Digital Foundry: Final Fantasy 7 Remake - Tech Review - Beautiful, But Not Flawless

[ss_lemonade]

Some people could be.. I've seen posts like "The door texture didn't load properly I won't play anymore" that's just an example and after that you check the post history and they don't even have a ps4. That's why it's funny.

But that's not even the point.. I'm posting screens to show the good part of the game since many of the posts here are just focusing on the 5% that is not on the same level.

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Yeah no, it isn't just 5%. People probably just focus on the same sections because they stand out a lot (garbage mountain texture for example). You could easily take other screenshots of bad looking parts throughout most of the game without even looking.

I also fail to see how it's hyperbolic (what is it with this word and this game), especially when most of the environmental assets have quality like this

 

[Valkerion]

The low res midgar skybox is really surprising, coming from Killzone Shadowfall (6.5 years ago!) and the City in Destiny 2.

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Yeah, the inconsistency in the skyboxes is what got me. Some seem high res and then others are a blurry 2d jpg seemingly. The random junk I ran past without much notice is w/e but some of those big vista/looking up/down areas to be met with ... ew. Every few chapters.

 

[MrConbon210]

Yeah, the inconsistency in the skyboxes is what got me. Some seem high res and then others are a blurry 2d jpg seemingly. The random junk I ran past without much notice is w/e but some of those big vista/looking up/down areas to be met with ... ew. Every few chapters.

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My favorite skybox is the one on chapter 8 that has two giant static helicopters which the camera focuses on while two characters are talking.

 

[ss_lemonade]

My favorite skybox is the one on chapter 8 that has two giant static helicopters which the camera focuses on while two characters are talking.

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I thought a helicopter was just bugged, then later realized there was 2 of them just sitting there waiting for you to make your way over to trigger a cutscene.

 

[Robspassion]

Some people could be.. I've seen posts like "The door texture didn't load properly I won't play anymore" that's just an example and after that you check the post history and they don't even have a ps4. That's why it's funny.

But that's not even the point.. I'm posting screens to show the good part of the game since many of the posts here are just focusing on the 5% that is not on the same level.

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Well I finished the game and to me it was more like 40-50% of the game that was looking really awful due to poor texture and asset quality and completely ruined my experience. Sorry that I expected something more consistent.

If you´re saying this thread is hyperbolic maybe you shouldn´t try to downplay the issue to just 5%.

This background picture is still giving me nightmares.

 

[hob982]

lmao, were you expecting them to say "shit, fix incoming, thanks for letting us know"

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Nope. This is a done deal, game is unpatched and will stay that way, it looks like. I'm not playing in hope this gets sorted come ps5 o pc version, there's still that hope I guess.

 

[Falus]

Well I finished the game and to me it was more like 40-50% of the game that was looking really awful due to poor texture and asset quality and completely ruined my experience. Sorry that I expected something more consistent.

If you´re saying this thread is hyperbolic maybe you shouldn´t try to downplay the issue to just 5%.

This background picture is still giving me nightmares.

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I think it's over reacting but the only time I was shocked was indeed chapter 15. This background is terrible. And after chapter 16 it's insane looking. Like 2 different dev

 

[Thickstone]

What makes you all say that this won't get patched given the current circumstances in the world?

They patched the hell out of 15, do You really think that this will stay 1.0 until a Remaster comes out? I don't see it.

 

[S1kkZ]

i played the trials of mana demo yesterday and while it is on a much lower budget, its also uses ue4 and had most of the same problems. awful low-res textures and weirdly low poly objects. it does not stand out as much, thanks to the more comical look. did kingdom hearts 3 also have issues like this (never played it)?

 

[Lnds500]

What makes you all say that this won't get patched given the current circumstances in the world?

They patched the hell out of 15, do You really think that this will stay 1.0 until a Remaster comes out? I don't see it.

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Having finished the game, I don't think it's a bug and I imagine it will take a lot of effort from SE to overhaul the textures of the game since there are so many bad textures. I just hope that the next gen and PC versions are overhauled because I really liked the game and a FF7 remake doesn't deserve to stay like this for the next 20 years.

 

[Martinski]

This is the most hyperbolic thread of the week.. it's funny because I'm sure many of the people posting here about the game haven't even played it.

My experience is the same as everyone.. low textures on some part of the game because of hardware restrictions or lack of a day 1 patch because of corona virus.

