Final Fantasy VII Remake

Honestly, this is the only thing Playstation has up its sleeve for the foreseeable future that I have any interest in. The last month of announcements gave me zero hype for anything we didn't already know existed.

I've been anticipating this one since we knew it was coming. I've been stuck at the end of disc 1 of FF7 (PS1) since 1998 when I eventually bought it and replayed through the first part. First play through was a rental that I had to return before moving further. Well, my copy of the game was glitched and wouldn't let me progress past the world map. Even after Remake (Part 1), I'm still essentially at the same spot more than two decades later. It will be nice to finally continue the story.

And yes... I'm well aware of the rest of the story from the PS1 game. We'll see what happens as apparently they're flipping the script a bit.
 
Honestly, this is the only thing Playstation has up its sleeve for the foreseeable future that I have any interest in. The last month of announcements gave me zero hype for anything we didn't already know existed.

I've been anticipating this one since we knew it was coming. I've been stuck at the end of disc 1 of FF7 (PS1) since 1998 when I eventually bought it and replayed through the first part. First play through was a rental that I had to return before moving further. Well, my copy of the game was glitched and wouldn't let me progress past the world map. Even after Remake (Part 1), I'm still essentially at the same spot more than two decades later. It will be nice to finally continue the story.

And yes... I'm well aware of the rest of the story from the PS1 game. We'll see what happens as apparently they're flipping the script a bit.
If you're intrested in the game I'd still recommend finding a way to experience the original game - As you have beaten Remake and are aware of the diffrent direction it is going. I'm getting a littel fatigued of remakes, normally I would hate the direction S-E is taking with the story. But it's got to the point now where I am finding Remakes in general to be too much of an indulgence. For me they will never replace the original experiences (Only Yakuza Kiwami 1 & 2 come to mind for that) but just be seen as an extra. So to have FFVII actually do something different does excite me... I just hope they doin't mess it all up! I replayed Crisis Core recently and whie,l Zack is still a great character the writting and story within that game is painful.
 
If you're intrested in the game I'd still recommend finding a way to experience the original game - As you have beaten Remake and are aware of the diffrent direction it is going. I'm getting a littel fatigued of remakes, normally I would hate the direction S-E is taking with the story. But it's got to the point now where I am finding Remakes in general to be too much of an indulgence. For me they will never replace the original experiences (Only Yakuza Kiwami 1 & 2 come to mind for that) but just be seen as an extra. So to have FFVII actually do something different does excite me... I just hope they doin't mess it all up! I replayed Crisis Core recently and whie,l Zack is still a great character the writting and story within that game is painful.
The one remake I want is Dino Crisis. That's all that's left for me in the remake scene. In fact, it doesn't even hvae to be a remake. What I'd really like is for Capcom to merge the first two games together.
- Keep the suspense of the first.
- Keep the action of the second.
- Ignore the third.
- Have 2 player co-op (both couch and online a la RE5) with Regina and Dylan
- Use RE Engine
- Use same controls as RE2 Remake.

That would be my dream Dino Crisis game.
 
I got to say, i'm really not impressed by the technical side of things in the new Rebirth demo.
For example, normally i'm totally okay with 30 fps as long as its rock solid 100% stable 30 fps
but Rebirth doesnt even have the slightest amount of any kind of motion blur,
which means its just the raw 30 fps output and it looks rough when you move the camera.
The whole image is moving in 30 fps without any disguise and that can create a very nauseous feeling.
I dont know why tho because FF7 Part 1 Remake actually had a very good object motion blur.

The 60 fps mode takes a huge hit in the resolution, like suddenly the whole screen looks super blurry.
Its also using a very harsh dynamic resolution, which means depending on where you are and where you look at,
you can clearly see how the resolution changes up and down. Its fine in the in game cutscenes
but it doesnt look good at all in gameplay. I dont know if its even 1080p or less
or if the upscaling technique is bad but it doesnt look great.

The lighting clearly has some problems. If you spin the camera, sometimes the whole screen
brightens up like a flashbang even tho the sunlight doesnt even come from that angle.
You can see how the lighting loads in when you move through a door that separates indoor and outdoor.
Sometimes it creates weird scenes where Cloud suddenly has blonde eyelashes.

The detail pop up less than one meter in front of the player is super distracting and its even worse
because it also has detail pop up like six meters in front of the player as well. So different waves of pop up.
Lots of low resolution textures in the village and on rocks, some textures dont load in cutscenes,
super soft shadows everywhere and the nature altogether doesnt even react to the player or anything. Its just static.
The RP walking animation stutters if you slightly change the walking direction ... yeah, i dont know.
I mean art direction, sound, battle gameplay is all fine. But i dont think that this demo is a very good looking game
in terms of resolution, detail quality or performance.
This is supposed to be a full on PS5 exclusive game but i dont really see it.

