan

DigitalFoundry, the tech supplement of Eurogamer, recently made a detailed comparison between the gameplay experience on the Xbox Series X and the PlayStation 5 while running Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla as the reference game.

As for the Series S console, they have this to say:

“The Series S rendition of Valhalla sits in a rather tricky position. Microsoft’s marketing places Series S as a lower resolution Xbox that should otherwise mirror the Series X experience, but the key cutback here is a drop from 60fps down to 30fps, firmly pegging it with last-gen versions of the game.

“Not only that, dynamic resolution is rather elastic, operating from 1188p to around 1656p, often settling at 1296p – lower than Series X, and also delivering reductions in shadow resolution, alongside pulled in level of detail settings for trees and terrain.”

So, as per DigitalFoundry’s report, the Series S can render the game in high-resolutions, matching up to the Series X even. However, it will have to do so at the expense of the framerate and other visual features.

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla promises total platform parity in terms of visuals but what about performance?

By now we all know that, in terms of features, the Xbox Series X and the PS5 are rather similar. However, the performance they delivered with a game like AC Valhalla made all the difference. Here is what DigitalFoundry says about the difference:

“While there are problems on both systems, Xbox Series X obviously fares worse. To put things into context, Valhalla targets 60 frames per second, but when the engine is under heavy load and can’t render a new frame within the 16.7ms target, it’ll present the new frame when it’s good and ready, while your screen is updating. This causes screen tearing… 

“However, the key takeaway is that PlayStation 5 is much closer to the 60fps target more of the time, while Xbox Series X can struggle. In fact, at its worst, we noted PS5 delivering a 15 percent performance advantage over its Microsoft equivalent in identical scenarios.”

The issue of screen tearing can be neutralized by something called the Variable Refresh Rate, or VRR, which features on the Xbox Series X. In this regard, the PS5 is at an obvious disadvantage in terms of performance.

“Still needs a lot of work”: DigitalFoundry on AC Valhalla

DF says that the game needs much work, especially the Xbox version. The reviewer says that he encountered a lot of bugs during the gameplay, as well as performance bottlenecks. While on the other hand, the PS5 gameplay features screen tearing.

“We also noted that camera motion doesn’t update with a linear relationship to frame-rate during cutscenes, meaning some ugly looking stutter even with the engine actually running flat-out at 60fps (PS5 is fine here)…

“Ultimately, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is in a very strange place at the moment – by and large, it works as a 60 frames per second experience on PlayStation 5, but with some intrusive tearing. Perhaps some tweaks to the dynamic resolution scaler are required – dropping lower than 1440p would be preferable to the tearing.”

However, we can all agree that we can cut the developers some slack since they pulled off nothing short of a miracle in order to complete a game as vast as Assassin’s Creed Valhalla amidst the pandemic. With that in mind, we can certainly hope that Ubisoft will be gradually rolling out the necessary fixes to this title. Hail Odin!