But the good part is that 95% of the time the game looks amazing and it's full of high quality gaming.

Here some random screens I got during my first run with the game.. of course I saw the low res textures but they represent like 5% of the game and I rather enjoy the best RPG we got in years instead of stay staring at some textures and quit a game because of that.

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95%?? I would argue that about 40ish% looks amazing, about 30% looks really bad and the rest 30% looks so - so depending on what chapter and area youre in.

 

[Zem]

This is the most hyperbolic thread of the week.. it's funny because I'm sure many of the people posting here about the game haven't even played it.

My experience is the same as everyone.. low textures on some part of the game because of hardware restrictions or lack of a day 1 patch because of corona virus.

But the good part is that 95% of the time the game looks amazing and it's full of high quality gaming.

Here some random screens I got during my first run with the game.. of course I saw the low res textures but they represent like 5% of the game and I rather enjoy the best RPG we got in years instead of stay staring at some textures and quit a game because of that.

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The only thing hyperbolic here is your post. The game does not look amazing 95% of the time. The game looks average the majority of the time, really bad a small amount of time and really good a small amount of time.

Some of your screenshots are also from cutscenes. Talk about being disingenuous.

 

[Zor]

The only thing hyperbolic here is your post. The game does not look amazing 95% of the time. The game looks average the majority of the time, really bad a small amount of time and really good a small amount of time.

Some of your screenshots are also from cutscenes. Talk about being disingenuous.

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This guy was part of the reason I abandoned the OT, largely for the way he responded to these very same issues and would patronise the hell out of people, myself included. They constantly felt the need to challenge anyone who brought this stuff up, largely ignoring that people were doing so out of disappointment given how good the rest of the game can look, and instead treating it like they were dragging the game in its entirety. It was absolutely exhausting. I'm not surprised this poster has now emerged here, in a tech thread, to challenge people.

 

[Equanimity]

But that's not even the point.. I'm posting screens to show the good part of the game since many of the posts here are just focusing on the 5% that is not on the same level.

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It's not 5%. All the hubs suffer with terrible textures and most day time missions too. More like over 50%.

I'm still enjoying the game though. Love the particle effects.

 

[Railgun]

This is the most hyperbolic thread of the week.. it's funny because I'm sure many of the people posting here about the game haven't even played it.

My experience is the same as everyone.. low textures on some part of the game because of hardware restrictions or lack of a day 1 patch because of corona virus.

But the good part is that 95% of the time the game looks amazing and it's full of high quality gaming.

Here some random screens I got during my first run with the game.. of course I saw the low res textures but they represent like 5% of the game and I rather enjoy the best RPG we got in years instead of stay staring at some textures and quit a game because of that.

Click to shrink...

95% of it looks good? Dude, the majority of the game is set in the open world section and even some of the linear levels have horrendous backdrops like 15 or the one above the slums. Why is it always people with FFVII avatars coming in here to tell us how great the game looks?

 

[Falus]

95% of it looks good? Dude, the majority of the game is set in the open world section and even some of the linear levels have horrendous backdrops like 15 or the one above the slums. Why is it always people with FFVII avatars coming in here to tell us how great the game looks?

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Must not have played the same game. For me it's amazing looking albeit some places and chapter 15

 

[Spark]

95% of it looks good? Dude, the majority of the game is set in the open world section and even some of the linear levels have horrendous backdrops like 15 or the one above the slums. Why is it always people with FFVII avatars coming in here to tell us how great the game looks?

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What do you mean, we should all trust a user called Cloud-Strife to bring us completely unbiased opinions about this game.

 

[Stinkinmushroom]

Gotta leave something for the PS5 version

 

[Railgun]

Must not have played the same game. For me it's amazing looking albeit some places and chapter 15

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Wish I had a magic PS4 like you guys. Ch 1,2,16,17 all look fantastic and there's a couple between 2 and 16 that also look great but I don't remember the numbers specifically. The rest of the game is set in one big open section that has the texture and low poly problems. This includes the hubs in 3, 8 and 9 and all the paths connecting them.

 

[nelsonroyale]

The only thing hyperbolic here is your post. The game does not look amazing 95% of the time. The game looks average the majority of the time, really bad a small amount of time and really good a small amount of time.

Some of your screenshots are also from cutscenes. Talk about being disingenuous.

