Assassins Creed Unity Update 3 Details

Although there was an initial burst of excitement for Assassin's Creed Unity heading into its release last Tuesday, that enthusiasm sure dissipated quickly. Gamers were hit left and right with many problems, from significant performance issues to matchmaking problems to some things that are hard to even explain.

And while it took a while for Ubisoft to respond, the developer has since shown a concerted effort to improve their major fall release. They created a blog dedicated specifically to Assassin's Creed Unity updates and have been actively providing AC Unity owners with new information both about upcoming patches and known issues with the game.

This weekend, Ubisoft revealed what's in the pipeline for Assassin's Creed Unity update #3, which looks to be one of the game's most substantial yet. Whereas past updates and fixes were focused on ironing out the little things, this upcoming update addresses known issues with gameplay, AI, and matchmaking in co-op.

Ubisoft splits their update into five key categories and outlines some of the fixes that are coming players' way, but those aren't necessarily the only fixes on the way for the patch. Since the developer doesn't yet have a release date for the update it's possible that more could be added. Still, see the current list of fixes below:

  • Gameplay: this includes bugs like Arno getting stuck on certain areas of the map (including a few more hay carts), problems with getting into/out of cover, character animation bugs, and general camera problems
  • AI & Crowd: in this category are problems with NPC animations, crowd events, and crowd stations, NPC navigation issues, as well as bugs related to NPCs detecting Arno’s activities in various situations
  • Matchmaking & Connectivity: this covers a number of issues related to co-op play, including bugs with joining games in-progress and problems that happen during host migration
  • Menus & HUD: fixes in this category will address missing details in certain menus, problems with some of the mission objective and co-op update pop-ups, localization inconsistencies, as well as some of the issues with menus and pop-ups overlapping each other
  • General Stability: this includes fixes for a number of crash situations we've identified in both campaign and co-op modes.

What isn't in update 3 are any fixes that address the game's frame rate issues on next-gen consoles. Mileage seems to vary by user, but a large contingency of gamers has reported significant frame rate drops while playing Unity. In some cases, those drops occur during congested open world portions, but some have even reported problems with the game's cutscenes. It also appears that the Xbox One version of the game runs better than the PS4 version, for whatever that's worth.

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An accurate depiction of a 18th century Frenchman.

All in all, there's a good-not-great update on the way, one that is sure to alleviate some of gamers' bigger issues with AC Unity. However, the fact that we are now looking at a third patch and Ubisoft is still talking about future updates speaks volumes about the kind of condition in which the game launched. Lucky for them two other major games also had release day problems.

It's somewhat comforting that Ubisoft is trying to keep gamers aware of what they're working on and letting them voice their frustrations, but with a little more development time maybe this all could have been avoided. We'll keep you posted when Ubisoft reveals a date for this next patch.

What issues would you like to see addressed in this or a future update? Has the poor performance of the game convinced either not to purchase or to return AC Unity?

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Source: Ubisoft