Assassin’s Creed: Shadows has just unveiled its system requirements. Despite the game’s several missteps in recent months and in late 2024, it appears the game’s thoroughness in its system requirements for the PC is one of the things it does right (and well). Do be warned though, despite the detailed specification sheet, Assassin’s Creed: Shadows will still be demanding, especially with ray tracing.
In any case, here’s what you will need to run the game:
Surprisingly, your 9-year-old high-end graphics card and 8-year-old CPU should be able to handle the game at its lowest and still run a passable 30 FPS. The bad news is that Assassin’s Creed: Shadows is imposing the 8GB VRAM minimum, and even if you have an RTX 3060 or RTX 4050, running the game will likely cause crashes due to insufficient VRAM.
The real culprit, as usual, is ray tracing with its huge hardware demand, and seeing the game in its full eye candy will be expensive, requiring the high-end or enthusiast RTX 4000-series options.
As for what Selective Ray Tracing means, a Ubisoft community developer explained it on a Reddit thread. In Selective Ray Tracing mode, only your in-game hideout will have ray tracing, and everywhere else outside will have traditional, rasterized lighting which is less demanding.
So while the game will have forced raytracing, much like Doom: The Dark Ages and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, it won’t be as Draconian or mandatory. Cards without ray tracing capabilities can still play the game.
Plus Points for Accessibility & Possible Optimization
With this kind of approach to PC optimization, Assassin’s Creed: Shadows easily has better accessibility compared to other AAA games this year. The aforementioned Doom: The Dark Ages, for example, made RTX and ray-tracing-capable cards non-negotiable, and some PC users might be forced to upgrade.
Ray tracing, as a new visual tech for gaming, after all, is still in its infancy stage and isn’t exactly consumer-friendly even now. Devs will still keep using it in the near future. However, since ray tracing cuts down development time, it’s the most realistic and practical simulation of light behavior in 3D graphics, meaning they don’t have to map out lighting traditionally.
Apart from that, a thorough explanation alone of the system requirements for Assassin’s Creed: Shadows (along with the Reddit explanation for ray tracing modes) is quite a good gesture from Ubisoft devs. Lots of PC players rely on system requirement reports to plot out their upgrade paths and plan their PC upgrade expenses, especially with the upcoming RTX 5000-series GPUs this year.
So while you might have problems with Assassin’s Creed: Shadows‘ gameplay or general direction, there’s a big chance you’ll find its accessibility and polish appealing. If you want to see what the graphics look like for Assassin’s Creed: Shadows, check out our exclusive preview here.