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Personally, I think the game is pretty inconsistent, but I also think you are being a bit hyperbolic. Most of the time the game hardly looks average. Character models are excellent, a lot of the lighting is distinctive and well implimented, and there is good geometric density. The issue is that this is strongly juxtoposed in particular chapters with some super obvious visual weaknesses. In Chapter 3 for instance, I would argue the skybox looks pretty darn good. The main issue for me aside from the infamous door, is the rocky textures in the 'outback' areas. they are really poor, even while the geometry density itself is pretty good. Fixing the textures would go a long way. The crap quality skybox in later sections is just bizarre. I think it is likely they had different teams working and budgets working on differet sections of this game, because the discrepancies are very evident. I do think a lot of the time the game looks stunning though, particularly in battles.

 

[Zem]

Personally, I think the game is pretty inconsistent, but I also think you are being a bit hyperbolic. Most of the time the game hardly looks average. Character models are excellent, a lot of the lighting is distinctive and well implimented, and there is good geometric density. The issue is that this is strongly juxtoposed in particular chapters with some super obvious visual weaknesses. In Chapter 3 for instance, I would argue the skybox looks pretty darn good. The main issue for me aside from the infamous door, is the rocky textures in the 'outback' areas. they are really poor, even while the geometry density itself is pretty good. Fixing the textures would go a long way. The crap quality skybox in later sections is just bizarre. I think it is likely they had different teams working and budgets working on differet sections of this game, because the discrepancies are very evident. I do think a lot of the time the game looks stunning though, particularly in battles.

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I find high quality playable characters useless when they're in a world that has low quality textures, textures that never load, skyboxes that are jpg's and NPC's that look like they came from a Fallout game with animation that is completely wrong. Everything in the slums and during the day is so low quality and blurry it's crazy.

Maybe the HQ playable characters are even worse than useless because the contrast between them and the rest of the world is so stark it pulls you out even more. Like they're in the wrong game.

 

[Pottuvoi]

I am really late to the party and this is probably the crux of the whole discussion, but do we know if these are indeed bad textures and low poly objects ?

or is there an issue with texture loading and detail culing system of the game ?

I really think its the latter.

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In many cases it looks like the game just doesn't load higher LoD models.
And no, we do not have confirmation on what exactly is the problem.

 

[Dr Pears]

The low res textures are disappointing, but this is still a must play game especially if you played the original PS1 FF7!

Majority of the areas in the game is still drop-dead gorgeous. I'm at the wall market now and oh my god the atmosphere and lighting is perfect!

And its mind-blowing how consistent the performance is during the battles where so much stuff is happening i cant even keep up with it all.

 

[jett]

i played the trials of mana demo yesterday and while it is on a much lower budget, its also uses ue4 and had most of the same problems. awful low-res textures and weirdly low poly objects. it does not stand out as much, thanks to the more comical look. did kingdom hearts 3 also have issues like this (never played it)?

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Trials of Mana is a Switch game.

TBH these ground textures are better than some of what I've seen in FF7R though lol

 

[snausages]

I find high quality playable characters useless when they're in a world that has low quality textures, textures that never load, skyboxes that are jpg's and NPC's that look like they came from a Fallout game with animation that is completely wrong. Everything in the slums and during the day is so low quality and blurry it's crazy.

Maybe the HQ playable characters are even worse than useless because the contrast between them and the rest of the world is so stark it pulls you out even more. Like they're in the wrong game.

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Yeah, there are some parts where it feels like Cloud has been modded into Garry's mod.

Call that exaggeration or hyperbole or whatever but that is the discomfort I feel with the inconsistent visuals here. The characters don't belong in the world, which is a horrible way to break the illusion of Midgar.

I think this Remake was quite disappointing for this reason, even if the combat is splendid. I felt less immersed in this Midgar than the original.

 

[Carn]

I think it is likely they had different teams working and budgets working on differet sections of this game, because the discrepancies are very evident

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Well, given the amount of work that has been outsourced (according to the credits) this sounds pretty reasonable.

 

[TitanicFall]

There are parts where it looks like Square did AI learning on the PS1 backgrounds and brought them forward. I think lighting plays a big part. When it's dark it's harder to notice especially if there's some nice HDR highlights.

 

[Blade Wolf]

Should I just wait for the PS5 version?

 

[jett]

Frankly it's insane how much the assets and textures jump in quality in the later chapters

Spoiler: Chapter 16/17

If the entire game maintained this level of quality it would be the best looking game on PS4.

