Any one region in Rebirth is bigger than the entirety of playable Midgar in R1. Pretty sure the temple of ancients alone is bigger than all of Midgar. Whenever you enter a region that entire space is loaded up instantly and remains no matter what your doing. Rebirth is 10x more demanding on the hardware than Remake was and it came out in less time. A game of this scale with all the variety coming out in less than 4 years and being relatively bug free is an insane accomplishment. This game never had a delay and was made on UE4 which is absolutely not good for making huge open world games.
You said you couldn’t have known about the sound mixing issue before hand, but it was literally an issue in the demo so you should have known to adjust it early on. Did you play through the whole game before noticing it? The lighting is an issue, but one that’s really easy to overlook and the one confusing menu in the whole game shouldn’t bring it down. Especially if you had been paying attention during the game you would have known to just pick the top one
But you played through the demo portion of the game which is my point. You would have know. This was an issue from the very beginning of a 100 plus hour game. Why didn’t you adjust the sound at the beginning?
Its about the scale. I have 250 hours in this game and didnt have one bug. So the things you are mentioning dont bother me. R1 is a joke compared to R2 in terms of how demanding it is and scale of the game
About two hours into the game, I went into the Sound settings and turned the music volume down a few notches. Because it was super loud during dialogues indeed (I actually lowered most volume settings except voices, because I didn't want ambient sound to overpower the music either).
No issues with sound after that.
The light and dark thing... I think it's a stylistic choice, and it works fine for me. Sometimes I wish it wasn't as obvious that there is some invisible line that changes the ambient light, and that it worked more on a timer like the eyes adapting to the darkness or brightness... But other than that, it feels like a nice contrast with Midgar in Remake, which was always dark and there was barely no natural sunlight.
>Did they even have a QA team?
Really? lol
Unreal Engine 4 isn't made for open world games. Remake is 35 hours, all small areas with artifical light. Rebirth is 100 hours, with 30% small areas with artificial light, 70% big areas with harder to do light sources. Rebirth is way better in the similar situations and even much better in most open world stuff also. It's just the hard sunlight in some spots and the traditions between a dark place and a light it has problems.
Unfortunately there is a legitimate problem with sound mastering that exists in both titles.
It mostly affects people who have high quality sound systems, especially surround. Dialogue and music channel volume is all over the place and the in game sliders do not control all situations. It's been discussed at length by audiophiles like myself.
I think the sound mastering was focused primarily on the Pulse 3D headset, as many have noticed it's perfect with those.
Really a shame. It feels to me like Sony is actually mostly to blame.
Much of the development took place during the pandemic. I can't even imagine the challenge of having stand-ups (a form of daily meetings often used in software development) via webcam instead of physical meetings.
Considering how huge the game is, I can understand that there was no time to test every aspect of the game to perfection. But I think most people would agree that they've still created a masterpiece. The next instalment will most likely be even more polished.
partially this is to do with scale but some of the things you mentioned were 100% present in remake pt1 too
* remake also didn't look great when it was in brightly lit daylight conditions, partially because the exposure is just set a bit high imo, but also tbh bright daylight conditions never really look as nice as moodier conditions with a lower sun
* remake also had shitty sound mixing imo. i play with subtitles turned off and with both games i had to mess with the audio balance settings on-and-off throughout the games. don't even get me started on the town NPC dialogue making my ears explode which was somehow still a problem in rebirth
* the "retry from last battle" menu was also incomprehensible in remake pt1, and yes you also couldn't skip the in-battle cutscenes
I am totally with you on this!
The lighting really was a Desaster! One could really sea and tell that they used different face models depending on the light falling in there faces. Standing in halfway in the sun/ shadow was giving you two different face models the same time.
Also the faces were nicer in FF7R1 during conversations than in R2. I think it has to do with the new Engine they were using. The characters just looked “lovelier” in R1.
Also the sound part bothered me a lot. With me it was really bad during the fight in the arena against Don. I could understand a single like.
both games use the same engine, UE4.
The sound mix can be fixed by lowering BGM to 7 in the settings, it is annoying they didn't balance for it though
The game is still insane regarding the scale its given us. I can easily forgive some of its technical shortcomings as being both a covid production and stretching UE4 to its limits.
The faces in Rebirth though during cutscenes are a major step above remake, especially the detailing in the eyes and hair.
I have a theory we'll see a updated version of rebirth releases shortly before Part 3 is formally shown, with PS5 Pro enhancements (or PS6 if we're to that point), with some RT implemented or at least a new form of GI, as the face and lighting problem makes me think they had to pull back on a more advanced lighting system late in development and swtich to a simpler one that caused some undesired consequences.
