Square Enix has gone to great lengths with the PlayStation 5 to ensure that the second chapter of the Final Fantasy VII remake runs at a better frame rate (and presumably even better on the yet-to-be-announced PlayStation 5 Pro).

Final Fantasy VII has just received a book called Ultimania, and the Shinra Archaeology Department has released some new details about it on Twitter. Senior rendering programmer Suichi Ikeda talked about the game’s rendering code. He confirmed that after Final Fantasy VII Remake, it had to be completely rewritten for Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, and Square Enix will probably have to do the same for the third installment.

The extra power that the PlayStation 5 gave them was all used to improve the frame rate, and they saw it as such a task that there was nothing left in the console to possibly improve other aspects of the game. If the rendering looks anything like what Final Fantasy VII Remake delivered, then this was a victory of sorts for the Japanese developers.

FFVII Rebirth lead rendering programmer Shūichi Ikeda says the rendering code had to be totally rewritten after Remake. The PS5's performance boost went to improving frame rate, with nothing left to allocate elsewhere—so if rendering looks the same, then that's a win. (RbU, 2024) pic.twitter.com/zyPvMQvszM

— Shinra Archaeology Department (@ShinraArch) May 3, 2024

Tomohito Hano, the lead technical programmer for Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, also spoke in the Ultimania book. Although the game was primarily developed using Unreal Engine 4, the team incorporated several useful features from Unreal Engine 5, which is such a mainstream technology that many companies have switched to it even though they had an in-house engine. One such company is CD Projekt RED, who last used the REDengine in their first and only Cyberpunk 2077 add-on, Phantom Liberty.

FFVII Rebirth lead technical programmer Tomohito Hanō says that although Unreal Engine 4 was the primary game engine used to produce FFVII Rebirth, the team also made an effort to incorporate some useful functionality from Unreal Engine 5. (RbU, 2024) pic.twitter.com/E98dvlF1I4

— Shinra Archaeology Department (@ShinraArch) May 5, 2024

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth was released on February 29th for the PlayStation 5, and has not been announced for any other platform (and we hear it has not done very well in terms of sales), as it is presumably a timed exclusive. Final Fantasy VII Remake was also a PlayStation 4 exclusive, then came the PlayStation 5 extended edition with the Intergrade subtitle, and then it jumped to PC.

Source: WCCFTech