The randomness is what gets you. Like the texture quality is pretty good in Chapter 15, but you have that awful low-res skybox marring the entire picture.

Or how Aerith's church looks like this from outside

Pretty decent altogether! But then you get inside and it's filled with blocky objects and blurry textures everywhere, and Square couldn't even be bothered to do the flower bed, one of the most iconic visuals in FF7, any justice.

Not that the "interconnected" part of the game (can you really call these collection of corridors open world?) doesn't have good looking sections.

Although you can see some flatness and angular qualities to the environment, like the tiles in ceiling, it's still pretty.

But you turn around and see this ugly ass helicopter and what looks to be a random collection of textures on the wall underneath it.

The best looking parts of the game are definitely those that don't take place in the streaming sprawl of the Midgar slums. But that's really only a handful of chapters.

 

[Hey Please]

I can only hope that there are better textures lying underneath somewhere or else whoever the texture works were outsourced to did an utter piss poor job in examples posted here. If it was SE themselves then it's very disappointing.

This guy was part of the reason I abandoned the OT, largely for the way he responded to these very same issues and would patronise the hell out of people, myself included. They constantly felt the need to challenge anyone who brought this stuff up, largely ignoring that people were doing so out of disappointment given how good the rest of the game can look, and instead treating it like they were dragging the game in its entirety. It was absolutely exhausting. I'm not surprised this poster has now emerged here, in a tech thread, to challenge people.

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I knew a guy like that here when it comes to defending another corporation *cough* Ub.. *cough*. I put him on ignore and life was good. Shame when the thread gets derailed though.

Should I just wait for the PS5 version?

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Given this should never have happened on PS4, there is no reason to believe that they'll fix it for PS5 either. The game has received universal praise bereft of highlighting these blatant issues and the game has sold extremely well. So, I am going to give SE the same benefit of the doubt as I give BetaShed- Zero.

Tell you what though, if Sony ends up opening their platform to something akin to smart delivery/cross buy then you can just get the PS4 version at a deep discount and enjoy the upgraded PS5 version.

 

[Perfo]

All in all I think it's safe to say the game can really be good looking overlooking some of its textures, these are few pictures I've taken not necessary in the best looking spots technically while still looking appealing to me. Last two images are under the spoiler tag, you never know...








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Spoiler

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[FunnyBunny19]

Got to Chapter 15 and the jpeg is absolutely insane. I noticed plenty of texture issues along the way, and I can cope with those, but the jpeg skybox is just....what????? What were they thinking?

 

[DmckPower]

This is the most hyperbolic thread of the week.. it's funny because I'm sure many of the people posting here about the game haven't even played it.

My experience is the same as everyone.. low textures on some part of the game because of hardware restrictions or lack of a day 1 patch because of corona virus.

But the good part is that 95% of the time the game looks amazing and it's full of high quality gaming.

Here some random screens I got during my first run with the game.. of course I saw the low res textures but they represent like 5% of the game and I rather enjoy the best RPG we got in years instead of stay staring at some textures and quit a game because of that.

Click to shrink...

The game looks absurdly gorgeous grand majority of the time.

I really hope square didn't crunch the devs too hard. :(

Sometimes it scares me how good it can look,especially in terms of animation.

There had to have been massive crunch here. Shit don't make itself.

 

[Kyle Cross]

I'm beside myself right now. I'm in Chapter 3 and I'm having textures slowly load in all over the place, even on NPCs during conversations. It takes several seconds. I also only have 85gb as the filesize, but isn't it suppose to be 100gb? Is my copy borked or is it really like this?

 

[Carn]

I'm beside myself right now. I'm in Chapter 3 and I'm having textures slowly load in all over the place, even on NPCs during conversations. It takes several seconds. I also only have 85gb as the filesize, but isn't it suppose to be 100gb? Is my copy borked or is it really like this?

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are you on PS4 or on PS4 Pro? I've seen some noticable texture loading and other kinds of LOD/pop-in on my Pro but to be honest I find that not to be that much of a deal; I found the discrepancy between some of the lowrestextures/objects and highres stuff more noticable. I never had to wait 'several seconds' tho (or maybe I just didnt notice).

 

[VirtuaModel]

I'm beside myself right now. I'm in Chapter 3 and I'm having textures slowly load in all over the place, even on NPCs during conversations. It takes several seconds. I also only have 85gb as the filesize, but isn't it suppose to be 100gb? Is my copy borked or is it really like this?

