Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth Exposes The Industry 

I always say, in 20 years you won't remember the texture details of the carrot on the counter top of an NPCs home but you'll remember how the game made you FEEL.

I don't care that the grass doesn't move when I run throught it. I care about the characters, story and gameplay.

All these people focusing on graphics and here am i still playing a old ass game from 2002 because i really love it.

Perfect. It always annoyed me that people nowadays get to play a massive game, just to go to a generic corner or look at the most generic asset of a game, then say "look, it's not full HD 4k! They're so lazy!"

I definitely miss the days of a new game from a studio every 1-3 years instead of 5-7.

"There wasn't pre-production purgatory." This has me thinking that, while it IS true, the idea of remaking FFVII is one that had been floated about the fandom for 20 or so years at this point. The game may not have experienced a pre-production purgatory, but the playerbase certainly felt like they were in one. It didn't help that, over the years, the series would receive a lot of additions to its entries such as the Advent Children movie, Crisis Core, etc... You can't deny they were the kind of thing that made you go "wow! imagine if the OG FFVII could look like this!" The PS3 tech demo was like, the cherry on the tease cake.

@8:29 "It has incredible visuals" - I see what you did there haha :D

Sounds like people need to stop expecting each fame to be 100% perfect every time and the next game has to be bigger and better by 100000%.

I noticed people really have complained about the visuals not being the very best it can offer. But they’re still good enough, and provide the content experience I anticipated the game to be.

Very thorough and condensed breakdown of the issue. Shortly put, artistic cohesion and integrity are sometimes more important than graphical fidelity. Wish more people realized that. Great video

Great video. So glad over 80% of the team is staying for part 3 too

Excellent video and fully agree. I was blown away by how this game was made. It’s the end of of 20 year journey of FF devs struggling and then finally figuring it out…

170 hours in at rebirth, and still wanna play it. The combat system, the music, the visuals, the characters, everthing fits so well. I had alot of fun with horizon, but never really felt connected to the characters. Loved the visuals and combat though

Fantastic video! And this is actually a topic a friend of mine was discussing the other day in a more general sense that are games now becoming too big for their own good? In terms of scope and budgets and all sorts rhat we are now seeing reach unsustainable levels to where we start getting shocked when we see a game come out and be solid with a small budget like what we saw Sucker Punch do with Ghost Of Tsushima using a fraction of what some kf these studios use these days. Where the focus now is constantly on the visuals and magnitude of the games rather than giving us maybe a smaller game with more substance and something that can be released in bite sizes maybe every 2-3 years or so. Coz even now for example we are seeing what has become of Naughty dog where we would have normally had some games in this cycle even Rockstar another one etc But yeah that tangent of mine is just a random wider point on the industry away from the topic at hand. Great video as always ❤

Lightning Returns mentioned. 😍

I just wish i will be alive for part 3. And FFXVIII. I love FF so much i cant even describe it.

Rebirth felt not like a Square-Enix but Squaresoft game to me.

i think its also important to mention that this game was made through the covid crisis

Nomura, Kitase, and Naoki Hamaguchi are from the golden era, when games weren't product before art. Before profits were more important than fun.

Of all the major things that make games good I think for me personally graphics are the ones that matter the least. Story gameplay art style music setting etc matter way more to me

The problem is, in 20 years people will still be playing the original FF7. The remakes will be forgotten by then, because they already are.

Thank you for this video. I felt even popular streamers like Maximillian Dood were harping on the visuals unnecessarily at times, although he checked himself a bit. It’s been an increasingly annoying complaint I’ve heard from folks who fail to acknowledge the fact that the developers have absolutely spoiled us with Rebirth’s phenomenal scope and content.

You put this into words so nicely! Great vid!

Honestly this is why I, a previously huge sony fan, switched my loyalty over to nintendo. I still love playstation but it just feels like a lot of the games released there lately aren’t fun. Nintendo has their properties straight. Graphics are good but not the most important. What’s important is that it’s a fun game.

Lightning Returns needs to be mentioned more for so many reasons. The 1st truly open world FF game with no zones like FF12 but at the same time it's the last game in the mainline series with a true turnbased atb system that actually was one of the best battle systems in the series. I think the JRPG genre is becoming less popular these days, tho i can only speculate why that is. And as someone whose been a fan of the series since 1999 when i 1st played FF8. Im kinda scared for the franchise. Idk how to describe it, but for me, this series is like a home for me and i played them all outside 11.

