Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is a highly acclaimed game – and often a very good looking one. Packing incredible character modelling, highly detailed open world environments, and beautiful, particle-packed combat, the game certainly has some very strong visual highs. However, its performance mode was less impressive, let down by poor image quality fed by lower rendering resolutions and a blurry final resolve – but all that’s set to change with the arrival of new Sony hardware.
The good news is that the upcoming PlayStation 5 Pro upgrade greatly overhauls the visual quality. It seems that Sony’s PSSR upscaling delivers greatly improved, sharper-looking rendering, providing a FF7 Rebirth experience with far less compromise. We’ve got just seven minutes worth of broadcast-grade ProRes footage – a single snapshot of the Pro version of the game – but what we’ve seen so far looks like a genuine, night and day improvement.
The Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth b-roll is an uninterrupted sequence covering the beginning of chapter two, the first gameplay segment set in an open-world space. The footage is unlabelled, but the one visual mode featured is targeting 60fps, just like the PS5’s performance mode. The intro cutscene shows off the impressive fidelity the PS5 Pro is capable of, delivering a crisp, sharp 4K image – a far cry from the blurry and imprecise 1080p-like rendering featured on the base console at the same 60fps update.
It’s possible to make out far more detail across the environment, especially in high frequency texture detail and fine tufts of foliage. Skin textures really shine on Pro, with the specular sheen on Barrett, for example, revealing pore detail that was smeared before. You can actually make out strands of hair on Tifa in close-up and dithering has been minimised relative to base PS5.
Some of the quirks of FF7 Rebirth’s TAA resolve have been fixed too and ghosting is no longer really an issue. Certain camera moves tended to cause ugly trails of duplicated detail, and I didn’t notice it popping up nearly as much during this footage, though in some moments I did spot some more minor ghosting. Also, distant trees no longer appear oddly transparent and shimmery, and have a more solid, stable look on Pro.