When you experience the wind in Assassin’s Creed Shadows, the world comes alive. Leaves swirl upward, the grass bends and sways, and Naoe’s hair gently moves with the breeze. This impressive feature adds depth to the game’s dynamic weather and seasonal changes. Interestingly, as revealed in a Digital Foundry interview with the game’s rendering engineers, this "wind" is an illusion—a clever simulation of an invisible fluid.
Yes, you heard that right. The realistic physics of the wind are actually crafted through a fluid simulation that’s woven into the game. It’s a widely used method in the gaming industry, with successful implementations in games like God of War and Dwarf Fortress. So, it makes perfect sense to see it in action here as well.
The developers at Ubisoft have named the dynamic weather system in Assassin’s Creed Shadows as Atmos. It’s intricately designed to complement the game’s seasonal theme. As Naoe’s tale of vengeance unfolds, fluctuating between different chapters of her life, the seasons transition in tandem. You might find yourself trudging through a winter wonderland one moment, before sprinting across lush, green fields the next, as the snow gives way to spring. Eventually, players even gain the ability to change seasons at will.
With the integration of new ray-traced lighting effects, Assassin’s Creed Shadows might just be one of the most visually stunning games to date. For me, this is the first time ray tracing has truly seemed integral to crafting the mood and atmosphere that elevates the storytelling. Digital Foundry breaks down the technical specifics in their video, but in essence, the game enhances older lighting methods with ray tracing to illuminate scenes more precisely. Shoji screens glow when you’re inside buildings, and shadows fall more naturally where sunlight doesn’t reach in the game’s open environments. Without ray tracing, the world loses its contrast and vitality, leading to what the experts at Digital Foundry describe as a “generational divide in lighting quality.”
Assassin’s Creed Shadows makes a solid case for upgrading to a PlayStation 5 Pro or a high-end gaming PC equipped with the latest Nvidia 50-series graphics card. On the PS5 Pro, it delivers a smooth gameplay experience at 60 frames per second with ray tracing enabled, and it’s set to fully support Sony’s PSSR upscaling technology in an upcoming update. On PC, leveraging DLSS and Frame Generation, you’re easily looking at 60 fps performance on an RTX 4070 or newer.
All that power isn’t just about eye-catching lighting. Dynamic elements like the believable wind and the ability to interactively slice through bamboo add to the game’s immersive experience, reminiscent of what players loved in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. With Assassin’s Creed Shadows, Ubisoft has raised the bar by using modern computing power not just to chase realism, but to craft a living, breathing world that players can truly inhabit.
