The game runs on an improved version of the Anvil engine.
According to the lead programmer of Assassin's Creed Shadows, the development team had to essentially rebuild the world rendering and even the interaction of game systems with each other to make the game work on Nintendo Switch 2.
Key simulations (clouds, fabric) are preserved but heavily optimized and partially simplified to reduce the load on the GPU. Global illumination uses a pre-configured solution (as on low-end PCs and Xbox Series S) instead of hardware ray tracing — this saved video memory.
In addition, the developers manually adjusted almost every parameter for each location: draw distance, level of detail, texture resolution, object streaming density. The number of non-player characters was reduced only in the most densely built-up cities and only to the level at which stable performance is maintained.
NVIDIA DLSS support is used for acceleration — the game is rendered at a lower internal resolution and then reconstructed to a clear picture. As a result, Ubisoft achieved a stable 30 frames per second in both portable and stationary modes.
Ubisoft wrote a special algorithm with which the game maximizes the capabilities of VRR and looks smooth even at 30 frames per second.
