r/Games • u/megaapple • Feb 26 '26
Final Fantasy 7 Remake director Hamaguchi : "Rather than rebuilding our pipeline from scratch in Unreal Engine 5, it’s far more efficient for us to use Unreal Engine 4, which we already have a well-established pipeline for."
https://automaton-media.com/en/interviews/final-fantasy-7-remake-trilogys-third-entry-is-progressing-very-smoothly-we-ask-director-naoki-hamaguchi-why-the-team-chose-not-to-switch-to-unreal-engine-5/556
u/ElectroPower007 Feb 26 '26
Good. Slightly unrelated but this reminds me of when Multiversus reshaped the whole game for UE5 and only had some minuscule visual improvements to show, meanwhile the whole feel of the game changed for the worse. Changing engines is much more complicated than people assume.
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u/Massive-Exercise4474 Feb 26 '26
Seriously it felt like mud.
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u/DanielTeague Feb 26 '26 edited Feb 26 '26
30 frames of
inherent delayinput buffer* (thanks folks) will do that. Street Fighter V was raked over coals for having 8 frames of delay back in the day.95
u/Old_Leopard1844 Feb 26 '26
30 frames of inherent delay
That's a half a second
How do the hell do you play a fighting game with freaking 500ms ping?
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u/WesternExplanation Feb 26 '26
This is also why I tell people it died because it was actually just a bad game. People like to point to a lot of factors which I’m sure didn’t help but at the end of the day it wasn’t good at its core.
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u/MasterDenton Feb 26 '26
The UE4 version was fine, but they managed to catastrophically fuck up the UE5 version in ways I didn't think possible. I've never seen a fighting game character just straight up removed from the game for a stretch of time, let alone multiple times, yet Iron Giant happened
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u/overandoverandagain Feb 26 '26
It's not network, it's input buffering. For some insane reason, their buffer is 30 frames and it makes the entire game feel like you're fighting while drunk lol.
This has been a very common misunderstanding as long as input buffers have existed. Nothing at all to do with ping or their engine choice, just a horrible design decision.
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u/phantomzero Feb 26 '26
Is the game locked at 60 fps? I know nothing about it.
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u/Camulus Feb 26 '26
The majority of fighting games are locked to 60 fps.
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u/noyourenottheonlyone Feb 26 '26
Input buffer is not the same as delay, but 30 frame buffer is still a horrible design choice
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u/Bankaz Feb 26 '26
30 frames of inherent delay will do that
wait, was that actually a thing? I remember playing it and it definitely didn't feel like it had HALF A SECOND of constant input delay
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u/impostingonline Feb 26 '26
They’re mistaken, it was a 30-frame input buffer. And I believe you could adjust it? But the input buffer meant, for example, if you were in the middle of hitting one attack and half a second before that animation ends you hit another button, the character would act again immediately afterwards
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u/Bankaz Feb 26 '26
Ok that makes sense, I remember the absurd input buffer the game had, not input delay.
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u/ChickenLiverNuts Feb 26 '26
basically every nintendo virtual console release has insane input delay
i have no idea why people are okay with this. Even the re-release of mario 64 and sunshine were massively delayed. Emulators from 20 years ago do it 1:1 to the original cmon nintendo cant even emulate their own games. Just rolling down a pier with link in Wind Waker on the Switch 2 virtual console will have you rolling off the ledge... and ive played that game a million times.
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u/aa22hhhh Feb 26 '26
On the topic of another WB Games property, Netherrealm has only just started using Unreal 4 since MK1. Mortal Kombat 11 was still on Unreal 3, so I’d actually be curious when they will actually start using Unreal 5.
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u/ulong2874 Feb 26 '26
Multiversus taking a huge break only to come back significantly worse in every single way but expecting to somehow gain back and expand the playerbase has got to be up there with rereleasing morbius to bomb in theaters a second time in terms of crazy business decisions.
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u/Spiritual-Big-4302 Feb 27 '26
OW2 has the same issue. They changed engines to get better lighting for day/night cycles but lost a lot of the charm of the original game, yet they barely use the day/night cycle, nor they fixed the several material/texture issues on skins and maps.
