It's no secret that Assassin's Creed Unity was a technically challenged game. While many lament the fact that it was buggy, its poor performance was arguably the greatest barrier that came between playing the game and experiencing enjoyment.
The truth is that Ubisoft Montreal was very ambitious when it designed Assassin's Creed Unity. It was the first next-gen focused title for this generation of consoles, and brought with it an upgraded engine that sought to take advantage of next-gen hardware. Unfortunately, the power of the PS4 and Xbox One were overestimated, so when crowd sizes were tripled and visual complexity was pushed to an all-time high for the series, framerate suffered.
A year later, the successor to Assassin's Creed Unity has released, and it has taken a step back in the visual department in an effort to try and provide a locked 30 frames per second experience.The compromises made to deliver higher framerate are very noticeable in Assassin's Creed Syndicate, to a point where some series fans are quickly targeting Ubisoft with their emotions.
As seen in the comparison video below, Assassin's Creed Syndicate sports decreased crowd volume, and NPCs have a lower polygon count. In addition, world design includes far less interior areas resulting in less for the GPUs in the PS4 and Xbox One to draw. See for yourself:
