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[Digital Foundry] - Final Fantasy 7 Remake - Beautiful, but not flawless

Alex and John ( D dark10x ) from DF provide a technical breakdown of FF7R



From DF Youtube

Join Alex Battaglia and John Linneman for a detailed breakdown of the Final Fantasy 7 Remake. We check out PS4 Pro and PS4 visual comparisons and performance and appreciate the often stunning use of Unreal Engine 4. It's a beautiful game but it's not flawless. What's up with the texture popping and can an SSD brute force your way through the issues?

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- John is working on a DF Retro seemingly involving OG FF7
- Comes out the gate swinging, really impressive usage of UE4
- Tons of motion blur in cut-scenes and extensive use of DoF, cut-scenes better looking in many aspects than Advent Children
- Smooth transitions between cut-scenes and gameplay
- Relatively high quality AO, Bloom, GPU particle effects
- Targetting 1620p on PS4 Pro
- TAA not too soft but some dithering with details like hair
- Mixes dynamic lighting and fixed lighting at the same time
- Environment quality is a mixed bag. Initial areas look really good, first mission and initial scene are particularly dense and detailed
- On PRO we have 1620p dynamic resolution, at lowest goes 1360p, stays at 1620p most of the time, framerate rarely ever dips and when they do its only 1-2 and immediately recover
- Base PS4 targets 1080p, doesn't seem to drop resolution and also performs really well with just occasional dips
- When you get past the first area of the game, the texture resolution issues seem to pop up. Textures seemed cranked down
- Kind of imbalanced image when you have very high resolution character models next to oddly low res object textures
- When running from area to area texture swapping becomes apparent, texture pop in worse than what you may be used to
- These texture issues persist regardless of using internal HD, external SSD, regardless of Pro model, base PS4 has same issues

Watching for details now

edit

VG Tech did a framerate comparison between Pro and base PS4



details are in video description

The version tested was 1.00.

When outputting at 2160p, PS4 Pro uses a dynamic resolution with the lowest resolution found being approximately 2133x1200 and the highest resolution found being 2880x1620. PS4 Pro renders at a native resolution of 1920x1080 when outputting at 1080p with forced supersampling disabled.

Performance in some scenes on PS4 Pro can be improved by outputting at 1080p with forced supersampling disabled https://bit.ly/3b2FckO

PS4 uses a dynamic resolution with the lowest resolution found being approximately 1600x900 and the highest resolution found being 1920x1080. Pixel counts below 1920x1080 seem to be rare on PS4.
 
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butman

Member
I think this sentence sum perfectly what this game is "Beautiful, but not flawless"
 
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Andodalf

Banned
Hope the texture streaming issues get fixed, game looks stunning, One of the Best UE4 games for sure. I wonder how much farther UE4 can be pushed. UE3 was able to make Arkham Knight, but idk if UE4 will get pushed that far.
 

Fbh

Member
Hey, I was almost starting to miss annoying texture loading issues on Unreal engine games.
Shame about the issues with the textures but it seems pretty solid apart from that. Hopefully they can improve it with an update or two.

At least modders already have the work cut out for them when this comes to PC
 

JimboJones

Member
summary ?

The game runs great on both OG and Pro models, very stable 30fps
Great use of motion blur during cutscenes and gameplay. Gameplay cuts the camera blur but per object motion blur is kept so animations look great but you don't get that blurring if you pan around the camera.
Opening area in the reactor and just after is very impressive looking
Slum area not so much, weird texture loading issues
Textures take a little long to load in some cases but overall not that bad
Some textures look like they may be bugged, or not, there not sure but some look too low res to actually be intentional or could just be a technical limitation.
 
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Quezacolt

Member
Hope the texture streaming issues get fixed, game looks stunning, One of the Best UE4 games for sure. I wonder how much farther UE4 can be pushed. UE3 was able to make Arkham Knight, but idk if UE4 will get pushed that far.
Unreal 4 is being used to create virtual sets for series and movies, so i'd say it still has a lot that it can do in gaming.
 

JimboJones

Member
- Kind of imbalanced image when you have very high resolution character models next to oddly low res object textures
Maybe they are just trying to recreate that OG game when cranked to HD look.

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I haven't watched the video nor played the game yet. I don't want to be spoiled. I'll play on Friday when the digital download unlocks. I was going to start a thread on this but feel it is better placed here.

I have a theory on why this game was separated into multiple parts and i dont feel its due to the size of the original. From what i understand the first part of this remake is rather linear and this allows for Squinex to raise the bar in graphic fidelity while maintaining a pretty consistent performance. While that is perfectly suited for the Midgar section, due to its linearity in the original, it would not be suited for the post Midgar portion of the game where things really open up. My theory is, this was intentional to get the game, and hype, out prior to the launch of the next gen consoles (this killed ff12) but didnt want their grand plan spoiled by what these current consoles offer. Enter PS5/XSX, the SSD is said to bring open world games to a whole new level with things no possible until now, err November. I truly feel the new systems will open the second half of the game up so much more than is currently capable. I feel this was a calculated risk by Squinex and based on the positive reviews it might have paid off.
 

fersnake

Member
i was hoping they test the game on an ssd maybe it fixes the loading textures, but probably its gonna be fixed on next gen consoles.
 