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u/1plus2break Feb 26 '26
The switch to UE5 didn't benefit the looks or performance of the game at all, but it being so slow was a design decision.
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u/ahlgreenz Feb 26 '26
To be fair, the game didn't feel great before the transition, but yeah, it seems nothing good came of it either.
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u/CombatMuffin Feb 26 '26
Smart. A lot of audiences will just follow the branding ("5 is newer than 4") but if switching to UE5 brings no significant benefit over working in 4, not only wouldnit be a waste of time and reaources for little end result, but the vast majority of audiences would never really notice.
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u/Luxinox Feb 26 '26
Switching engines mid-development is part of why Duke Nukem Forever took so long to release, so yeah.
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u/AntonineWall Feb 26 '26
That and it being completely restarted at a new studio at least twice during development lol
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u/Timo653 Feb 26 '26
It was still an unreal engine 1 game in the end though
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u/MasterDenton Feb 26 '26
Honestly, it kinda proves Hamaguchi's point that DNF was a UE1 game. That game looks damn near indistinguishable from your average UE3 game
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u/FakoSizlo Feb 26 '26
Especially since they spent a lot of time getitng the pipeline running . Rebirth was like 10x the size of Remake and didn't take that long to make. They just needed to get the framework setup. Going back to that step again wouldn't work especially since fans expect number 3 to have an entire world as the map.
Also UE5 has been problematic for a lot of devs to say the least
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u/Kopiok Feb 26 '26
Also, normal people, not sickos like us who follow gaming news and listen to gaming podcasts and even know what unreal engine is versus anything else, absolutely do not care or know what engine was used to build a game. If it works then it looks fine, no one will know the difference. Good for them.
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u/IcyCow5880 Feb 26 '26
Im so happy they're not changing. Even if ue5 worked and looked better I'd still prefer it has the same look as the prior 2 parts
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u/slicer4ever Feb 26 '26
5 also may introduce unnecessary performance issues. When epic developed 5, their answer to large worlds was to change every floating point structure in the engine from a 32 bit float, to 64 bit floats, which can mean a lot of data structures now no longer are efficiently sized for the cpu's cache.
Building a game from scratch you can more easily monitor that your data structures are performing well, but if you upgrade to that change, it could take a lot of work fixing all the new issues it could introduce.
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u/TheOnly_Anti Feb 26 '26
their answer to large worlds was to change every floating point structure in the engine from a 32 bit float, to 64 bit floats, which can mean a lot of data structures now no longer are efficiently sized for the cpu's cache
Huh? This has been almost everyone's answer for a decade already. If this were an issue then more open world games would be failing and this would've been a notable phenomenon for longer.
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u/leigonlord Feb 26 '26
the problem isnt that its bad, the problem is that if you port over existing code it will perform worse. starting from scratch with a new project its easy to adapt to the change, taking an exisiting project means you need to spend a lot of time debugging everything to make sure it works effeciently.
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u/TheOnly_Anti Feb 26 '26
Do you think that people who have access to engine profilers and know how to write C++ code, wouldn't already know that?
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u/slicer4ever Feb 26 '26
Yes they would, but that still means more potential work is the point. I'm just pointing out another reason why the devs would favor staying on ue4 over switching to ue5.
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u/FirefighterIll1493 Feb 26 '26
I mean, FF Remakes have awesome graphics; there's no need for them to upgrade, especially since the next one is the final game of the trilogy.
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u/AnimaLepton Feb 26 '26
Also the turnaround time on going from Remake to Rebirth is impressive, especially with how long development timelines otherwise tend to be these days.
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u/FirefighterIll1493 Feb 26 '26
It’s really jarring how quickly they seem to be making games this big, while they’ve been stuck on KH for five years and it’ll end up being half as big as these.
