Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth Exposes The Industry

the unending Chase for perfectionism against the increasing cost of AAA development and staggering amount of job loss has begun to bring into question the future of the industry now more than ever it's become obvious there's a sustainability issue in regards the length of time it takes for a AAA game to be in production before it ends up in the hands of the consumer many studios falling under the category of 5 to six-year development Cycles in between releases are due to a need to chase raw attention to detail over content quality this Chase is not a mistake in all cases and there are exceptions to the rule the open world genre is where this issue is beginning to Fester there has been a mass focus on adding things to a game that add very little utility to your momentto moment experience outside of their initial Discovery it's becoming increasingly evident that the budgets for many of these games are favoring surface level technical achievements rather than substance it's here where Final Fantasy 7 rebirth makes parts of the industry show their hand Final Fantasy has since the beginning of the HD era chased highend visuals for all of their Mainline entries it's something the franchise became synonymous with once they were functioning in a fully 3D environment this was also a time when games were developed under far different circumstances where the sheer size of the world wasn't an expectation it was a unique surprise Final Fantasy had always been made to look Larger than Life by the use of beautiful backdrops and environments and clever visual tricks a game could be one of the most linear in the series but you could still be convinced a larger world existed outside of your set path it just required different methods methods that retained the consistency of The Cutting Edge visuals while not being able to fully Implement them in a wide reaching explorable area it wasn't until Lightning Returns that you could fully see the visual tradeoff for that level of Freedom Final Fantasy 7 remake launched to some of the best visuals of the generation in most of its environments and character models much to the disbelief it garnered in the leadup to its release it still had its share of visual bugs in areas of the game most notably a number of NPCs in a very precious door took a hit remake was a late generation PS4 title that needed just a little more power to reach its potential and it did it was known very early on in discussions of a sequel that whatever came next would be a very different game The Narrative was always designed to thrust this cast of characters into a much larger open world one that could only be managed on what was then next Generation Hardware rebirth had this instilled fear in its buildup as to whether or not it would run into a lot of the same pitfalls you see many modern open World Games still pretending that they don't see they had figured out a mostly linear design that worked with remake but that design philosophy was only ever going to afford them a single entry the world of rebirth had to come with a level of compromise due to the hardware that it's on and what will go on to be the most important string of decisions made in the development of this game they spread their budget and resources perfectly it still had the same level of occasional visual bugs that remake did in its first year but even more important some visuals that were left basic with intent it's here where so much is to be learned from similar AAA output rebirth has many Interiors consisting of home shops and everything in between these locations are filled with the items you would expect a lived in space to have and some of them often look like this this doesn't matter nor will it ever in a game with visuals is consistent everywhere else outside of something as inconsequential as a clock this small aspect of texture quality in game exists as an important indication giving this clock and all of these types of objects the same texture quality is the rest of the game would in no world be worth taking away resources from even 1% of any of the game's overall features the world of rebirth is lined with content to an overwhelming degree it can be more daunting than exciting pre-launch when you can't help but project some of the current industry Trends on Square Enix as many did the difference in this case being that the content is placed with intent and meaning every minute you put into servicing the world is paid back to you immediately or eventually the percentage of General job loss in short contracted work that goes on at many studios is hurting final products historically many of the best sequels released in the industry in recent years come with Tales of Team retention Nintendo famously retains a staggering amount of their developers allowing them to consistently deliver with both Mario and Zelda amongst their other IP the team behind remake stuck around for rebirth and the overall idea for this Trilogy has been set for some time there wasn't pre-production Purgatory there was a team of developers passionate about a vision that willingly stuck around to realize it and the year post remakes launch was spent on uv's expansion built for integrate Final Fantasy 7 rebirth was developed in 3 years the franchise's highest scoring entry in over a decade containing well over 100 hours of meaningful content was developed in 3 years if the video game IND ever needed to pay attention to something it's how this was accomplished it's not only puzzling that it happened but it shines a spotlight on the ever increasing sustainability and developer retention issue plaguing many studios around the world so many games chase visual Trends to the ends of the Earth when in turn other parts of the project take hits and in exchange they gain no extra praise than they would have because their clock looked perfect this is many open world games the exception to the rule does still exist Games should often be judged in the environments they were made in and the expectations that have long been set by whomever is delivering the experience Final Fantasy has not been long known for this level of attention to detail their focus the last three generations has been on deep gameplay systems unique personalities and overall character and environment Fidelity however where Final Fantasy is not affected as a result of ignoring certain textures other Studios should Naughty Dogs since they began their singleplayer narrative driven Odyssey have designed their games at a scale where not a single stone is left unturned this is the identity that they have built their Studio on when you play a naughty dog game you expect nothing less than the most hyper attention to detail in how your character interacts with the world around them systems are in place you would have no idea of greatly enhancing your immersion in the background animations exist for situations you will probably never find yourself in every way you choose to experience the game is accounted for it's a AAA skill set they might as well have a trademark for Final Fantasy is not this nor should it ever be these two Studios have quality bars that are the complete antithesis of each other and they can still end up on the same part of the scale when Judgment day arrives most of the games that have achieved a 90 and above score in the last decade are vastly different experiences however many fall under under two different categories there are your photo realistic games with a huge focus on making sure simulation is taking place in every corner and then the ones that ignore this entirely to make something otherworldly both can reach the same Heights ignoring what made the other reach its score Final Fantasy 7 rebirth is today's best example of a game that understands exactly what its audience needs from The Experience they locked in on what made the game stand out and maximized their efforts there the race to the most photorealistic open world game is one that continues to sacrifice content quality for momentary praise visuals are important but not every clock needs its Shining Moment rebirth shows you can still have the Best of Both Worlds Final Fantasy 7 rebirth is a rare occurrence in which a video game tries to do a little bit of absolutely everything and almost never misses and its Concepts coming to fruition it is the everything everywhere all at once of video games it has incredible visuals franchise best combat and Larger than Life characters that mean the world to so many people

Channel: Repaduski

Views: 71,134

Keywords: final fantasy 7, final fantasy 7 rebirth, final fantasy 7 remake, final fantasy open world, final fantasy 7 open world, final fantasy 7 rebirth open world, final fantasy 7 rebirth gameplay, open world ps5

Id: lYR5jbBUSF8

Length: 8min 49sec (529 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 25 2024