Murderer’s Creed IV: Black Flag got here out means again in 2013, and whereas the sport was demanding for its time, PC gaming has come a great distance within the final 13 years or so. If Ubisoft merely launched a remaster for the sport, it’d seemingly be extraordinarily straightforward to run, even on weaker {hardware}. However, as an alternative, the sport makes use of the identical model of the Anvil Engine as final yr’s Murderer’s Creed Shadows, and that sport was completely attractive, even when it was onerous to run on low-end {hardware}.
With Black Flag Resynced, although, Ubisoft appears to have widened the online of {hardware} that’ll have the ability to run the sport effectively. As a result of the place I wouldn’t even take into consideration working Murderer’s Creed Shadows on a handheld gaming PC, Black Flag Resynced has three entire presets for handheld gaming PCs.
On the high-end, Black Flag Resynced is an extremely attractive and demanding PC sport, but it surely’s nonetheless scalable sufficient to run on just about any fashionable machine. Ubisoft itself is simply requiring an AMD Ryzen 5 3600 and an AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT to run the sport, and that’s not precisely a ton of horsepower.
What’s Previous is New Once more
Despite the fact that Murderer’s Creed Black Flag Resynced is a remake of a now-ancient sport, it’s completely gorgeous. The sport appears to be like loads like Shadows, with luscious vegetation and among the most stunning water results I’ve seen currently. The latter is tremendous vital, clearly, as you spend a whole lot of time on the Jackdaw doing, you already know, pirate stuff.
That’s really the place the sport performs greatest, too, in my expertise. The worst efficiency patches are if you’re strolling by way of a crowded road with a whole lot of NPCs. However if you’re out crusing and fascinating in a little bit of ship-to-ship fight, body charges soar. That is seemingly as a result of the sport doesn’t should render so many particular person NPCs, and the wide-open areas make shadow work loads much less demanding.
Fortunately, Ubisoft really included a big selection of knobs and buttons to allow you to tune how the sport appears to be like and performs. Not like 007 First Mild, which launched again in Could with no graphics preset and a fairly small quantity of particular person settings to vary, Black Flag Resynced has 10 totally different presets starting from “Handheld Low” to “Extremely Excessive”. And past simply the presets, there are 20 totally different settings you possibly can tweak to actually dial the picture in.
Similar to with just about each fashionable sport, Ubisoft launched system necessities for Black Flag Resynced calling out sure resolutions and high quality settings for every ‘tier’ of {hardware}. For its 1440p setup, which I nonetheless suppose is the golden normal of PC gaming, Ubisoft requires an RTX 3080 or an AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT. I don’t have a 3080 mendacity round proper now – that GPU is six years previous at this level – however I do have an RTX 4070, which performs at about the identical stage. Now, Ubisoft says it ought to have the ability to do 60 fps on the ‘Excessive’ preset with ray tracing set to ‘Commonplace’ at 1440p, and that’s with dynamic decision and DLSS enabled.
With these settings, the RTX 4070 is ready to exceed that 60 fps threshold, coming in with a mean of 76 fps. However, after I flip off dynamic decision and depart DLSS set to ‘balanced’, the body fee really goes up, averaging 100 fps, however with a little bit of a softer picture. That’s as a result of the dynamic decision algorithm needs to maintain you as near 60 fps as potential, scaling up the decision when it has the overhead to take action.
After all, I’m by no means glad simply utilizing a preset, so I did a little bit of tweaking, decreasing the standard of clouds and eliminating hair strands, with a purpose to increase water high quality, loading distance, and ‘micropolygon,’ which reduces pop-in at the price of reminiscence – and the 4070 has lots to spare at 1440p. With my customized settings, I received a mean of 101 fps, however with higher water and fewer pop-in. And, positive, hair doesn’t look nearly as good, however does that basically matter in a sport the place you’ll be spending a whole lot of time on a ship in the course of the ocean? I don’t suppose it does.
Even in case you don’t like upscaling, my customized settings get a mean of 65 fps at native 1440p. Nonetheless, they do dip all the way down to the excessive 50s if you’re in a crowd.
Greatest PC Settings for Murderer’s Creed Black Flag Resynced
For most individuals that simply wish to boot up the sport, decide a graphics preset and simply begin enjoying, Murderer’s Creed Black Flag Resynced is without doubt one of the greatest video games to do this with. However, if you wish to dive in and get the perfect picture with out shedding an excessive amount of efficiency, you’re going to should tweak the settings a bit. Fortunately, I will help clarify what all of the little knobs really do.
Black Flag Resynced Optimized PC settings (mainstream PC)
Particles High quality
Very Excessive
Texture Decision High quality
Excessive
Loading Distance
Very Excessive
Terrain Texture High quality
Excessive
DLSS / FSR / XeSS
Balanced or Native AA in case you favor native rendering
Black Flag Resynced Optimized PC settings (handheld gaming PC)
Particles High quality
Very Low
Texture Decision High quality
Low
Display Area Results
Very Low
Terrain Texture High quality
Very Low
DLSS / FSR / XeSS
Balanced
Raytracing Mode: Ubisoft has included two various kinds of presets right here, identical to it did with Murderer’s Creed Shadows. The usual mode simply permits ray traced world illumination, and the prolonged mode additionally permits ray traced reflections. Except you might have a beast of a GPU, I’d advocate sticking with normal. It doesn’t tax efficiency an excessive amount of, and it does make the sport look fairly a bit higher.
