Someone alluded to it earlier but I think in this screenshots, the main character is 'blending' into the crowd which maybe making him look more washed out and have the weird circle and styrofoam beard. You can see an alert marker in the background, and the light on the upper side of the building is different to the shaded areas where NPC's are:
The rest of the screens look like they're missing something, like fog or haze. But in the following picture, look at the character models arm on the right. Wtf?!? And is that right foot clipping through the wall?
Also the (relevant) metadata from the image:
ImageDescription Assassin's Creed® Unity_20141031004928
Make Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.
Model PlayStation(R)4
Orientation Horizontal (normal)
XResolution 72
YResolution 72
ResolutionUnit inches
Software 1.76
ModifyDate 2014:10:31 00:49:27
YCbCrPositioning Centered
ExifVersion 0221
DateTimeOriginal 2014:10:31 00:49:27
CreateDate 2014:10:31 00:49:27
ColorSpace sRGB
ExifImageWidth 1920
ExifImageHeight 1080
Compression JPEG (old-style)
I've looked at these images and videos and surely these can't be from retail. Honestly, the clipping, pop in and flatness look awful. Have their been any closed betas in the last couple of months these could have been ripped from?
This one doesn't look too bad:
But in a similar stance look at the sword in this one compared to above:
I have a feeling that we may see some of the issues that were present in places like Boston in ACIII performance wise. I thought the point of the engine was it could handle these numbers anyway, because the engine spawned them in as you got closer to them. You'd get like that weird cross animus effect then a couple of NPC's would appear. Are they still using that tech or just making the spawn distance bigger?
I just think that they (Ubi) have have reached beyond their grasp. This quote here:
Keep in mind that
previous Assassins Creed games could support around 100 to 150 NPCs; Assassins Creed
Unity has crowds of thousands of NPCs on screen, and you can interact with each and every one them.
- Vincent Pontbriand (
Source)
Surely we shouldn't be going from 125 (avg) to 'thousands'. To us, a step up to even 800 NPC's on screen is going to feel much more dense and alive (it's almost 8 times than could previously be done). It reads like a tech test is more important to achieve and they'll compromise core game elements to reach it. We didn't need to shoot from a couple of hundred to a couple of thousand, there is a happy medium I'm sure which will allow the rest of the game to be tweaked and reach higher fidelity.