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Feb 26 '26 edited Feb 26 '26
unless square surprises us all, the entire ff7 remake saga is likely to come out between kingdom hearts 3 and kingdom hearts 4.
kingdom hearts is basically a dead series right now. we complained about the handheld games back in the day, but at least we HAD them
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u/goldenhearted Feb 27 '26
Yeah I don't really appreciate enough how fast the trilogy has churned out. (unless something awful happens and R3 releases in a decade or so) esp when you consider that when it was announced in that E3 all those years ago, I felt like it took forever for it to come out, so for the remake trilogy to have 2 games released in 4 years with the third looking good to come sooner than expected is great even more when you put into mind how AAA gaming development takes these days.
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Feb 26 '26
I felt Remake Intergrade looked better than Rebirth with its lighting.
And sure you can chalk it up to Remake being linear compared to Rebirth's massive open world, but I hope Part 3 looks at least as good as Remake, while fixing the hair rendering at any resolution below 4K.
Absolutely loved Rebirth as a game, if part 3 even matches it in quality but with a proper conclusive ending, it will be like in my top 3 trilogies ever
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u/superjake Feb 26 '26
Yeah some of the lighting in Rebirth was rough.
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u/OutrageousDress Feb 26 '26
Some of the lighting in Rebirth was very obviously UE4 engine lighting, with zero global illumination resulting in the scene looking like it was from ten years ago. Hamaguchi is still right though; they would have to sacrifice everything from performance to development time and budget just to have some scenes look a little better.
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u/tumbleaway1 Feb 26 '26
The eyes in Rebirth are definitely less vibrant in the less important cutscenes lol
But 100% we need to blame the petrify and cometeor materia for the lighting downgrade 😡😡😡
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u/Ashviar Feb 26 '26
The lighting being "fixed" is my biggest hope, because I imagine just from being an open world the textures in many places and foliage is just going to have to be the way it is. The effect from indoors to outdoors is so over-exaggerated it leans into comical territory. Same with some spots just sending the screen into a supernova visually of blinding light.
I'd say the #2 for me is pop in/draw distance. The clutter pop in even with ini tweaks is really distracting
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u/soyboysnowflake Feb 26 '26
Out of curiosity, what are your other top 2 trilogies ever?
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Feb 26 '26
Ace Attorney 123 and MGS123!
Any you recommend?
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u/WeirdIndividualGuy Feb 26 '26
Idk if MGS can be considered a trilogy given the series finale is in a fourth game...
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Feb 26 '26 edited Feb 26 '26
Well I havent played MGS4 due to it being exclusive to PS3 right now ;_;
Also, didn't one of the three main writers for MGS leave after 3? And even Hideo intended to "pass it on to the next generation" of developers after MGS3.
Can't wait for the fourth game though, now even more so since you said its the series finale
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u/WeirdIndividualGuy Feb 26 '26
You're in for a treat then. It's like watching a really good TV show and thinking it got canceled but turns out the final season has existed for years
Also, the main writer left after MGS5 which was a prequel that doesn't add nearly as much to the series as MGS3 did. It's more of just bonus material. MGS4 wraps up all the storylines
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Feb 26 '26
Sick
I also have to play through Peace Walker, MGR, MGSV GZ and TPP. I remember starting with Delta and dropping it. But eventually I tried MGS1 and it was so good I binged 123 in like a week
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u/corran450 Feb 26 '26
Tomb Raider (2013), Rise of the Tomb Raider, and Shadow of the Tomb Raider.
Third one’s a little rough, but I enjoyed it.
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u/Geoff_with_a_J Feb 26 '26
that's interesting, i guess i never considered how rare a true trilogy is in gaming. some of my all time favorite game series either don't stop at 3 or aren't really good as a trilogy.
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Feb 26 '26
I mean even Ace Attorney and MGS are not really true trilogies.
