The PlayStation 5 is backwards compatible with a vast majority PlayStation 4 games, but, while most run even better on the stronger hardware, a handful of them are compromised on the newest machine. Assassin’s Creed Syndicate is arguably the biggest title on that list and has suffered from major flickering issues on PS5 since launch. And while it seemed like that would always be the case for the 2015 game, Ubisoft has officially revealed that it will be fixing its visual glitches.
The official Assassin’s Creed Twitter account posted the announcement, noting that update 1.53 is coming on February 23 and will address the rampant flickering. No other patch notes were given at this time and it is unclear if it will also come with a boost to 60 frames per second. Ubisoft had previously raised the frame rate for both Assassin’s Creed Origins and Odyssey for PS5 users playing those games through backwards compatibility. (Update: The patch is out now and does not boost the game’s frame rate.)
As shown by the above video, the game’s flickering issues are quite prevalent and distracting. The three Assassin’s Creed Chronicles games on PS4 — China, India, and Russia — also ran inconsistently on PS5, but Ubisoft put out an update that seemingly addressed those shortcomings, which was just after the trio landed on PlayStation Plus Extra. Ubisoft has known about these problems for some time, as it posted a blog just before the PS5’s launch in 2020 noting of potential issues with these four games. However, that blog post was eventually pulled.
Players have been asking for a fix for years, especially since this was the last more traditional entry in the series before Origins changed the formula in 2017. There was hope in July 2022, as Ubisoft said that it was working on a fix. That tweet was, however, eventually deleted and Ubisoft didn’t mention the problems much again aside from saying that the game was no longer being developed and updates were not planned.
