Yesterday, the PS4 version of Assassin’s Creed: Unity received a huge 2GB update. This highly anticipated update for Ubisoft’s open world game was meant to fix its performance issues, however it seems that the patch did more – or should we say removed more – than that.

For starters, we can confirm – after witnessing with our own eyes – some really broken reflections. After upgrading the game to the latest version in PS4, there were some flickering reflections in Arno’s house. Not only that, but those reflections seemed of a lower quality than those we enjoyed before patching the game.

To top it all, Reddit’s member ‘Derekro’ has shared some comparison images between the unpatched and the patched versions of Assassin’s Creed: Unity.

As we can clearly see, there are huge lighting differences between them.

For the time being, we are marking this story as a rumor until we hear back from more people about the visuals of the PS4 version post patch. Moreover, the PC patch is not live yet, therefore we don’t know whether this is happening only on the PS4 version or not. We also don’t know whether this is caused by a bug, and if so whether it will be fixed via a future update.

What we do know, however, is that there is a noticeable difference in the whole lighting system between these versions. For example, notice the lack of bouncing lights on those pillars in the second comparison, or the lack of environmental lighting next to the rocks (left of the second image, under the candles).

Still, take everything with a huge grain of salt – at least for now. As we’ve already said, this could be caused by a bug after all, meaning that the lighting difference may not be intentional. And if that’s a bug, were other interior environments affected by it? And if so, will Ubisoft issue a hotfix?

UPDATE:

This appears to be a bug related to the game’s TOD settings and not a downgrade. Make sure to read our follow-up article about this lighting issue!