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Xbox One X has much to prove in the run-up to its November 7th launch. Forza Motorsport 7 demonstrates how beautifully 1080p first-party engines scale up to ultra HD resolutions, but what about taxing third party titles, typically rendering at 900p on base Microsoft hardware? Assassin's Creed Origins - showcased at Microsoft's E3 media briefing - presents compelling evidence that a beautiful 4K presentation isn't off the cards. We've got access to a pristine 4K source file of the gameplay segment, and even under close scrutiny, Origins holds up admirably.And yet, for a machine marketed on 'true 4K' gaming, there is an argument that the game does fall short, as Ubisoft is deploying both checkerboard rendering and dynamic resolution to construct its 2160p framebuffer. But equally, those raw metrics don't tell the full story. In motion, edges appear sharp as they would at native 4K across most of the scene, and even up-close image quality passes for a native presentation. It's only when looking closely at texture detail that a slight softness is evident - just as it is on other 2160p checkerboard titles we've seen, like Horizon Zero Dawn and Days Gone. Image integrity is solid, with just minor artefacts around fast-moving objects - easy for us to see on still shots blown up to 300 per cent, but virtually impossible to detect in gameplay on a 4K TV.
The bottom line - Assassin's Creed Origins may not be a native, 'true' 4K game, but it really doesn't matter. Crucially, it looks great on a 4K screen, and if there is dynamic resolution in play in order to stabilise performance, we didn't pick up on anything that overtly compromises the image. Indeed, we extracted a few shots for pixel-counting analysis and found a 2160p result in all cases. The only caveat to apply is that the Xbox One X development can deploy an additional 10 per cent of GPU resources, as it has access to 44 compute units over the retail unit's 40. Whether these extras CUs were in play or not is unknown.
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