McCheese

Member
Awesome video, but why didn't they try to reach out to Square-Enix to ask if the texture thing is a bug or not? Seems like they spent more time speculating about it than it would of taken them to ping the PR person an e-mail.
 
Awesome video, but why didn't they try to reach out to Square-Enix to ask if the texture thing is a bug or not? Seems like they spent more time speculating about it than it would of taken them to ping the PR person an e-mail.

Has SE issues any sort of statement in it anywhere? Reddit, Twitter, anywhere?
 

Ma-Yuan

Member
The texture stuff annoys the hell out of me. It looks ridiculously good in one scene and like crap for no reason in others. Also why didn't they mention the low polygon count. There are pipes that are not round but literally squares besides other objects. I don't get how SE could mess this up so bad.

They work forever on that game just too throw you out of the immersion constantly >< nether the less love the game.
 

McCheese

Member
Has SE issues any sort of statement in it anywhere? Reddit, Twitter, anywhere?

It's not been fixed by the "day 1" patch, there are some textures (such as the door) that they could fix if they wanted to but seems disingenuous to presume it's a bug, when it's more likely an oversight from a rushed production schedule.

The general lack of higher resolution textures in the more open areas would make sense considering the texture LOD pop-in issue, imagine adding a third set of even larger textures into the mix and it'll be like Gears of War 1 all over again.
 

godhandiscen

There are millions of whiny 5-year olds on Earth, and I AM THEIR KING.
- When you get past the first area of the game, the texture resolution issues seem to pop up. Textures seemed cranked down
- Kind of imbalanced image when you have very high resolution character models next to oddly low res object textures
- When running from area to area texture swapping becomes apparent, texture pop in worse than what you may be used to
- These texture issues persist regardless of using internal HD, external SSD, regardless of Pro model, base PS4 has same issues
Pass. I will wait for the next-gen version.
 
I played and finished the game and I had zero issues regarding texture pop in. I have a 4tb SSD installed in the console so I don't know if that prevented the issues...
 

GametimeUK

Member
I don't see what's wrong with Alex. I think he's doing a fantastic job. I'm always interested to hear his opinions. What's people's problem with him?
 

Quezacolt

Member
I haven't watched the video nor played the game yet. I don't want to be spoiled. I'll play on Friday when the digital download unlocks. I was going to start a thread on this but feel it is better placed here.

I have a theory on why this game was separated into multiple parts and i dont feel its due to the size of the original. From what i understand the first part of this remake is rather linear and this allows for Squinex to raise the bar in graphic fidelity while maintaining a pretty consistent performance. While that is perfectly suited for the Midgar section, due to its linearity in the original, it would not be suited for the post Midgar portion of the game where things really open up. My theory is, this was intentional to get the game, and hype, out prior to the launch of the next gen consoles (this killed ff12) but didnt want their grand plan spoiled by what these current consoles offer. Enter PS5/XSX, the SSD is said to bring open world games to a whole new level with things no possible until now, err November. I truly feel the new systems will open the second half of the game up so much more than is currently capable. I feel this was a calculated risk by Squinex and based on the positive reviews it might have paid off.
That would make sense, but at the same time, square mentioned a few months ago that they dont plan on making next gen exclusives for a while, since it wouldnt make sense for them. Most likely part 2 will still be a ps4 game, but enhanced when played on a ps5.
 
So in going larger than needed for could and should have been a straight forward 1:1 remake like Res1 remake, we have an rpg and an FF7 remake that is over 20 years apart and it suffers from:
  • Isnt 4k/30fps
  • 1620p variable resolution dropping as low as 1360p!
  • Frame drops
  • Excessive motion blur
  • Texture pop in

and a plot that makes MGSV look like a master piece.
 
So in going larger than needed for could and should have been a straight forward 1:1 remake like Res1 remake, we have an rpg and an FF7 remake that is over 20 years apart and it suffers from:
  • Isnt 4k/30fps
  • 1620p variable resolution dropping as low as 1360p!
  • Frame drops
  • Excessive motion blur
  • Texture pop in

and a plot that makes MGSV look like a master piece.

Were we expecting native 4k tho? How many games has Pro ran at native 4k? Isn’t it a pretty small amount?

The texture problems seem like the only real issues, and it’s unfortunate.

The framerate is solid, only some minor hiccups that rebound almost instantly

I know nothing about the new plot, not going there. No spoilers plz
 
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