i am fairly new to using blender, so i am sorry if this was a really simple error on my part. as you can see (hopefully) its rendered at 200% because thats what other people did when asked similar questions, yet the end product is still pixelated in the shadowed areas.
EDIT: thank you Duarte Farrajota Ramos, turning the "raytraced" option on smoothed out the shadows perfectly
for anyone interested the render with the raytraced on looks like this: