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DF: Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth - PlayStation 5 - The FULL Digital Foundry Tech Review

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?



Severely limited in what we could show of the game at the review embargo, Oliver Mackenzie is back with his full technical review of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. With the length and breadth of the game to look at, we check out the plus and minus points of the visual presentation, stack the new release up against FF7 Remake Intergrade, dig deeper into the quality and performance modes and deliver final analysis and conclusions.


00:00 Overview
00:42 Visual strengths
05:20 Visual weaknesses
09:57 Modes and performance
14:17 Analysis and conclusion
 
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DeaDPo0L84

Member
Finally playing FF7 Remake on PC, trying to rush through it so I can have a reason to turn on my PS5. Wife is 100% going to play it even if it runs/looks terrible, but I'll wait and see what the consensus is.
 

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
- As always, if you are worried about spoilers, do not watch. They say they use footage from 'the first 40%' of the game.

Features:
- Character models have subtle improvements, they have been remade and show more finer details compared to FFVIIR even if you won't notice them as a quick glance
- Hair dithering on Cloud/Aerith etc have been reduced compared to VIIR
- Cut-scene lighting improved with more effective in-direct lighting
- Fidelity and animation looks better than Advent Children, in the cut-scenes
- Polygonal density in open world environments is 'pretty solid'. PS5's primitive shaders used to add incidental detail in environments per developers
- Aside the broader scope, some areas are very similar to the previous game and 'Quite a few spots where we've actually taken a step back'

Visuals:
- Environmental lighting is one of the most obvious visual flaws
- Multiple areas are presented without any shadow casting lights
- FFVII Remake's baked lighting did a better job simulating baked GI with 'worse lighting in typical play' in Rebirth, by comparison.
- Shadows have a lot of breakup in game play, cascades also have a 'comically close distance'
- FFVII Remake by comparison had higher resolution shadows, further boosted in Intergrade
- Fair number of low resolution textures also seen. Mt. Nibelheim area is where this is most notable
- Traversal animation is also stilted, jerky when traversing the world.
- SSR doesn't have cube-map fallbacks so their cut-off point is easily seen when moving the camera
- Zero physics on any foliage (original reveal trailer had foliage bending on character models but final game does not)
- 'Generally a good looking game ... but has obvious visual flaws ... that can make it look less visually appealing than its predecessor'

Performance:
- Visual settings are a match in both Graphics and Performance mode
- Both modes use DRS
- Performance: Average at 1152p
- Graphics: Average at or near 4K
- Performance mode uses nearest neighbor up-scaling, softer than usual and pretty blocky.
- Setting system to 1440p seems to reduce the blockiness
- Performance mode is ' a lot less sharper than FFVII Remake when targeting 60 FPS'
- Graphics mode looks clean and sharp with minor ghosting but otherwise a good resolve.
- Only per-object motion blur, no camera-based motion blur.

- Graphics mode is a consistent 30 FPS with one-off drop here and there disrupting it
- Performance mode is wobblier, sticks to 60 earlier areas but combat can drop to 50s, especially in high particle areas. Neibleheim area also drops performance in traversal.

- Load times are very fast across the board.

- DF recommends the Graphics mode at the moment.

- Verdict: 'Curiously uneven experience'. DF compares it to FF16 at the end and say it was quite a whole more visually impressive compared to FFVII Rebirth.
 
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adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
The lighting and shadow comparisons with Remake are pretty brutal. It just makes it seem like this game was always planned to be a PS4 game as well, and those parameters were set to keep the game within PS4's memory.

I bet there's an "Intergrade' type re-release for this a year or so later that will improve those.
 
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Imtjnotu

Member
Glad I cancelled my preorder. PS5 has been such a disappointment to me!

I'm waiting for PC. The game deserves it. Also, the involvement of that propaganda group (sweetbabyinc) has put me off.
"Canceled my preorder "


Uh Huh Nod GIF by Law & Order
 
The lighting and shadow comparisons with Remake are pretty brutal. It just makes it seem like this game was always planned to be a PS4 game as well, and those parameters were set to keep the game within PS4's memory.

I bet there's an "Intergrade' type re-release for this a year or so later that will improve those.

On what console? That’s not happening a year or two later. I would expect a rerelease on PS6 so the entire trilogy can be experienced on one platform, and maybe a performance patch if they treat the PS5 to PS6 transition the same way as PS4 to PS5.
 

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
On what console? That’s not happening a year or two later. I would expect a rerelease on PS6 so the entire trilogy can be experienced on one platform, and maybe a performance patch if they treat the PS5 to PS6 transition the same way as PS4 to PS5.

Maybe a PS5 Pro patch.

But there's been examples of games getting visual enhancement patches in the same gen.

I think you're right tho.
 

violence

Gold Member
I want to watch their vids when they come out, but I don’t wanna ruin any surprises either.
 
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Played quite a bit now and it looks very AA PS4 open world. Lighting is really poor, there are tons of low quality textures and low poly assets, a tiny shadow distance, object pop-in etc. In performance mode it's blurry as shit, pixelated and aliased.

The first photo op the game sends you to honesty looks like a PS3 game like they are taking the piss out of us.

Sure it's open world but it's a basic bitch open world compared to something like RDR2 so I don't think that's a valid excuse.

Is it fun? Yes, very fun. Do I recommend it? If you like JRPGs then yeah it's great. Is it a good looking game? For the most part no.
 
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mckmas8808

Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
Played quite a bit now and it looks very AA PS4 open world. Lighting is really poor, there are tons of low quality textures and low poly assets, a tiny shadow distance, object pop-in etc. In performance mode it's blurry as shit, pixelated and aliased.

The first photo op the game sends you to honesty looks like a PS3 game like they are taking the piss out of us.

Sure it's open world but it's a basic bitch open world compared to something like RDR2 so I don't think that's a valid excuse.

Is it fun? Yes, very fun. Do I recommend it? If you like JRPGs then yeah it's great. Is it a good looking game? For the most part no.

A PS3 game? Really that bad graphically? If so, I'll wait to get a PS5 Pro first, then buy this game. I'm still playing FF7:Remake right now. About 50% through the game and still need to play Intergrade.
 

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
Are people forgetting that the scope of this game is also WAAAAY bigger? Plus are they comparing Part 2 to the PS5 version of Part 1? Or the PS4 version?

The scale is bigger but it's also a new-gen exclusive game. And the things like lighting and shadows, they compare with both. Lighting and Shadows are worse than the original PS4 version, the Intergrade version further improved on them originally. So it's Rebirth > FFVIIR > Intergrade.
 
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A PS3 game? Really that bad graphically? If so, I'll wait to get a PS5 Pro first, then buy this game. I'm still playing FF7:Remake right now. About 50% through the game and still need to play Intergrade.
Not the whole game just the odd bit where you are looking out over a low poly scene. Strangely the first photo op the game sends you to is one of those low poly scenes. If I was sending people off to show off photo mode I'd make sure the place I sent them to looked amazing.
 

mckmas8808

Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
The scale is bigger but it's also a new-gen exclusive game. And the things like lighting and shadows, they compare with both. Lighting and Shadows are worse than the original PS4 version, the Intergrade version further improved on them originally. So it's Rebirth > FFVIIR > Intergrade.

I didn't want to watch the video, so thanks for answering that question for me. Actually shocked that some graphics are less than Remake on the PS4. I'm 100% waiting for the PS5 Pro patch now.
 

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
Ray traced GI would do wonders for this game.

That lighting is horrendous.

I don't think Square has the chops to do that on the consoles at least, maybe if they farm the PC port to Nixxess or someone.
 

Go_Ly_Dow

Member
- Performance mode uses nearest neighbor up-scaling, softer than usual and pretty blocky.
- Setting system to 1440p seems to reduce the blockiness

Interesting, I am going to play at 4k/30fps but may experiment with this.
 

saintjules

Gold Member
I didn't expect an improvement based on what the demos provided. I am however surprised that they went backwards in terms of the visual fidelity for example when comparing to Remake. Seems like they were in a rush in getting this done.
 
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Go_Ly_Dow

Member
I have the feeling this game suffers the same fate as FFXIII. Each new entry seemed to have less budget then the previous one and they tried to up the scales with each which didn't work out.
Rebirth clearly has the higher budget than Remake, but that doesn't mean it automatically translates over to visuals. There was a comment when they said the increased the budget for Rebirth after the success of Remake. It's just that the resources are allocated over a much larger game world which has more characters, more locations, bigger environments, assets and more side activities than Remake.
 

wvnative

Member
Are people forgetting that the scope of this game is also WAAAAY bigger? Plus are they comparing Part 2 to the PS5 version of Part 1? Or the PS4 version?

For me i'm comparing both.

Many people will complain about different things, yes you are correct, it's wayyyyyyyyy bigger than Part 1, and I myself am often irritated when people bitch about a far off rock looking a bit PS2-ish. I don't really care about that.

My issue, is just the overall image quality being poorer than Part 1. The HDR looks worse, the image looks softer in both modes, where Part 1 looked much sharper in both modes, and colors popped off way more. These issues imo should not exist in a next-gen exclusive sequel that was presumably larger budget. It's just distracting, to me.

But the game itself is great, and we all need to just enjoy it. Probably too much focus being placed on the visuals.
 

StereoVsn

Gold Member
I got Deluxe Physical copy, but not opening it and going to wait for some of these issues to get fixed or at least till Steam release then. If it takes a year, it takes a year.
 

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
On the whole?

No, it is not. The open world looks far better here

DF really has awful takes

Did you see the video? The lighting and shadows are worse than the PS4 remake. I don't see how you're saying 'the open world looks better', the only way it looks better is in the sense that it is a bigger scope. Fidelity / visual features wise, it doesn't look better.


GzIK3YG.png


SE, you bastards! What have you done to shadow-chan and texture-chan? You killed them! I'll never forgive you!



That is a literal turd wall, lol.
 
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Hugare

Member
I was already expecting a downgrade in lighting going from such a linear game like Remake to an open world one like Rebirth

But overrall it looks so much better than Remake. I've played 2h of it and few games with open spaces look this good and dense.

Oliver mentioned FF XVI, but man, that game visually was a rollercoster. I wouldnt say it looks better than Rebirth at all. In places, but in others it looks horrendous.

Rebirth so far has been much more consistent visually than FF XVI, by a long shot

Nah, come on. FF XVI looks better than this. A lot more consistent too.

It really doesnt, imo

FF XVI looked spectacular during the first 15H. After that, looks like they've wasted all of their budget and saved the rest only for bosses.
 
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SABRE220

Member
Jesus christ this company is a mess, how the hell did they fuck up so badly with a mature engine at their disposal. Freaking days gone looks more polished and better looking on a ps4 so they can't blame ue4. Also, they cut ff7 into three parts to gouge more money out of fans based on the sole justification that they wanted to do the game justice in terms of quality and production values, and still somehow they made a game less visually appealing and polished than the ps4 predecessor.
 
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