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Your file size is correct. Any texture loading I have had though takes under a second on a PS4 Pro.

 

[Kyle Cross]

are you on PS4 or on PS4 Pro? I've seen some noticable texture loading and other kinds of LOD/pop-in on my Pro but to be honest I find that not to be that much of a deal; I found the discrepancy between some of the lowrestextures/objects and highres stuff more noticable. I never had to wait 'several seconds' tho (or maybe I just didnt notice).

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I'm on Pro. Every texture is taking several seconds to load. Should I delete the game and reinstall?

 

[Dictator]

I'm on Pro. Every texture is taking several seconds to load. Should I delete the game and reinstall?

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That won't help with anything. The texture pop-in happens with every system. We tested 4 diff ps4pros and saw the same thing.

 

[Carn]

That won't help with anything. The texture pop-in happens with every system. We tested 4 diff ps4pros and saw the same thing.

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Just curious: I know there shouldnt be any differences between them, but did you guys verify if there might be some differences between the physical and the digital release?

 

[Dictator]

Just curious: I know there shouldnt be any differences between them, but did you guys verify if there might be some differences between the physical and the digital release?

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I did not. BUt I do not see why there would be. If it still has the problem installed to an SSD, then I would logically think it will happen on slower media as well regardless.

 

[G_Zero]

I did not. BUt I do not see why there would be. If it still has the problem installed to an SSD, then I would logically think it will happen on slower media as well regardless.

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do you guys have the ability to reach out to SE for a comment? I'd really like to know whether they intend to mitigate some of these issues.

 

[NotUS]

Really love the game, never played the original, but had so much fun with this. Sincerely hope the PC and PS5 versions receive a texture overhaul. I feel it looks bad around 50% of the time, and the rest of the time ok to pretty good,

Remake deserves a remaster already:)

 

[jmnemonic]

I have no idea why people are claiming that this is some gorgeous game. The entirety of Sector 5 looks like Half-Life 2 on low settings. This is one of the worst looking games I've seen this generation, and was clearly released in an unfinished state.

 

[S1kkZ]

its crazy that 2 weeks after launch there is still no patch or even a comment from square. with 3.5 million sold, there is no need for them to "fix" anything. i fully expect a patch after the excusivity ends, like with the ff7, ff8 & ff9 remasters.

 

[Jazar]

This isn't some current gen / next gen issue. A PS4 / PRO can definitely handle a huge variety of detail without such low res textures.

 

[Leo-Tyrant]

I did not. BUt I do not see why there would be. If it still has the problem installed to an SSD, then I would logically think it will happen on slower media as well regardless.

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There may be some politics involved, so I understand if there is no follow up to the DF video, but , I remember really appreciating the level of details old videos and DF articles showed. Example: DmC PS4 Remaster initial launch with no anisotropic vs the other versions, all could see the difference clear as day.

DF could perform a second video going deeper into the disparity in texture and geometry. Comparing a nicely textured Door A, vs a 0% detail Door B, etc. This wouldn't imply that its a bad game, far from it, but it would be transparent message to the world, on how its rendering in base and Pro PS4s.

You may even tie it to the "what games could benefit from the PS5 specs" recent video.

 

[Deleted member 64666]

its crazy that 2 weeks after launch there is still no patch or even a comment from square. with 3.5 million sold, there is no need for them to "fix" anything. i fully expect a patch after the excusivity ends, like with the ff7, ff8 & ff9 remasters.

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Am I the only one that thinks that Square would just say that it would have taken them an additional 6-9 months to polish those areas, so instead of delaying the game further, they just decided to release it and eventually patch it in future releases (XOX and PC)? Possibly with a PS4 patch later on?

 

[burgerdog]

It's kind of amazing that version 1.0 is this solid outside of texture problems. I can't remember the last huge release not having a "day 1" patch.

 

[leng jai]

It's kind of amazing that version 1.0 is this solid outside of texture problems. I can't remember the last huge release not having a "day 1" patch.

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JRPGs in general seem to release solid and usually don't need major patches. Don't think FFXIII had any patches of note either or DQ11.

 

[Kieli]

Got to Chapter 15 and the jpeg is absolutely insane. I noticed plenty of texture issues along the way, and I can cope with those, but the jpeg skybox is just....what????? What were they thinking?

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The chapter 5 one was even worse. Well, it's a floorbox rather than skybox.