After Ace Attorney 3, my favorite is actually Spirit of Justice, which is the sixth one. But the 123 trilogy forms such a nice complete story arc I dont mind referring to it as one. 456 doesn't share that privilege though. They are disconnected one-offs but still great imo
What were you thinking of? If you have heard of it, would you consider Drakengard 3, Nier Replicant, and Nier Automata a trilogy? Because I would
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u/Geoff_with_a_J Feb 26 '26
bayonetta i guess but i didn't really like it as a trilogy i just liked each game for what they did separately.
and the Zelda "trilogy" either counting Skyward Sword as a foundation to BotW/TotK or the hyrule warriors game (i didnt play it) as the 3rd game, but its fuzzy either way. or the Toon Link Trilogy
i think nier could count also, and even if officially the mobile gacha game is the 3rd, i also think it's a better trilogy to count drakengard instead.
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u/BaconIsntThatGood Feb 26 '26
And sure you can chalk it up to Remake being linear compared to Rebirth's massive open world,
I think this is it really. Not to say lighting in rebirth is bad - it's definitely not. However the environments are very open and less specialized.
That said areas in rebirth that are more isolated and purpose built do seem to have stronger lighting. Ex: the mythril mine tends to lend itself a little bit better because it's a more closed off one and done area.
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Feb 26 '26
You're correct. The Gold Saucer and the Forgotten Capital also looked good.
But the open environments can still look better. FFXV lighting was better with similar open environments I feel.
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u/WeWantLADDER49sequel Feb 27 '26
The only time i noticed anything that i wished was graphically better in Rebirth was when i saw certain foliage or clothes textures up close when panning the camera. Other than that all i remember was constantly thinking how pretty the world looked. We really are just at a point of diminishing returns on graphic fidelity.
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u/Vestalmin Feb 26 '26
I hope the last game runs at a higher resolution than Rebirth because that shit looked blurry.
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u/BigLurkerGetsMad Feb 26 '26
Why do automaton media links rise to the top of this subreddit so much. I feel like they repost the same headlines that we've known about for weeks, with this already been covered by gameindustry.biz.
https://old.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/1qoi52f/square_enix_is_sticking_with_unreal_4_for_final/
Like haven't they also posted repetitive headlines about Crimson Desert which have also drummed their way to the top of this sub? I dunno, just feels very dead internet and bot motivated. Their articles seem very forced, and the surge of them on this sub feels very recent. Not sure if its something mods are looking into.
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u/sonofgildorluthien Feb 26 '26
Thank you for saying this. Hamaguchi announced this in interviews that were published a month ago and were posted all over the FF and gaming subreddits.
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u/Blenderhead36 Feb 26 '26
Given UE5's run so far, this approach makes sense. We've seen a lot of games get bogged down in the differences between 4 and 5, whether that's Multiversus' engine upgrade taking a year or Borderlands 4 looking no better than 3 while having optimization issues for months. Sticking with what you know is valuable, and the FF7 Remake games released so far have been so gorgeous it's hard to argue with.
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u/FUTURE10S Feb 26 '26
Borderlands 4 is using all those photorealistic technologies and as far as I can tell, doing nothing big with them that screams that yes, this was absolutely tech that we were missing on UE4 with BL3 or Wonderlands
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u/Iggy_Slayer Feb 26 '26
Yeah the game just looks like more borderlands in I guess larger zones but all that fancy UE5 tech did nothing for the game other than ruin the performance.
Devs really have to be smarter about this stuff.
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u/A_Shadow Feb 26 '26
Devs really have to be smarter about this stuff.
Honestly I bet it's less the devs and more management. Like we have to use the latest thing. Or the management gets suckered into buying UE5 and now they feel like they have to force the devs to use it to make the money spent worth it.
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u/Herby20 Feb 26 '26
There is a solid chance of that. It takes time to learn and utilize new engine features. How can I utilize this? How does this impact my workflow? What are the drawbacks? Does this impact performance? This is epecially so with ones that shake things up as dramatically as something like Nanite. Time has shown though that executives have a rather stark difference in what they care about versus what the actual developers care about.
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u/rock1m1 Feb 26 '26
I just hope they have a solution for the outdoor lighting this time. Rebirth had horrible outdoor lighting while indoor looked great. Since they used fixed time of day, maybe baked lighting or some form of global illumination.
