Assassin's Creed Migraine

Here, we are, another day, another AAA release where the day 1 experience is absolutely not up to standards.

Some Assassin's Creed Mirage players are frustrated with a graphical effect called chromatic aberration that can't be turned off.

Chromatic aberration is a graphical effect implemented to simulate lens distortion to make gameplay appear as if filmed with a real camera and therefore more cinematic. In actual gameplay, it makes the outlines of objects blurred or sometimes shine with bright colours.

"It's pretty much killing the game and making it look so bad," said Thestickleman on Reddit. "That along with not being able to turn motion blur off hurts my eyes a bit and makes me feel a bit ill after not too long."

The replies are full of similar sentiments. "It's horrendous. I felt ill within 10 minutes," said one user. "It's so insanely bad. What were they thinking?," asked another. "I couldn't believe there was no option to turn it off," added a third.

Reddit user SioVern, who claimed to be a visual effects supervisor in the film industry, said chromatic aberration is an effect film makers work to remove. "It is a lens defect or artefact that adds nothing to the user experience, only subtracts," they said. "Adding it in games for the sake of realism is like saying that everyone should play the game as seen by a myopic person."

Just started up the game and I'm at loss for words, this isn't just Chromatic Aberration. This is Chromatic Aberration times one thousand. It makes everything look super blurry, it makes everything lack detail. It makes everything have a blue and red outline, just look at the sun in this picture above.

Furthermore and get this... The effect is always on. It can't be removed, not even with an .ini edit or a hex edit. It's there for every console and PC gamer to suffer through.

I don't even care if this game is bad, if everyone hates the gameplay.

But developers putting in a new effect (this wasn't there in any of the previous 21 AC games) that just has a detrimental effect and causes serious eye strain, now that is true sadistic behaviour.

Why do they still do this? It makes no sense. It's been a hugely unpopular effect since it was introduced and would take a single toggle to fix.

Yeah this has been a subject ever since these kind of effects got introduced in the PS3/360 days.

FF XVI recently released without a toggle to turn off motion blur and this became a subject of talk immediately.

Now Mirage introduces an effect that wasn't in Valhalla, or in any previous AC game and again, the most talked about reddit thread is not the quality of the game, it's people thinking something might be up with their TV.

Clownish behaviour not allowing these effects to be toggled.

Is this the Nintendo Switch port? Looks like a switch game.

@Maroxad: Switch probably won't be able to render the CA, some stuff had to be cut. I guess switch version it is!

CA still has no place in video games, its a goddamn unwanted side-effect on cheap lenses

Your fault for jumping in at launch!! Muahaha

I find it so hard to care for a game the devs obviously didn't care for enough themselves. Will be going on a trip in a bit and then when I get home I have Forza and Total War to play. My fault for jumping in day one, you are entirely correct.

On the other hand I can report this crap and work with modders to eliminate CA once and for all, so I'm extremely happy at the same time.

There have been some games in the past that have had a CA effect, one that I couldn't turn off. the cryengine Sniper games have had it and so did the launch version of the Outer Worlds.

But I swear to God, their Chromatic aberration fade into nothingness when compared to how strong this effect is in AC: Mirage, it's insane.

Dude Chromatic Aberation is not game breaking at all lol talk about hyperbole.

If you want game breaking "features" look at 30 fps games.

Games are playable at 30fps.

I saw Mirage at 4K and it had this insane chromatic aberration effect, it looked like vomit, ok?

Please stop putting this shitty effect in games. It's one of the first things I turn off if there's an option for it. Why would you intentionally make your game look worse and ruin image quality?

I was playing last night for not very long, and this little girl is taller than your character, and she's abnormally thick all around. It was weird. But I'm enjoying this cliche' game.

You'd think CA would've gone extinct by now, but no. It has absolutely no place in games.

I think a recent example of a game that also launched with CA and no option to turn it off on launch was Elden Ring.

A girl you meet later? As I've only met the girl at the start of the game? :)

All those kids that are in that corner at the start of the game. Your character interacts with them. There's this one girl out of the group who is clearly supposed to be a child but is gigantically big; her head especially. I was going to take a snapshot of it last night because it was probably a bug. :3

It's a horrible effect that is on my auto turn off list along with motion blur and film grain.

Assassin's Creed Migraine

Chromatic Abortion is the worst effect ever introduced to gaming. Depending on the game, for a screenshot, it can be OK, but during gameplay, shit's eye melting.

Yeah I even get wanting to apply some vignette for screenshot purpose or whatever. But applying it in this game, and with such a strong effect, it's like something went terribly wrong. Or Ubisoft is sadistic, I'm going with the latter.

