Ubisoft currently has 2 massive games from some of their biggest franchises coming out just 2 weeks apart from each other, both Watch Dogs: Legion and Assassins Creed Valhalla. So naturally up to their launch we saw the official system requirements release, and oh boy were they something to behold.

Thankfully, Ubisoft has graced us with an extremely extensive range of system specs for both Watch Dogs Legion and Assassins Creed: Valhalla, not only giving us the minimum and recommended specs but also even further for different resolutions, performance expectations, ray tracing requirements etc.

However, the one big takeaway we saw was that the system requirements for them seems to have jumped up, obviously in the wake of next-gen consoles pushing towards better visuals that in turn requires better hardware, but is this justified or are these just new games listing the latest PC components in order to feel modern and relevant?

For instance, let’s take a look at the recommended PC system requirements for Assassins Creed Valhalla compared to the previous AC game Assassins Creed: Odyssey...

Looking at the PC system requirements above for AC Odyssey compared to AC Valhalla, we can see that the recommended specs jumped from a GTX 970 to a GTX 1060. This isn’t a huge deal, and the GTX 1060 is a mild improvement over the GTX 970, but is this just a way to make these new games feel more relevant like we mentioned above?

Because this is very much a marketing and promotional challenge for modern AAA titles. They want to be available to the masses with lower system requirements, but if they don't mention super high specs as well then the audience may consider that their tech or game engine feels out of date.

This becomes all the more clear when you look at the Watch Dogs Legion PC system requirements, which recently got updated to include the newly announced RTX 30 series graphics cards (as well as the GTX 1660). This meant where the RTX 2080 Ti was the original recommended GPU it now required an RTX 3080 instead. There was also the mention of an RTX 3070 for the 1440p ray tracing requirements.

Watch Dogs Legion original vs updated PC system requirements comparison:

And considering the RTX 3080 is slightly better than an RTX 2080 Ti, this only further backs up the argument that they have upgraded the specs just to seem more relevant and up to date, using the most modern PC hardware in the official specs.

And just if you're curious, here are the Watch Dogs Legion and Watch Dogs 2 recommended PC system requirements - as both games use the same game engine - to see how they compare:

One thing that it certainly doesn’t help with is the perception of our systems looking more out of date quicker than we thought, with the requirements feeling a little bit higher now for anyone who owned a reasonable to high-end system 2 years ago.

But what do you guys think? Do you feel like your rigs are getting out of date now already? Is there a noticeable upgrade in graphics to justify the bump in requirements? Or is this just another way for games graphics and requirements to seem more relevant? And do you think these PC system requirements for WD Legion and AC: Valhalla are accurate? Let’s debate!