Assassin's Creed Mirage Players Frustrated With Chromatic Aberration That Can't Be Turned Off

Some Assassin's Creed Mirage players are frustrated with a graphical effect called chromatic aberration that can't be turned off.

Chromatic aberration is a graphical effect implemented to simulate lens distortion to make gameplay appear as if filmed with a real camera and therefore more cinematic. In actual gameplay, it makes the outlines of objects blurred or sometimes shine with bright colours.

While this is an effect implemented across many games, some Assassin's Creed Mirage players are calling its use here the worst they've ever seen, with others claiming it's making them unwell and stopping play altogether. Ubisoft failed to include an option to turn chromatic aberration off within Assassin's Creed Mirage.

"It's pretty much killing the game and making it look so bad," said Thestickleman on Reddit. "That along with not being able to turn motion blur off hurts my eyes a bit and makes me feel a bit ill after not too long."

The replies are full of similar sentiments. "It's horrendous. I felt ill within 10 minutes," said one user. "It's so insanely bad. What were they thinking?," asked another. "I couldn't believe there was no option to turn it off," added a third.

Reddit user SioVern, who claimed to be a visual effects supervisor in the film industry, said chromatic aberration is an effect film makers work to remove. "It is a lens defect or artefact that adds nothing to the user experience, only subtracts," they said. "Adding it in games for the sake of realism is like saying that everyone should play the game as seen by a myopic person."

Chromatic aberration was also a hot topic on the Assassin's Creed Mirage launch mega-thread, with users finding it everything from a bit distracting to a reason not to play the game until Ubisoft adds the ability to toggle it off.

Of course, many players are also playing through Assassin's Creed Mirage with no understanding of what chromatic aberration is or why some people are complaining. It appears to be affecting those who use PCs and / or sit close to their screens the most. IGN has asked Ubisoft for comment.

The complaints bear resemblance to Final Fantasy 16's launch, when the game had a motion blur effect many players found uncomfortable and nauseating. Square Enix didn't include an ability to turn this feature off either, though community outcry prompted a toggle to be added in a later update.

Assassin's Creed Mirage launched October 5 as a smaller-scale entry that returns players to the series' roots through slower-paced, stealth-based gameplay, veering away from the role-playing game foundations of Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla.

Its map isn't anywhere near the size of those of its predecessors for one, and it only takes around 20 to 30 hours to complete compared to the several dozens of hours of previous games.

In our 8/10 review, IGN said: "Assassin’s Creed Mirage's back-to-basics approach is a successful first step in returning to the stealthy style that launched this series."

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.