For the last week, eager fans have been able to play a demo for the hotly anticipated Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth on PS5. While the appetite for the RPG remains high, some players have been left a little deflated by the demo's somewhat rough visuals and technical performance. Fortunately, it looks like Square Enix will be aiming to fix that very soon.
On social media, the publisher confirmed an update is coming to the demo on 21st February, which will "apply improvements to the visual quality when selecting 'Performance Mode' from the graphics options":
The same improvements will be made to the full game, which is due to launch just over a week later on 29th February. Of course, the jury is out on just how much this patch will change things, but hopefully it'll make a noticeable difference.
It's worth noting that it's unclear whether this update is the same one that'll be adding Junon to the demo, which was previously confirmed to be coming before the game's launch.
Will you be checking out the Rebirth demo post-patch? If you've played the demo, what do you think of it? Tell us in the comments section below.
[source x.com]
Comments 39
The demo was extremely underwhelming visually. With Low-res textures and low-quality assets, terrible shadow implementation, lighting problems, lower quality character models in game, near character pop in and Janky traversal. There was far too much fundamentally that was of poor/unpolished quality that it genuinely appeared rushed out the door.
To me, there was much more wrong with it than the very blurry post processing presentation in performance mode. I will give them the befit of the doubt and see if the patch manages to address this, despite their track record with these things.
Right now, the demo took me from a likely day one buy to a wait until it's better polished, or priced at a point that justifies its downgrades despite being a native AAA ps5 title. I have little confidence fixes will be enough considering they are only addressing these cut corners in the release day code AFTER criticism from a demo released weeks before launch.
So, no worries, it's just not a release window play for me now, I'll give it a go eventually as the gameplay was great.
It ran at a stable 60 which is all I care about (unlike FF16).
@KundaliniRising333 I think you are really blowing this out of proportion I have seen you saying it on so many articles. I noticed some texture issues but it wasn't all that detrimental to the experience. The game will be great, don't play it if you don't want to but can we move on from this tired narrative
@KundaliniRising333 must have been playing a different demo. Looked fab to me? And more importantly it was extremely fun to play
Nice to know but it looked fabulous to my eyes!
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There was some slight gfx issues, but of course "certain people" blow it well out of proportion, this is what demos are for no? And sqx are gonna fix before game goes live, so whiners keep your pants on, and if your so concerned, wait for reviews easy
@KundaliniRising333 @Logonogo @CharlieChooChoo While I was surprised at the visuals being nothing that screams "current-gen" (there is some improvement over Remake, but nothing drastic), I do understand why this was probably the case:
Square Enix didn't want people waiting years and years for the next iteration of the series.
In other words, the developers are simply using the same general visual and technical foundation that they started with in order to get this series out quicker.
I feel like a total "current-gen" makeover would have taken much longer.
I played in Quality Mode and it felt fine to me. I expect the final chapter of this probably won't be much of a generational leap, either.
Noticing people say demo was visually underwhelming, which is a shame because I thought pt 1 looked stunning in performance mode. I thought ff16 looked quite blurry also which put me off. Ps5 pro is sounding quite appealing..
@Logonogo Yeah, people are blowing this out of proportion for sure. I just played FFVIIRemake, and while it still looks wonderful, Rebirth looks even better. The problem with the demo is resolution and blurriness, the textures and overall visual quality has no doubt improved since Remake.
@KundaliniRising333 "extremely underwhelming"
Lol gotta love the usual Internet hyperbole.
@AlexPorto Textures are 100 times worse than remake. I've never seen so many mismatched textures in the environments that are straight up blurry or not loading at all and where you can see the seams of the environments stitched together. And the texture pop-in is so much more noticeable.
I am hoping Graphics Mode gets some love too. Compared to Remake on PS5 it's much softer visually, lacking sharpness in the menus/overall HUD and graphically to the point of distraction on my OLED. Performance Mode was unplayable with how blurry it was, looking like someone smeared vaseline all over the screen. And that's just resolution issues. The game has terrible low-quality textures in the environments, some straight up don't load, and the pop-in is worse than Remake's ever was...very distracting too in the background of cutscenes as assets load in.
@Logonogo It's not a tired narrative when it's 100% true.
I played the demo. It didn't convince me so I moved it from my "day 1" to "buy on sale" list. No big deal. Still gonna plat it one day.
@CharlieChooChoo @fabio78 @Rob_230 @Logonogo It's great that you see its visual fidelity differently, however my take is not an isolated one. You don't think Square came out two weeks before launch announcing an incoming patch to performance mode prerelease just because of my supposedly distorted hot take, do you? Of course not.