"Final Fantasy VII and Legend of Zelda both had teams of long-time veterans and practiced a business model of skill retention."-Paraphrase They, honestly, didn't have a whole lot of choice. Unlike in America, Japan has laws against mass layoffs. They can do them, but only if they do this certain list of things first and STILL look like they will go into the red, whereas here mass layoffs most often occur to make quarterly earnings look good.

I think what you are missing is that they didn’t have to go back to the drawing board to create something totally new, they took most of the assets from the first game. That alone can save years of development time.

8:29 That had to be intentional... That was perfect timing for the commentary.

The visuals were great. However the side missions, open world map objectives and time wasting main missions were huge problems in the game. I can forgive bad graphics if u spend more time making these kinda things better as they are much more important to the experience than great graphics.

Something I noticed in Remake is that NPCs are really small. Many regular adult NPCs are shorter than Tifa. I'm perfectly alright with the devs saving polygons and rendering time where they can to make what matters spectacular. Rebirth looks incredible and feels great to play. I am a middle aged man and when I left Kalm the first time I just walked around the fields laughing at the glory of it. Now I just hope they put NPC chatter on a separate volume slider than main character dialogue for part 3.

FF7 Rebirth has made me feel like a child again ... that magical feeling that only Final Fantasy could evoke inside of me, it's a masterpiece ❤

And besides, The quality of resolution and texture detail canbe fix in the future but story and character are difficult to adjust after release.

I’m so glad people are giving this game the attention it deserves. It isn’t perfect - but it’s still a masterpiece. Great video!

Great video. Ive always accepted that if a game is to be truly huge in scope and create a rich and varied world full of towns bustling with life, vast and fully explorable open planes with stunning vistas, and a massive variety of enemy encounters, often with multiple enemies on screen at once, there WILL be visual trade offs with the current console tech we have. I went into rebirth already accepting of this fact. I’d much rather have a slightly blurry patch far off in the distance or a low res apple than make everything super high res but reduce the scope of the world. For me I was actually impressed that they managed to hold a very consistent 60fps in the performance mode. Frame rate drops break immersion for me way more than minor visual compromises. I also think more generally, graphics are being looked at in the wrong way. People seem obsessed with resolution and pixel counts these days. Don’t get me wrong there’s definitely a basic acceptable standard for this stuff, and it’s nice when a game looks nice and polished, but it’s not the most important thing- What really counts is good art direction and design. And rebirth nailed that totally. Another example is Elden Ring. Does the games visual fidelity blow you away? Not really. Often up close things look pretty basic. But the art design is stunning, and that’s what is memorable.

5:33 Devs know damn well how this was accomplished. As the game is essentially a continuation of the first part many of the assets and such can be carried over and used on the second part greatly reducing development time.

This is why I love the Falcom games. Their budget isn’t the highest by far, but their heart is in it.

Great video. Along the same point, I feel like it exposes the gamer side of the industry too. Gamers again and again want tons of content, don't want DLC, content locked behind paywalls, and a fully functioning game at launch. Rebirth is one of the most content rich and high quality open worlds in the last decade. The combat, world, and story are quality, and it's so much bang for your buck. The devs made a game for gamers. So what happens? It's not selling that well. These devs did everything the fans wanted, and made a game the larger gaming community would love. But so many just ignored it. It's aggravating.

FF7 Rebirth was an enjoyable experience but I do wish that so much time effort and resources should have been geared toward a more focused and lazered in main story. These mini games and open world elements at times bordered tedium and the Far Cry towers were absolutely rediculous and not needed. But overall still a beautiful game

Great video. I don't know why more people aren't playing the FF7R series... everywhere I look people have been asking for a game literally designed like Rebirth but then it comes out and people complained about mini games and shit. This game should've sold 10 million copies! It's the funnest game I've played in so long and it only took 3 years! It achieves incredible spectacle without relying on fancy animations and graphics. Just cool shit happening, fun characters, very well paced story and awesome music. It's precisely because the core content is so good that it gets to also have it's average check list game shit too. (Which is not a bad thing when you have good characters and a interesting world.)

