Square Enix has shown the visual upgrades for Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth in a recent post on the PlayStation Blog. The main focus is on polygon count, which measures the complexity of the graphics based on the squares (movies) and triangles (games) used. The post explains that the number of polygons used in character models, creatures, weapons, and environments has been greatly increased compared to the original game from 1997 and doubled from the Remake.
Lead character artist Dai Suzuki explained the improvements made to the Final Fantasy 7 series character models. Cloud Strife, the main character, serves as an example. In the original game, Cloud’s character model had about 900 polygons. In Final Fantasy 7 Remake, this number increased to about 110,000, allowing for a much more detailed representation. In Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, this number has almost doubled to an estimated 220,000 polygons, resulting in even finer details and more realistic character portrayals.
“Polygons are essential not only in depicting a character’s physical appearance, but also in expressing their inner personality. When expressing emotions through facial animation, facial distortion is greatly influenced by the total number of polygons. The characters in the original version had relatively expressionless faces, but in Final Fantasy VII Remake and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, their facial expressions allow us to convey the emotions of the characters much more powerfully.”
Dai Suzuki
In the upcoming Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, there are significant improvements to the main characters and the creatures. For example, Red XIII and Cait Sith, known for their distinctive fur, have seen a notable enhancement. In the original game, their models comprised approximately 900 polygons each. However, in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, Red XIII now boasts an impressive polygon count of around 120,000, resulting in much more detailed fur rendering. Similarly, Cait Sith’s polygon count has also increased to around 100,000. Furthermore, the accompanying Moogle has received a substantial upgrade, with an estimated 230,000 polygons in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth.
Even simple things like weapons are getting more detailed. Cloud’s Buster Sword was made of 50-100 polygons in the original game. In Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, it’s made of about 8,000 polygons. This means it can have more detailed textures on the blade and handle.
The graphics update applies to characters and weapons. Environments and enemies are also significantly increased in detail. For instance, the Midgardsormr serpent boss, previously made up of about 3,000 polygons, now consists of an impressive 260,000 polygons in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. As a result, it looks much more intimidating, with features like individual spikes now being accurately modeled.
We all know it takes a higher-end machine to run games with characters with higher polygon count. That’s true for real-time graphics like you’d see while playing a game. Back in the day, studios would show pre-rendered scenes that only needed file size on a disc. Every cutscene is the same as the graphics because they have the hardware to use the quality of a cutscene.
Movie quality is still better because they use squares instead of triangles, and movies are pre-rendered. This means that in the future, the movie-quality CGI we see will likely be video game quality. Sounds outlandish now, but look at Star Wars Episode II: The Clone Wars—that used to be out of this world.
The blog post also mentioned the size of environments, pointing out that the battleship Relnikha, ridden by Scarlett, has the highest number of shapes in the game, estimated at 2.3 million. This is because the ship’s insides must be fully shown in scenes. The PlayStation Blog article ends by asking if upcoming hardware advances will enable games to run models with even higher polygon counts (exceeding 10 million) in real time. Obviously, things will only get better, but getting that much better from one game to another is astounding.
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