Perhaps there is no better exploit the boys’ reaction than the announcement of the Final Fantasy 7 Remake at E3 in 2015 – screams, breakdowns, tears of joy – and the release of the stuttering PC version of the same game in 2021: screams, breakdowns, tears of bitter disappointment. It was a shamefully crude edition of what should were a huge game for Square Enix, made even harder to swallow due to a 20-month delay after console launch and exclusivity on the Epic Games Store.
It’s no surprise that last year, Square Enix’s CEO said the company planned to refocus on cross-platform releases, with a particular focus on “initiatives to win over PC users.” Between much-delayed releases and other releases that weren’t much of a bang but a whimper, such as the Kingdom Hearts collection that limped along on Steam after three years, Square Enix consistently dug into the PC bag with games that should have had the easiest sales.
But hey: things are finally looking up. The above video showing PC features in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, which will be released in just a few weeks, sounds like an apology for all the problems with Remake.
It starts with the basics we’d expect from a game running on higher-end hardware than what’s offered on consoles, vaguely advertising “improved lighting” and “improved graphics,” which I assume means either higher-resolution textures or perhaps increased draw distance ; the console version in particular had image quality issues in “performance” mode that were not fixed until the PS5 Pro came out.
With those basics in place, the Rebirth PC trailer starts to show off features we’ve really come to expect in high-end games: DLSS scaling, detailed graphics options in addition to presets, and the ability to reassign mouse/keyboard controls. I appreciate FF7 Remake for getting the latter right when many Japanese games still don’t, but the inclusion of keyboard controls in the trailer – as well as the ability to raise the number of NPCs rendered on screen at once – shows Square Enix is solemn about courting PC gamers.
There’s even DualSense support from the console version, which is a nice addition. More details about PC functions can be found on the website official website.
There are still a few advanced features missing from the experience that would indicate that Square Enix is truly investing in its PC ports: accessibility options, for example, as well as ultrawide support and active frame rates at 144Hz and higher. It’s disappointing to see a demanding cap of 120fps, and I wonder if and why in this day and age the game was programmed to run at a inert multiple of 30fps. It took modders and tools like Flawless Widescreen to port some of this functionality to Remake upon launch.
It’s not like this is Square Enix’s first attempt at making a great PC game; last year’s PC port of Final Fantasy 16 was certainly better than the FF7 Remake port, and if we go back to 2018, Final Fantasy 15 was full of PC-exclusive graphical bells and whistles. Remember Nvidia’s VXAO (voxel ambient occlusion) or turf effects? I certainly didn’t, but FF15 used them both!
Square Enix has a few other black spots in its PC history, including Nier: Automata. The less said about some of the early PC ports of classics like Final Fantasy 6 and Chrono Trigger, the better.
It’s frustrating when such technical errors ruin the final versions of some great games. I hope FF7 Rebirth arrives on PC less than a year after PlayStation 5 and does its best to highlight all the improvements it has made. I hope we see the first results of Square’s initiative to get more PC gamers on board.
How about a Final Fantasy Tactics remaster, eh?
