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There may be no better use case for the reaction guys than the 2015 E3 announcement of Final Fantasy 7 Remake—screams, meltdowns, tears of joy—and the 2021 release of the stuttery PC version of that same game: screams, meltdowns, tears of bitter disappointment. It was a shamefully barebones release of what should have been a huge game for Square Enix, made even harder to swallow by its 20-month delay after the console release and exclusivity on the Epic Games Store.
It’s no wonder that last year Square Enix’s CEO said the company planned to refocus on multiplatform releases with a particular eye towards “initiatives designed to win over PC users.” Between majorly delayed releases and other not-a-bang-but-a-whimper launches like Kingdom Hearts collection limping onto Steam after three years, Square Enix has consistently fumbled the bag on PC with the games it should have the easiest time selling.
But hey: things are finally looking up.
The video above highlighting the PC features in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, out in just a few weeks, reads like an apology tour for all the problems with Remake. It starts off with some basics we’d expect from a game running on higher-end hardware than the consoles offer, vaguely touting “improved lighting” and “enhanced visuals” which I assume means either higher-resolution textures or perhaps an increased draw distance; the console version particularly had image quality issues with its “performance” mode that weren’t cleaned up until the PS5 Pro came around.
After those basics, the Rebirth PC trailer starts hitting on the features we really expect to see in high-end games: DLSS upscaling, granular graphics options in addition to presets, and rebindable mouse/keyboard controls. I’ll give FF7 Remake credit for getting that last one right when many Japanese games still don’t, but including the keyboard controls in the trailer—and also being able to crank up the number of NPCs rendered on-screen at once—shows Square Enix is serious about courting PC players.
They’re even bringing over DualSense support from the console version, a nice little bonus. You can read a bit more detail on the PC features at the official site.
There are still some high-end features missing in action here that would signal Square Enix is truly investing in its PC ports: accessibility options, for example, as well as ultrawide support and dynamic framerates at 144Hz and beyond. It’s disappointing to see a hard ceiling of 120 fps, and makes me wonder if and why the game was programmed to run at static multiples of 30 fps in this day and age. It took modders and utilities like Flawless Widescreen to bring some of that functionality to Remake after launch.
It’s not like this is Square Enix’s first stab at making a great PC game; last year Final Fantasy 16’s PC port was certainly better than FF7 Remake’s, and if you go way back to 2018, Final Fantasy 15 was packed with PC-exclusive graphical bells and whistles. Remember Nvidia’s VXAO (voxel ambient occlusion) or Turf Effects? I sure don’t, but FF15 used them both!
Square Enix has some other black marks in its PC history, including Nier: Automata. It’s frustrating seeing those kinds of technical blunders mar what should be the definitive versions of some great games. With FF7 Rebirth landing on PC less than a year after the PlayStation 5 and going out of its way to highlight all of its improvements, I hope we’re seeing the first results of Square’s initiative to win over more PC players.
Now how about that Final Fantasy Tactics remaster, huh?
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Kurt Indovina
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