Many others mentioned it here on Push Square, as well as all over the place in online discourse when the demo dropped. Including a recent digital foundry discussion on their latest direct where they highlighted low-res textures, the blurriness, janky terrain traversal, camera, and lighting issues, lack of smoothness despite solid framerates in quality mode and an overall downgrade compared to the first one. They chalked some of it up to Rebirth including more natural environments of which the first didn't, and unreal engine 4 being terrible with natural elements, but they also clearly highlighted the blurriness and other quality issues, mainly because so many were asking them to take a look at the demo because of it being so visually underwhelming.
Again, I'm Glad you see it different but don't pretend that the issues don't exist because of that. As this announcement clearly shows Square Enix knows its a problem because the discourse was strong enough to reach them. FF7 is one of my all-time favs, and I hope it gets addressed for sure. I will play it when it does or is priced accordingly.
@KundaliniRising333 it was definitely blurry, noticeably more so than other titles. But not enough to make it look like a ps4 title. They definitely know optimization needs to be prioritized.
@Sequel Yeah because graphically nothing changed which is why FF16 just looked better.
Imagine defending or pretending there is nothing wrong with the image quality of the demo, and the publisher themselves pretty much acknowledging the issue and releasing an update to improve the visuals of the performance mode..
It's beyond repair, the dark times we are in.. ppl with such low standards, ppl defending blindlessly scummy practices of companies within the industry.. that's why we will continue to get more crap and BSs ahead, no future unfortunately..
I will play this day 1, as this is one of my top games of all time and I was able to get it at a reasonable price. Just because is something we love, we should not overlook at the issues that are evident
I loved the demo. I can't wait.
@Kidfunkadelic83 You and me both lol
@Fatewalker exactly
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Err…people seriously had no idea of how this looked after roughly 200 hours of trailers? The characters models are incredible, the art direction is solid and it runs at a very stable frame rate in performance!
The demo convinced me 100% and to think this kind of graphic impact will be applied to huge open worldish areas is just …wow!
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aside from the weird lighting from being mid-day bright outside gameplay to a dark cave and having it change within a few seconds.... demo was overall amazing! Very excited to play the full game. Gave me enough to get back into the flow of playing the game and Seph's rizz being off the charts haha
love just playing the piano too. and the music just exciting.
I sit far away from my TV screen that I didn't notice to much difference from performance and graphics, so if they make it prettier and still do the 60fps, good on em 😁
People excepting 4K 60 FPS on every game on console makes me laugh. Build a PC if you want to play everything at max settings.
@MrMagic and then complain about AAA development times after driving development teams insane with some insanely high standards
@Nei Don't forget the death threats for having to wait.
I would be happy with a 40fps quality mode like Horizon Forbidden West offers. Maybe aim for 1800p upscale to 4K.
@Nei Yeah true, and after I left this comment I went to the next article and surprise, surprise the usual suspects were complaining again. 😂👍
I personally think its pretty great that they're pushing out an patch to address the graphical performance issues for a DEMO. Square Enix could've easily just added it to the day 1 patch only. I too noticed the graphical issues, though it didn't bother me as much as others. It didn't take away the enjoyment of what I was experiencing and only made me that much more excited for the full game.
On a separate note, I also like that they are giving players the OPTION to skip the demo portion of the games opening chapter. I'm sure a lot of players will have replayed the demo several times, and some would like to jump right in to what happens next. And I like many others will not be choosing to skip it, I like that there's at least that option.
@MrMagic I give up on one of them long time ago 😂
@Slayer25c Yeah I think I have good idea of who that is and I think I've reached my limit as well, I guess it's my turn to give up on him. 😉
@KundaliniRising333 I see the issues if I look for them, but in this case it's not bad enough to make me feel like it's really bothering me.
Final Fantasy XVI on the other hand is still unplayable for me in performance mode.
It's insane how people defend bad graphics on performance mode and then gaslighting others saying they're the problem. We pay money for games, Square enix doesn't give them to us for free. They want 70$ for a game? Well it should look like a 70 bucks game.
Fans just sound arrogant, even Square enix is releasing a patch to address graphics issues, but you guys keep saying "it's nothing serious, looks stunning" why make a patch for a demo then? It's just stupid
Literally just finished the final chapters of remake again and 100% rebirth looks better. Not huge amounts in it for sure, but definitely better. Not that I care anyway, if the game is good and I enjoy it thats all that matters.
@Kidfunkadelic83 I just added them to the ignore list too, looked at their game ratings and saw they gave persona 3 reload a 5/10 and infinite wealth a 1/10, pretty impressive to have completed both of those 80+ hour games that came out almost the same day two weeks ago already! Hope some people keep this in mind when reading those “well thought out” opinions
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