It seems like Square's finally consistently taking the PC ports of Final Fantasy seriously

pcgamer.com:

There may be no better use case for the reaction guys than the 2015 E3 announcement of Final Fantasy 7 Remake—screams, meltdowns, tears of joy—and the 2021 release of the stuttery PC version of that same game: screams, meltdowns, tears of bitter disappointment. It was a shamefully barebones release of what should have been a huge game for Square Enix, made even harder to swallow by its 20-month delay after the console release and exclusivity on the Epic Games Store.

It's no wonder that last year Square Enix's CEO said the company planned to refocus on multiplatform releases with a particular eye towards «initiatives designed to win over PC users.» Between majorly delayed releases and other not-a-bang-but-a-whimper launches like Kingdom Hearts collection limping onto Steam after three years, Square Enix has consistently fumbled the bag on PC with the games it should have the easiest time selling.

But hey: things are finally looking up. The video above highlighting the PC features in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, out in just a few weeks, reads like an apology tour for all the problems with Remake.

It starts off with some basics we'd expect from a game running on higher-end hardware than the consoles offer, vaguely touting «improved lighting» and «enhanced visuals» which I assume means either higher-resolution textures or perhaps an increased draw distance; the console version particularly had image quality issues with its «performance» mode that weren't cleaned up until the PS5 Pro came around.

After those basics, the Rebirth PC trailer starts hitting on the features we really expect to see in high-end games: DLSS upscaling, granular graphics options in addition to presets, and rebindable mouse/keyboard controls. I'll give FF7 Remake credit for getting that last one right when many Japanese games still don't, but including the keyboard controls in the trailer—and also being able to crank up the number of NPCs rendered on-screen at once—shows Square Enix is serious about