PS5 exclusive upgrades for Black Flag Resynced laid bare | Gaming | Entertainment

PS5 and PS5 Pro players will get a “tailored” experience while playing Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced. Ubisoft bosses have confirmed the upgrades PlayStation owners will enjoy once the newest Assassin’s Creed game arrives, including up to 60fps options.

Ubisoft have also pledged that Black Flag Resynced will enjoy “extended” ray tracing across all three graphics mode for the PS5 Pro, as opposed to the standard ray tracing on PS5. This allows for diffuse lighting and reflective surfaces “throughout the game world”. Other exclusive upgrades for PlayStation owners include HDR support, Dolby Atmos and DualSense haptic feedback.

In a new blog post for PlayStation’s official website, Ubisoft’s technical architect, Nicolas Lopez and technical director, Jussi Markkanen, wrote that they realised while first working on the Black Flag remake that “a traditional remaster wouldn’t be enough to do it justice”.

Instead, they “rebuilt the game from the ground up” on the latest Anvil engine, ensuring that Black Flag Resynced “takes full advantage” of the PS5 hardware.

As a result, there are impressive features across the three PS5 and PS5 Pro graphics modes – performance, fidelity and balanced.

On the PS5, Black Flag Resynced enjoys a 2160P upscaled resolution regardless of which graphics mode is used.

It has a target performance of 60fps in performance mode, 40fps in balanced and 30fps in fidelity. There is also extended ray tracing usage in fidelity and balanced modes.

PS5 Pro exclusive upgrades for Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced

But on the PS5 Pro, there are even more technical features to love. The resolution is 2160P upscaled using the enhanced PSSR, while the fps performance is the same across the three modes.

The other difference is the previously mentioned extended ray tracing usage across all three graphics modes.

In the blog, Lopez and Markkanen said: “The PlayStation 5 Pro includes all the features of the base PlayStation 5 but adds significantly more GPU power and enhanced ray‑tracing performance, giving additional headroom for higher fidelity and more stable performance.

“Across all graphics modes, players on PS5 Pro benefit from extended ray tracing support, including both Ray-Traced Global Illumination and Ray-Traced Specular Reflections.

“This enables richer lighting and reflection quality while maintaining higher performance targets across Performance, Balanced, and Fidelity modes.

“We’ve also expanded our strand-based hair on PS5 Pro. Rather than relying solely on traditional hair cards, the engine can simulate and render individual strands for more natural motion and response to wind. All of this allows us to get a very realistic hair render for our characters.”

Ubisoft also promised that the Black Flag Resynced world “reacts in real time to changes in time of day, weather and environment” rather than relying upon precomputed lighting.

Gamers should expect a “fully modernised” water system to show off the improved ocean at the heart of Black Flag’s gameplay.

Ubisoft added: “When rebuilding Assassin’s Creed Black Flag on the latest version of Anvil, our goal wasn’t only to modernize technology.

“We wanted to strengthen the sense of immersion, adventure, and discovery that made Edward Kenway’s journey so memorable in the first place.

“PlayStation 5 hardware has given us the opportunity to push that experience further than ever before, from the way the world looks and sounds, to how it feels.”

Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced releases on July 9 for PS5 and PS5 Pro. It will also be available on Windows and on Xbox Series X/S.