Raytracing High quality: This modifications the decision and amount of rays being forged. If you set the ray tracing mode to straightforward, this can default to Medium. You may flip it up if you’d like, however it’ll make a big impact to efficiency, particularly in difficult scenes and it doesn’t even make that large of a distinction to picture high quality.
BVH High quality: BVH stands for bounding quantity hierarchy, which basically calculates what number of objects within the atmosphere rays can bounce off of. Principally, decrease settings means mild rays bounce off of fewer objects, and better settings means extra mild bounces. Similar to with ray tracing high quality, depart this as-is except you might have a strong GPU.
Character High quality: This modifications how NPCs look. Not like some video games, that is baking in a whole lot of totally different settings into one. It will change character meshes, shadows, and might even wipe the beards off of characters faces. I’d depart this on excessive, as a result of crowds are already essentially the most demanding a part of this sport, and altering to very excessive doesn’t actually make a distinction.
Hair Strands: This setting will animate particular person hair strands both simply on Edward Kenway’s head or on each character. As cool because the impact appears to be like, I don’t suppose it’s a extremely priceless use of GPU sources. However, hey, if not having extra reasonable hair is a dealbreaker for you, it’s there if you’d like it. Everybody else ought to most likely simply flip it off, although.
Submit Results: Similar to with character high quality, this setting modifications the standard of all of the post-processing results. Issues like bloom, LoD and godrays. I depart it on excessive, however in case you like these spiffy little results, be happy to show it up a bit, it received’t make that a lot of a distinction to your efficiency.
Particles High quality: This merely modifications the standard of particle results. There are a whole lot of them in Black Flag Resynced, so I’d maintain it as excessive as you possibly can with out shedding efficiency. Nonetheless, the stronger your CPU is, the much less of an affect this can have.
Water High quality: This modifications the standard of the water. Actually, that is most likely crucial setting right here. This sport is famously chock-full of the stuff, and it appears to be like completely gorgeous when it’s maxed out. I might decrease different settings simply to have the water high quality greater. However, clearly you probably have a lower-end GPU, you might need to make do with decrease settings.
Texture Decision High quality: That is simply the feel high quality setting. Flip it down, and the decision of textures goes down. Flip it up, and the other occurs. Rule of thumb is to show it up as excessive as you possibly can with out working out of VRAM. With the RTX 4070, that didn’t occur, however you probably have lower than 8GB of VRAM, you’ll have to show this down
Loading distance: This modifications the space at which objects are loaded into the sport. Each time I’m enjoying an enormous open world sport like Murderer’s Creed, particularly when there’s an entire mechanic constructed round climbing big towers to scope out your environment, I like having the load distance greater. Now, that comes at the price of VRAM and CPU efficiency, so flip this down in case you begin stuttering.
Geometry High quality: Whereas loading distance modifications how distant objects are rendered, this modifications the standard of close by objects. There’s little or no distinction between excessive and really excessive, so I’d simply depart it at excessive except you’re going through VRAM points.
Micropolygon: Micropolygon sounds just like the identify of a King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard album, but it surely’s really superior that Ubisoft has included it right here. This modifications the quantity of reminiscence allotted to render objects within the scene. Turning it up reduces pop-in. I’ve been enjoying the sport with this setting maxed out and have skilled just about no texture pop-in. That is value cranking up you probably have the VRAM price range for it.
Display Area Results: That is one other setting that modifications a number of issues, particularly ambient occlusion and reflections. These are among the most taxing results in fashionable video games, so they need to be the very first thing you flip down if you’re working into efficiency issues. On the 4070, although, I run it at excessive, and haven’t any downside staying above 60 fps.
Mild Supply High quality: This modifications the standard of the sunshine sources within the sport. That is one other setting that’ll actually push your GPU, so I’d depart it excessive except you might have a strong card just like the RTX 5070 or Radeon RX 9070. It does look fairly good maxed out, although.
Shadow High quality: This modifications the standard of shadows, and likewise how distant from you they’ll render. Shadows are at all times an impact that may hit efficiency onerous, however the excessive setting retains the sport wanting wealthy, with out tanking your body charges an excessive amount of.
Cloud High quality: This could be a scorching take, however I don’t actually care how the skybox appears to be like in a sport. This setting could make the clouds look completely attractive, however except you’re staring on the sky, you’re most likely not going to note it. As such, this is without doubt one of the first issues I’d flip down, simply to maneuver among the GPU price range in the direction of issues that matter, like water high quality.
Fog High quality: This setting modifications the density of fog results. Similar to with clouds, it’s good to have very nice wanting fog, however not a necessity. Flip it up you probably have oodles of GPU price range, but it surely’s probably not value its efficiency price.
Terrain High quality: One other setting that modifications two settings. This modifications the loading distance of terrain geometry, and likewise impacts tesselation. Depart this one at excessive, there actually isn’t that a lot of a distinction between that and the extremely excessive setting.
Scatter Density: This simply modifications the density of muddle on the bottom. I’ve it set to excessive, however I can barely inform the distinction between the low setting and the very best setting.
Deformation: Deformation simply modifications the standard of issues like footprints within the sand. It’s a minor impact, but it surely’s at all times cool leaving footprints within the terrain. However that is one other impact you could flip down to save lots of GPU price range.
Terrain Texture High quality: What are you aware, a second texture high quality setting has appeared! This simply modifications the textures of terrain, which might be notably noticeable on seashores. Similar to the opposite texture setting, flip this as excessive as your VRAM will enable. It received’t actually affect efficiency till you run out of reminiscence.
Jackie Thomas is the {Hardware} and Shopping for Guides Editor at IGN and the PC parts queen. You may comply with her @Jackiecobra