Final Fantasy VII Rebirth finally landed on PC less than a month ago. While PC gamers had to wait nearly a year since the original PlayStation 5 launch to play it, Square Enix made it worthwhile by including several graphics improvements, such as enhanced lighting and character models over the console version.
However, even this supposedly definitive version of the beloved game (which just won the Best RPG of 2024 prize at our annual Wccftech Awards) still had visual shortcomings. More specifically, many textures were relatively low resolution for today's standards.
Thankfully, one modder quickly took it upon themselves to improve this graphical aspect of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. Romi969 released 4K upscaled texture packs for some of the main characters, including Cloud, Tifa, Aerith, Barret, and Yuffie, just a week after the PC launch.
A few days later, the modder also published Natural Fantasy, a mod that greatly improves environmental textures through upscaling. And yesterday, they have completed the circle with the release of the Upscaled Interiors mod. As you can easily guess by the name, this one is focused on improving around 98% of the interiors textures. According to Romi969, around 14K textures have had their resolution doubled in size through AI upscaling.
They also claimed that there is practically no noticeable performance impact, which makes it all the more puzzling why Square Enix did not do this themselves, especially since there are so many great upscaling models nowadays.
Anyway, Square Enix is now fully dedicated to the sequel of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, the third installment in the FFVII Remake trilogy. So far, we've learned that the next title might include increased combat freedom and some sort of twist to make it a fresh, exciting experience. Meanwhile, the story and concept have been completed, and the developers have committed to the map being fully explorable with the airship.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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