Its simply Ubisoft. I don't hate on them for over 15 years for no reason🙃

Dude I've bought all their games including all the spin offs, and climbed all the towers.

And how do they reward me?

They make their most recent game have the one effect that will simply destroy your eyes and mind.

Best company in the world!! Love them.

Not even a toggle? That’s insane…I was interested in the game too; still am but I was going to wait nonetheless for a Steam version to drop later on

I doubt I would even notice it 😅. I know, I’m part of the problem 🙈.

Steam version is pretty much a given at this point.

You know I can forgive people for not noticing vignette or lens flare. But yeah it's gonna be pretty obvious when you start this game. The chromatic aberration is the no. 1 thing being talked about when it comes to this game atm :D

@Sushiglutton: Look at some of the trees or leaves in the distance. look at the details under the characters feet. I mean other games have CA but this is on a whole other level :p

Me too..lol

I always turn off chromatic aberration, motion blur, film grain, and vignette whenever I have the option to do so.

Same here along with lens flare. Though I left them on in Starfield as they kinda fit the stargazing nature of the game.

Apart from the blur it causes blue/red outlines on everything. Kinda like a drunk vision too:

@R4gn4r0k: Yeah, the lens flares in Starfield are quite fitting.

@R4gn4r0k:

It looks absolutely atrocious in that screenshot you shared. You can't not see it. I don't understand the fascination and doesn't this stuff affect performance too?

Probably does, it has to render blue and red lines around every straight line :p

Looks fine to me 🤷

I almost bought it yesterday as it was $69 but bought Wild Hearts for $39 instead.

I must say with my old arse eyes I'm not sure I can see the big deal.

I mean I see the Blue & Red ring around the sun, but I had to zoom all the way in, and I normally wouldn't be standing there looking for faults, so for me its a mountain out of a molehill is kinda thing.

Hmmm, this game should cost no more than 49 but Wild Hearts should be pretty good too. Did it get a few patches?

@R4gn4r0k: I'm Aussie so our prices differ to the rest of the world. A $69 game here usually means it's a AA game (budget title) so I might jump in for that price.

As for Wild Hearts, is was $20 off so I thought what the heck. As for patches, yeah I heard it has had a few. I read somewhere the game wasn't getting anymore though and EA was moving on from the game as it didn't sell as well as they hoped.

I saw you say you have played every AC game (not sure if it was sarcasm or not) and wanted to ask, did you find the say pros palace in Origins?

My origins for getting into AC actually came from these forums. I got AC 1, AC 2 and AC Brotherhood gifted to me from somebody on these forums. I could not get into them at all, lol

But yeah later on they started growing on me more and I did play all of them. I also played the PSP spin off, the DS spin off, the chronicles... you catch my drift. I did not read all the comics, there are a ton.

You mean the palace in Alexandria? I scoured every inch of that place lol. My favourite part of the game was that Roman outfityou could win in those gladiator fights:

I thought the underlined was pretty funny.

Shame on Ubisoft for not providing an optino for turning it off. I feel like that's a failure to meet the bare minimum standards, you know?

@R4gn4r0k: I played the original 2 then skipped them all until Origins came out, then got Odyssey and Valhalla. Then went back and played Rogue and the one where you play as brother and sister in England. I have Black Flag and 3 remastered (only bought it because they removed the mp) so I'm nowhere near you when it comes to the series.

Now I don't recall the city in Origins it was in, however there were some let's say provocative paintings on the wall. One in particular I found very funny. It was on the wall next to the stairs.

I would post it but it's against the rules. I just found it funny af (it's not really) because it was in a video game and it somehow got past the regulators here in my country because I believe it was rated at 15+

Do you know of the picture I'm talking about?

https://www.nexusmods.com/assassinscreedmirage/mods/23

Post effects are the bane of my existence.

For PC there is a tool to remove CA. Foe everyone else you'll have to wait for the official patch in the coming weeks.

@R4gn4r0k:

Nah man, 30 fps is completely unplayable and imo shouldn't be legally sold at that state.

I've never heard a problem with chromatic aberation to be honest. I just sometimes disable it cause most "graphics" guys say it should be off. But honestly in most cases does not matter.

How a game feels > how a game looks.

I'd rather play BOTW in 120 fps than TLOU in path traced 8K/20 fps.

@last_lap: same here, MK1 day one edition was nearly $200 AUD that is insane.

@robbie23: I'm assuming that was the digital store price, and was the ultimate edition?

I saw the Mortal Kombat 1 physical ultimate edition at Big W the other day for $149, again I assume that the extra $50 was to play it like 5 days earlier?