Calling Rebirth an "open world" game is being far to generous and setting expectations too high. Like the original game it has an "overworld". It's been upgraded with interactive elements now.

wow I just beat the game and a Repaduski video is all I needed

Great video. Just started Rebirth last week and still having a blast when the most bombastic moments happen.

3:18 Well, if all those shitty texture weren't in fact left there on purpose, I don't know what to think

This is the message that we should be sending to the developers. And more so than the developers the people who bank roll the games. They need to stop chasing higher dollar amounts and focus on solid gameplay with reasonable turn around times. Once a year release may never come back however we should strive to make that the goal.

I agree with the principle that you don't have to have perfect 4K assets everywhere. I myself play in performance mode and I feel fine with the lower quality (graphics mode doesn't exactly improve it that much anyway). There ARE, however, things in the graphics / visuals department that actually affect overall immersion and satisfaction. When LoDs pop in and out inconsistently, when shadows disappear and appear at random, when the brightness of the screen changes dramatically at the slightest movement of the camera - you do get distracted, and you break off from the immersion. For me it does negatively impact overall enjoyment. Also I'm not sure Rebirth's development speed can be attributed to the fact that the game lacks asset quality. I think a much bigger factor is that it is a sequel so they didn't need to develop and test certain things which had already been proven in Remake / Intermission. In contrast, Remake itself WAS in quite the purgatory since being announced at E3 2015, even though it also didn't have the best asset quality. In the end, I agree that a game should first be a good game before it is a good spectacle. However I also think that good visuals do contribute to how a game makes you feel. I'm hoping that the future has great things to offer - like UE5's Nanite might already be doing, and in the future things like AI generated interactive worlds - that will massively help lower development time, and focus game devs back on what they should always be doing - making games.

I felt like FF7 Rebirth side missions are so.. filler. I bought a PS5 just to play it, I played for 7 hours and stopped it. Maybe it’s just me.

Great video but sad to see the subtle jabs at Horizon.

Content takes talent. Graphics fidelity takes time and money. One of these two paths is easier than the other.

As a 30 year old gamer I’ll tell you this much : I played Final Fantasy and many other games on PS1 and OG gameboy. Back then, I could have never imagined this. Not in a million years. When I’m playing these games that come out today, it still feels surreal to me. Even after playing 1000’s of hours. Like I’m always on borrowed time, pinch me and I wake up. I get that there’s scummy business tactics imvolved behind the scenes for sure. And I do not condone them. But I’m here to remind you Final fantasy Rebirth released with 2 discs. In an age they could’ve easily locked the game behind a digital update to save money, like they usually do. No, they gave you the full game, and a gorgeous, huge game at that. Man, have we become privileged also. We will sing the original FF7’s praises, we all say what a masterpiece Ocarina of time was etc. “For it’s time”. Bro even these games were somehow flawed for their time. OG ff7 was an ugly game even back then. But nobody cared because the game made you feel a certain way. But godforbid a fantastic game like Rebirth released today has some low resolution textures in the corner of a dark alley. “Those lazy developers”. “How dare they.” It’s human nature to always want what we don’t have. And it is natural for popular things to get the most criticism. But out of all the games to criticise and out of all the things you will complain in life, let me tell you: FF Rebirth should not be one of them. If it is. I feel bad for everyone around you. And sad for you. One day you will die. Probably unsatisfied. I hope you understand that.

This video is very terse, efficient and insightful. Could have easily been 40 minutes. But you make your points very well and don't waste a word

oh no there are towers, squint and look at this unloaded texture, game looks too blurry, mini game simulator... too much variety I'm overwhelmed!

i miss old games. they were better cheaper complete and the devs didnt say that it wasnt sustainable. they were making bank while we payed 20$ leff for base game that was big where itn didnt need dlc for 8+ months

Props to Bugenhagen’s place. It’s the first time a game has made me “smell” something. It smells like old books. Sooooo that was a new thing for me in a game

reminds me of the days when everyone laughed at pokemon sword and shield for having terrible tree texture quality honestly tho that game had nothing in it to begin with anyways

Well said. FF7 Rebirth is so incredible

Looks like Square has got their mojo back. I'm here for it!

All the minigames did slow down the pacing for me, especially around Costa del Sol & Gold Saucer, but the game is still a banger.