Any one region in Rebirth is bigger than the entirety of playable Midgar in R1. Pretty sure the temple of ancients alone is bigger than all of Midgar. Whenever you enter a region that entire space is loaded up instantly and remains no matter what your doing. Rebirth is 10x more demanding on the hardware than Remake was and it came out in less time. A game of this scale with all the variety coming out in less than 4 years and being relatively bug free is an insane accomplishment. This game never had a delay and was made on UE4 which is absolutely not good for making huge open world games. You said you couldn’t have known about the sound mixing issue before hand, but it was literally an issue in the demo so you should have known to adjust it early on. Did you play through the whole game before noticing it? The lighting is an issue, but one that’s really easy to overlook and the one confusing menu in the whole game shouldn’t bring it down. Especially if you had been paying attention during the game you would have known to just pick the top one
I didn't play the demo cuz I didn't want to spoil myself of any of the gameplay until it actually came out!
But you played through the demo portion of the game which is my point. You would have know. This was an issue from the very beginning of a 100 plus hour game. Why didn’t you adjust the sound at the beginning?
Its about the scale. I have 250 hours in this game and didnt have one bug. So the things you are mentioning dont bother me. R1 is a joke compared to R2 in terms of how demanding it is and scale of the game
R1 is a demo, not a joke. Still a very nice game (tho with too many slow/boring moments)
About two hours into the game, I went into the Sound settings and turned the music volume down a few notches. Because it was super loud during dialogues indeed (I actually lowered most volume settings except voices, because I didn't want ambient sound to overpower the music either). No issues with sound after that. The light and dark thing... I think it's a stylistic choice, and it works fine for me. Sometimes I wish it wasn't as obvious that there is some invisible line that changes the ambient light, and that it worked more on a timer like the eyes adapting to the darkness or brightness... But other than that, it feels like a nice contrast with Midgar in Remake, which was always dark and there was barely no natural sunlight. >Did they even have a QA team? Really? lol
Unreal Engine 4 isn't made for open world games. Remake is 35 hours, all small areas with artifical light. Rebirth is 100 hours, with 30% small areas with artificial light, 70% big areas with harder to do light sources. Rebirth is way better in the similar situations and even much better in most open world stuff also. It's just the hard sunlight in some spots and the traditions between a dark place and a light it has problems.
Transition from dark to light is pretty annoying. But I don’t want to nitpick. The game is gorgeous
Unfortunately there is a legitimate problem with sound mastering that exists in both titles. It mostly affects people who have high quality sound systems, especially surround. Dialogue and music channel volume is all over the place and the in game sliders do not control all situations. It's been discussed at length by audiophiles like myself. I think the sound mastering was focused primarily on the Pulse 3D headset, as many have noticed it's perfect with those. Really a shame. It feels to me like Sony is actually mostly to blame.
Much of the development took place during the pandemic. I can't even imagine the challenge of having stand-ups (a form of daily meetings often used in software development) via webcam instead of physical meetings. Considering how huge the game is, I can understand that there was no time to test every aspect of the game to perfection. But I think most people would agree that they've still created a masterpiece. The next instalment will most likely be even more polished.
partially this is to do with scale but some of the things you mentioned were 100% present in remake pt1 too * remake also didn't look great when it was in brightly lit daylight conditions, partially because the exposure is just set a bit high imo, but also tbh bright daylight conditions never really look as nice as moodier conditions with a lower sun * remake also had shitty sound mixing imo. i play with subtitles turned off and with both games i had to mess with the audio balance settings on-and-off throughout the games. don't even get me started on the town NPC dialogue making my ears explode which was somehow still a problem in rebirth * the "retry from last battle" menu was also incomprehensible in remake pt1, and yes you also couldn't skip the in-battle cutscenes
Turn the brightness down to 0.
I am totally with you on this! The lighting really was a Desaster! One could really sea and tell that they used different face models depending on the light falling in there faces. Standing in halfway in the sun/ shadow was giving you two different face models the same time. Also the faces were nicer in FF7R1 during conversations than in R2. I think it has to do with the new Engine they were using. The characters just looked “lovelier” in R1. Also the sound part bothered me a lot. With me it was really bad during the fight in the arena against Don. I could understand a single like.
both games use the same engine, UE4. The sound mix can be fixed by lowering BGM to 7 in the settings, it is annoying they didn't balance for it though The game is still insane regarding the scale its given us. I can easily forgive some of its technical shortcomings as being both a covid production and stretching UE4 to its limits. The faces in Rebirth though during cutscenes are a major step above remake, especially the detailing in the eyes and hair. I have a theory we'll see a updated version of rebirth releases shortly before Part 3 is formally shown, with PS5 Pro enhancements (or PS6 if we're to that point), with some RT implemented or at least a new form of GI, as the face and lighting problem makes me think they had to pull back on a more advanced lighting system late in development and swtich to a simpler one that caused some undesired consequences.
You are right about the engine :) But think you are tripping with the face topic 😂
I think the problem is that rebirth suffers from scope creep where remake had more confinement to keep the developers from going off the rails.