Assassin’s Creed has always enjoyed gorgeous, cutting-edge visuals, a facet of its design that has proven, in large part, to be the key to its success. Rendering its historic locations in gorgeous detail offers an experience that, even when tainted with Ubisoft’s long-since antiquated approach to gameplay, is undeniably phenomenal and truly one-of-a-kind. Even should one detest the Assassin’s Creed series as a whole, it is hard to deny that even the likes of Assassin’s Creed: Unity aren’t a delightful feast for the eyes.

As Assassin’s Creed enters its bold new era, Ubisoft will likely continue to improve upon the visual fidelity of its highly-detailed, well-researched, and impressively immersive open worlds. One path to reaching that goal would be to utilize the now-infamous DLSS 5, a new rendering model that uses AI to generate photorealistic lighting, shadows, and details as a filter in games that could otherwise not natively implement them. However, if the recent footage of Assassin’s Creed 2 with DLSS 5 enabled is anything to go by, that is perhaps not the wisest idea.

To be clear, DLSS 5 doesn’t inherently make a game look worse, even if, on the vast majority of occasions, it absolutely does. In some cases, the AI-powered rendering model can work, such as in the case of the Super Mario Odyssey DLSS 5 remaster. However, for the most part, the model ostensibly slaps an AI filter over otherwise stylized visuals, giving everything a glossy, homogenized look that tends to favor enhancing the beauty of characters, rather than adhering to the game’s existing artistic vision and style.

It also isn’t inherently bad to remaster Assassin’s Creed games. There have been numerous transformative and gorgeous fan remasters of Assassin’s Creed games that don’t utilize AI technology or DLSS 5 directly. On occasion, older games, especially those like Assassin’s Creed 2, that were aiming for more photorealistic visuals during an era in which they simply weren’t possible, require remastering. However, as the video uploaded by the YouTube channel Direcreep Gaming proves, sometimes the original antiquated visuals are infinitely better than whatever nightmare fuel DLSS 5 produces.

The video showcases a handful of cinematic clips in which we get to see the haunting AI filter at its worst, completely transforming the look of the original character models into ugly, glossy, and bizarrely older versions of themselves. Ezio looks like he’s got an Instagram smoothing filter running at all times, his lips and cheeks looking particularly shiny for no apparent reason. The background NPCs don’t fare any better, and there are several instances of faces that just look wrong or downright horrifying.

In motion, while freerunning across rooftops or fighting ruffians, there are flickers of genuinely impressive visual fidelity. The city looks more realistic and textured, its buildings even casting accurate shadows. However, these moments are few and far between and absolutely obfuscate the original game’s ethereal art direction, especially its blown-out lighting that casts an almost angelic glow across the entirety of Italy. Its moments of warmth and vibrancy are also gone in favor of murky, dark tones, and its animated expressions are lost amid the AI filter covering it all.

Obviously, there are ways to implement DLSS 5 properly, to better integrate it into the game’s original vision, to utilize it just like any development tool to better enhance a game’s visual fidelity. Simply applying the filter to an existing game rarely works (as evidenced by any JRPG), as its brute-forcing it onto a game that wasn’t designed with these visuals in mind. That being said, DLSS 5 should probably be used sparingly, especially if its implementation in Assassin’s Creed 2 ends up being a portent of things to come.

Systems

Released

November 7, 2009

ESRB

M for Mature: Blood, Intense Violence, Sexual Content, Strong Language

Engine

havok, anvil

Franchise

Assassin’s Creed