The 60 fps mode in Horizon Zero Dawn Forbidden West looks way better than the 30 fps mode in Rebirth.

 
Yeah I’ve only played the demo and as said the 30 FPS mode doesn’t feel particularly great due to lack of per pixel motion blur, especially when panning camera around. The performance mode clearly has issues the DF analysis points this out.

Outside the cut-scenes this didn’t especially impress me from a visual stand point.
 
I played a small portion of the demo, enjoying the piano playing in Tifa's bedroom. I quit shortly after, not wanting to spoil anything further. Looking forward to continuing the story after being stuck at the same point since 1997.
 
If Rebirth is having technical difficulties I hope they manage to patch it up before launch - I tend to play on a 32' 1080P HDTV as i have a small sitting area but I have whacked out the big 4K TV for this! Currently replaying Remake with that setup and it looks phenominal! The detail is staggering and despite being 4 years old it still looks leaps beyond much else I have seen on PS5.

I beat the game on Hard & did the exclusive extra boss content (Something I hope they don't repeat with Rebirth) & now playing the Intermission DLC - which is a lot of fun!

Overall I am optimistic about Rebirth, it features a lot of the strong parts of the original game - I felt in OG FF7 the disc 2 portion was mostly weaker with the search for Huge Materia. My main concern going in is that I know it is going to be more open-world than Remake and I just hope it isn't full of generic side-quests! Remake was generally okay for this but FF16 was painful - They were so dull and I dread to see new sidequests appear.

Beyond that, I am geuniely excited! I've accepted that the story is going to change and I'm open minded to see where they go with it. But I am looking forward to the combat too! Remake's combat was a great mix of action/strategic abilities something the series has struggled with since leaving turn-based behind - I would argue there was already a great action combat system with Kingdom Hearts but I really like what they have developed with Remake & look forward to having fun with it in Rebirth.
 
If Rebirth is having technical difficulties I hope they manage to patch it up before launch - I tend to play on a 32' 1080P HDTV as i have a small sitting area but I have whacked out the big 4K TV for this! Currently replaying Remake with that setup and it looks phenominal! The detail is staggering and despite being 4 years old it still looks leaps beyond much else I have seen on PS5.

I beat the game on Hard & did the exclusive extra boss content (Something I hope they don't repeat with Rebirth) & now playing the Intermission DLC - which is a lot of fun!

Overall I am optimistic about Rebirth, it features a lot of the strong parts of the original game - I felt in OG FF7 the disc 2 portion was mostly weaker with the search for Huge Materia. My main concern going in is that I know it is going to be more open-world than Remake and I just hope it isn't full of generic side-quests! Remake was generally okay for this but FF16 was painful - They were so dull and I dread to see new sidequests appear.

Beyond that, I am geuniely excited! I've accepted that the story is going to change and I'm open minded to see where they go with it. But I am looking forward to the combat too! Remake's combat was a great mix of action/strategic abilities something the series has struggled with since leaving turn-based behind - I would argue there was already a great action combat system with Kingdom Hearts but I really like what they have developed with Remake & look forward to having fun with it in Rebirth.
Yeah playing on a 4K tv is awesome especially a premium OLED tv I got an lg in November of last year and currently playing intermission my game arrives today hopefully I beat intermission before i get to it today.
 
The performance mode of the PS5 Remake Part 1 / Intergrade version
looks way better than the performance mode in Rebirth.
Something about the resolution output looks very smudged.
The 4K options looks sharp but its 30 fps with no camera motion blur and it has ghosting effects
because of the reconstruction / upscaling technique.
And 30 fps looks worse on a OLED than on a normal TV because the pixel response of a OLED is faster
which makes 30 fps look more stuttery than it actually is.

It is probably a great game judging by the reviews
but its not great on the technical side.
The lighting in Remake Part 1 looks better, the shadows in Remake Part 1 look better,
Rebirth is still full of low res textures, detail pop in, completely static vegetation and so on.
They clearly had to sacrifice a lot of different things to make the open world work in Unreal Engine 4.
 
It was a given that riding chocobos to travel in the open world was gonna be a thing but I didn't expect to be this addicted to it. I have not played FF14 through FF16 so this concept is probably old hat, nevertheless it's a delight.
 
Calling it.

FF7 Rebirth is the defacto 2024 GOTY. Nothing else will come close, and I'm barely past the demo area. There's nothing on the horizon that even looks remotely interesting. The games that would have a possitiliby are so far out, that there's no way they're releasing this year anyway.

Now, if anyone needs me, I'll be playing FF7 Rebirth whenever I get a spare moment (rare).
 
I love this game so far. I've long been someone who championed FF6 and FF9 over FF7, but if Square Enix sticks the landing when the Remake Trilogy completes, this is gonna sit right up there along with FF6 and 9 for me. The expansion of all the characters have somehow made them even more iconic than they already were.
 
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