One thing I didn't like about rebirth was the unnecessary collision with objects in buildings. It kinda breaks your immersion when you run into a room and loudly knock over all the furniture. Why couldn't they just keep stuff static?

I believe assets like fruit or clocks are just stuff you get for free using Unreal Engine (which so many triple A games are using). I don't think they put any real effort into them, it's just a matter of placement and setting up the "map" or area.

the game doesn't need to be absurdly beautiful, it has to be fun, and give the player a sense of reward, be challenging, not frustrating

I kind of wish they made queens blood more like triple triad where you could challenge almost any NPC to a match. Instead of just a couple in each town. Also the combat really shines more in hard mode. In most people’s normal mode play through, they will probably fumble and brute force their way through most fights. Hard mode forces you to learn the fight and take advantage of mechanics which imo is a lot more rewarding than just burning everything with a couple firaga spells.

I for one love that it's got a real life clock on the wall! Lmao Great video, you hit the nail right on the head

Whole there are many factors at play, considering Square-Enix still had to announce lay offs after the release of this game, apart of me feels like this hasn't aged that well.

This game has a lot of flaws, is sometimes annoying and even frustrating to play. But it is also beautiful, highly detailed, and fun to play. When I was a kid, I remember that games had a lot of problems, bugs, frustrating moments, like the water temple in ocarina of time, or controlling Mario with his wing cap. But these games were masterpieces for me. Rebirth feels like that to me, it's a videogame in its purest form, a work of art that you can criticise but also appreciate and cherish. And, most importantly, have fun.

this not game this is adventure i dont care about some textures i care characters story fight music and even visuals is still pretty good gameplay is the key

Wasn't Final Fantasy 7 Remake originally being made by Cyber Connect 2? I don't know if you can say it wasn't in pre-production purgatory if that was the case. I think Rebirth keeping the same visual fidelity/art style was Remake definitely helped in the content department and kept a similar look between both games, something I hope they keep for what I guess will be called 'Reunion' for a more consistent look between all 3 games. This should help with production time and overall budget.

I don't care about a clock, but I do care that there is a vast distance of quality between story cutscene character animation and conversational character animation. One looks great; the other would earn a "you won't get a zero if you fix and resubmit it at the end of the day" from your college professor if you turned it in as your final project.

I remember the doors in remake being criticised and being like….not only did people notice this but they cared? That’s not what the focus should be

I think the Remake project was only possible due to Sony funding it. Otherwise Square Enix wouldn’t do it.

I finally played Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth early this month in April. I didn’t play it upon release in February. I wish I did but I loved every minute of it and I can’t wait for the 3rd part in the remake series whenever it comes out. The best and probably the only new game I’ve played so far to year too. I still need to play Tekken 8 and Prince of Persia the lost crown eventually.

I'm so glad you're like explaining the game and the reason why Final Fantasy 7 rebirth the special because it is special I just wish everybody wasn't so trapped in the past about Final Fantasy 7 and dealing with the current day video game politics to actually really enjoy the game for what it is because it isn't like the recent Final Fantasy games that square enix have given us It feels like one of those older games back in the day before you know the 2010s if that makes sense.

Well said! Man! Three years is super fast now. Not quite the golden years of 1 new FF every year, but I love the new era of FF for what it is!

Good video. I'm just blown away about how good Rebirth is and it's reignited my love of JRPGS!

lol remake and rebirth got everything right BUT THE ORIGINAL STORY. All it needed to begin with was updated cutscenes, character models, and on a scaled down world or game size as final fantasy 15 is. 15 was able to stay on one console.

8:29 “It has incredible visuals” - shows Tifa in THAT outfit 😂

I think this speed of development(and whatever they did to achieve it) was probably due to the FF7 team knowing that there would be title to title dropoff with the FF7R trilogy. Some franchises are able to do direct sequels and grow(many western franchises in particular) but FF and many JRPGs heave historically seen noticeable declines for direct sequels. FF7R being both direct sequels and nostalgia/remake(s)(of sorts) probably has audience cap and development has to take this into account to maximize profits. Honestly, I am not sure if this project was the better option in terms of commercial success but they're definitely doing the best they possibly can here. I will say that it's a bit of a shame that FF gets this type of critical reception not on FF7 Remake or FFXVI but on FF7 Rebirth. There's definitely less commercial upside to this scenario compared to the others. But yeah, I do think that FF and Square Enix needs more of this in general, especially for their key franchise like Dragon Quest and FF. How are franchises supposed to grow and acquire new players if the time between mainline entries is so long?

