Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth's Huge PS5 Pro Enhancements Are 'Night and Day' 1
Image: Digital Foundry

Here come the early tech evaluations, then: according to the experts at Digital Foundry, based on several minutes of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth footage running on the PS5 Pro, the upgrade is a “night and day” difference. We’ve already heard murmurs about the improvements to this game in particular, which will run at 60 frames-per-second on Sony’s supercharged system with significantly improved image quality – but here’s the evidence to support it.

The Square Enix title is a very interesting example, because many people complained about its visuals in performance mode. The publisher did attempt to improve this with subsequent patches, but it’s always looked soft when running at 60fps. As system architect Mark Cerny promised, the PS5 Pro solves these issues, offering a smooth frame rate with image quality on par with – and, in some instances, better than – the base PS5 version’s 30fps graphics mode.

Once again, reading through the increasingly complex analysis, it seems like Sony’s AI-based PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution is doing a lot of the heavy lifting, taking a comparable internal resolution to the original and upscaling it effortlessly with very few compromises in image quality. Digital Foundry’s report does note that the technology struggles a little with areas of shallow depth of field, but overall we can see a remarkable increase in clarity and image quality.

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth's Huge PS5 Pro Enhancements Are 'Night and Day' 2
Image: Digital Foundry

The report also notes that ghosting is no longer an issue on PS5 Pro, and even distant foliage appears more solid and dense on the upgraded appliance – but pop-in does remain an issue in the open world. Particle effects also appear cleaner and clearer in motion, where they’re muddy on the standard PS5 console. All of this results in a dramatic difference, and it’s probably worth emphasising that the patch is unlikely to be finalised just yet.

Still, based on these early results, we’ve got a meaningful upgrade here: PS5 Pro simply looks cleaner running at 60fps than on a base PS5. Whether that’s enough to convince you to upgrade is another discussion, but there’s no doubt, for this game in particular, the new hardware is delivering a meaningful improvement. You can learn more, as well as browse some pretty nifty comparison screenshots, on Eurogamer.net.

[source eurogamer.net]