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In retrospect, perhaps Assassin's Creed Unity was simply too ambitious from a technological perspective. Ubisoft scaled up virtually every element of the last-gen engine, with enormous increases to environment detail (including building interiors), an NPC count pushed into the hundreds and a cutting-edge rendering engine with sensational, physically-based lighting. Play Unity today on a top-tier PC and you'll be pleasantly surprised at just how beautiful it looks. Unfortunately, on console, it's nowhere near as attractive, blighted by a highly variable frame-rate that's mysteriously worse on PS4 than it is on Xbox One. Combine that with the multitude of bugs endemic in the title at launch and the challenge facing Ubisoft with Assassin's Creed Syndicate is clear. The new game has to be solid, it has to perform well, glitches and bugs must be kept to a minimum. Ubisoft simply cannot afford another Unity.What's immediately apparent as you play your way through the overly long tutorial mission is that Ubisoft has made little in the way of fundamental improvements to the core rendering technology that powers Assassin's Creed Syndicate. The same AnvilNext engine runs the game, and the same basic compromises we found in Unity are present and correct here - specifically, the utilisation of internal upscaling, with both PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions of Syndicate sporting the same 900p resolution as last year's title. Indeed, there's a fairly compelling argument that Ubisoft has made a play for improved performance this year by scaling back on Unity's giddy ambition.
The online multiplayer modes are gone - meaning that the co-op functionality that debuted last year has been discarded. Bearing in mind that Assassin's Creed Syndicate features twins as its main protagonists, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, it's not difficult to imagine that co-op may well have been a key factor in the game's design brief at some point. On top of that, another major innovation found in Unity - the prevalence of interior locations - has also been pared back, though not removed entirely. Side mission markers for clearing Templar influence and street-corner pubs with collectibles have interiors, while key landmarks such as the Palace of Westminster are also explorable.
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