Great video and Amazing game, been absolutely blown away by it and I'm sad iv almost done everything there is to do. I Platinum almost every game I play and after the 50 hour mark on most games the boredom starts to set in but I don't want this game to end. The combat is so strong and every characters plays so different, I personally think they should just not bother with creating new combat systems per game and make this their new system. This can be the new turn based for me.

Still didnt need to add Chadley

And running at 60FPS to boot, god am I thankful 60FPS was an option at release.

Just imagine how much sooner they could have finished the game if they hadnt spent so much time attaching a minigame to everything you do. The PoI's are a sort of minigame in their own right. Why do i have to do another minigame to collect the rewards. Like the lifesprings. That could have just been an animation. Why did they spend time programming a minigame into that. I know its just 3 button presses, but still. It should have just been triangle to interact, then an animation of Cloud scanning it

some of the textural issues are definitely a bit distracting, and the fact that the grass doesn't move seems to be a half ass attempt of physics. overall still a pretty rewarding experience both from a gameplay standpoint and the environments still look great as well as the leve design. it just makes me wonder if they could've perfected it more. it's still a great game nontheless but they could've done a little more in 2024 imo and it's something reviewers should mention.

Final Fantasy Rebirth will always be unique because it is a game which is probably gonna be 30 years in the making. Yes, it has a good combat system from Remake, yes, it looks great from the many many years of graphical emphasis from the Final Fantasy team. But the most important aspect is the characters and the story from the 1997 original, so Final Fantasy 7 re-* series is really very unique in itself. Great job on the .... visuals, Square!

FF7 Rebirth not only has insanely good graphics, but it also has brilliant gameplay, and a well thought out story which differs from the OG game so the audience doesn’t know what’s going to happen. This game is a masterpiece, and it deserves a spot next to Red Dead Redemption 2 and Tears of the Kingdom as one of the greatest games of all time.

Weird how the video kept cutting to footage of horizon when making negative statements. That was odd

First BG3, now FF7. The rest of the industry is telling us that we shouldn’t expect this quality from them and I say fine, don’t expect us to pay for your crap when we have game like these that ALSO offer replayability on top of everything you mentioned. Honestly the one other game that can pull me from these two are my Sunday D&D sessions lol

This is why I fully endorse AI in videogame development. Imagine the cut in costs and development time!

And here I am waiting for the third title of this trilogy to release so I can immerse myself fully for a long LONG playthrought while people are looking at the finger pointed to the moon kind of drama. Pitifull

This game was such a grind for me, and I only played the main quest, plus a couple side quests.

Rebirth is probably the GOAT, I’m exploring everything still, just in chapter 10 I think. Taking everything in

I very much agree with the points made in the video. It hurts a bit to see the game underperform in sales but in the long run, high quality games usually seem to get the recognition they deserve.

I just wish i will be alive for part 3

I just wish it didn’t look so blurry on performance mode. Other than that, I’m enjoying it a lot more than I expected because it’s not afraid to be “videogamey”. It’s sad that the only FF I’m truly enjoying since XV is not meeting Square’s expectations. I hope they won’t take this as some sort of message and change what worked with rebirth in the final installment

Rebirth is not only GOTY for me, it's one of the best games I've ever played(and still playing). I hope it gains more valoration as the time goes by.

It kinda feels like Horizon ZD is the designated punching bag of this channel.

applause! great video.

Great video.

All Square had to do was remake the original. Don’t change the story. Up the dialogue and cut scenes, turned based combat like the original. Maybe new materia. But keep is like the original. Square screwed themselves

Hot take, I miss when games actually looked and felt like games and not some almost 1 to 1 recreation of real life with some fiction thrown in. I like when stuff looks goofy and unrealistic and I can defy physics and fly around with a 6 ft sword like it's a paper weight.

One of the best games I played on the last two years was Triangle Strategy that is on the same graphic level as Octopath Traveler (pixels).

It took 3 years because it’s a sequel and the basics of the game were already created and fine tuned. Not because they didn’t put resources for details that aren’t necessary.