Square Enix’s next game is now available to try (and the demo will be updated later), but the visuals don’t look perfect.

If you happen to have a PlayStation 5 nearby, you might have tried the demo of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, but it’s mainly the performance graphics that make for… interesting visuals. Everything seems blurry, but it’s not because of the low resolution. John Linneman, editor of Digital Foundry and DF Retro, said on Twitter that the demo has some very surprising and serious problems. Unreal Engine 4 is a burden, so to speak, but he also mentioned bizarre design flaws in the way the visual assets were packaged. The image quality in performance mode isn’t the best, but at least it runs well, he added.

It’s not even that the dynamic resolution is too low! According to Linneman, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth runs at 1440p in performance mode, but post-processing runs at a quarter of that, 360p, and that’s why the game looks bad! This is a very big mistake, and hopefully Square Enix will make a patch for the release of the full game, but at the earliest for the already confirmed content update of the demo, because this is something the Japanese company cannot ignore.

But here we have to stop for a moment, because we have to ask ourselves how this bug was missed during testing? If this was a garage development done by one person without any external testing, we would say that it happens, because usually you need another pair of eyes to look over any bugs… But we’re talking about a AAA game made by one of Japan’s biggest game companies, and they certainly had a lot of testing involved in the project. That’s why this visual error is incomprehensible.

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth will be released on February 29 for PlayStation 5.

Source: WCCFTech

It has some pretty surprising and serious issues. A lot of UE4 baggage but also some bizarre design choices in regards to how assets are jammed together. Image quality is not good in perf mode but at least it runs well, I suppose.

— John Linneman @dark1x.bsky.social (@dark1x) February 9, 2024

I thought so too but it's not! Post-processing at 1/4 res seems to be causing issues.

— John Linneman @dark1x.bsky.social (@dark1x) February 9, 2024