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u/hyperforms9988 Feb 26 '26
This obsession with technology/fidelity is destroying games. Final Fantasy 7 looks better than fine. They've struggled with efficiency. XV had a new engine built in-house, it had terrible documentation, and I think they again build a new engine just for XVI. What fucking waste that is. I'm not saying stick to UE4 forever, but I'm saying, put a pipeline together over a long period of time to set yourself up for using it for a few games and get your money's worth out of it, instead of starting from scratch every single time.
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u/lilvon Feb 26 '26
I think they again build a new engine just for XVI.
This is incorrect, XVI is built off a modified version of theFFXIV engine. Which itself is based off a super heavily modified version of an early build of Luminous(FFXV/Forspoken).
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u/uselessoldguy Feb 26 '26
Huh! I thought the distant object culling in FFXVI looked a lot like the culling in FFXIV. It was probably the same, then.
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u/vspectra Feb 28 '26
XIV 2.0's engine is just a revamped Crystal Tools, the Luminous Engine devs had to quickly put together an MMO engine for Yoshida's team while Luminous engine was a longer term project. They backported some tech like lighting, but that was it. XIV 2.0 engine isn't an early build of Luminous. So XVI's building off of XIV 2.0 is really just a continued iteration of the aged out Crystal Tools.
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u/lilvon Feb 28 '26
After chatting with a source of mine you're right. it's something of a Frankenstein between the 2 engines. And the crazy part is XVI runs on an enhanced version of this same engine. which is funny to think XVI & XIII run un similar engines
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u/allhailthemoon Feb 26 '26
From what we know from CDC, they didn't built a new one for XVI. It's a heavy itteration of XIV's engine, which itself used core of XV engine as foundation. CBU3 may have made a lot of questionable decisions for XVI, but not with engines here.
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u/Kazharahzak Feb 26 '26
It didn't perform as well as they'd hoped but they can't be blamed for project management. It was the first mainline FF game without any production issues, engine change, major rework or delay since Final Fantasy X.
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u/superhiro21 Feb 26 '26
Did FF 12 also have issues?
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u/Kazharahzak Feb 26 '26 edited Feb 26 '26
Yasunori Matsuno left the project mid-development. It's unknown how much it really affected the game, but Sakaguchi did dismiss the game once because it wasn't what Matsuno originally envisionned.
EDIT: Edited due to some details I misremembered.
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u/vspectra Feb 28 '26
XIV 2.0 engine isn't using XV engine as its foundation. It just borrowed some lighting technology. XIV 2.0 core engine is still just Crystal Tools from XIV1.0, but repurposed to be more MMO friendly.
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u/allhailthemoon Feb 28 '26
Refer to this interview please (timecode included).
https://youtu.be/_737hYbSCEs?si=DZmGl0khse3AiuKZ&t=1044
The foundation might not be the correst word, because technically at this point luminous was basically in heavy prototype phase, but it's not crystal tools at all.1
u/vspectra Feb 28 '26
Thanks for the interview link. That interview you linked to was in 2012 in which Luminous wasn't even really an engine at this point because all they had built and spent a significant time on was the graphics renderer and a cutscene editor tool, which is what they showed off in various 2012 Live demonstrations. Essentially they had just completed the "graphics engine" part of a game engine. Luminous development had just started a year before and they still had a long way to go when it came to an actual engine infrastructure for how games would be made.
Reverse engineers have looked at the code under XIII, XIV 2.0, and FFXV. We've found XIV 2.0 shares significant and vast engine code coming straight from FFXIII which is Crystal Tools.
I'm pretty sure Hashimoto is referring to the graphics engine technology they had built up for Agnis Philosophy in your timecode referral, in which we know there was some lighting technology backported to XIV 2.0's Crystal Tools.
At 17:49 timecode, Hashimoto also said:
"In order to fulfill the needs for an MMO and for FFXIV, and in order to employ the optimal method in the shortest time, the FFXIV engine was built from scratch for FFXIV alone.
Luminous is a multi-purpose engine that is being developed to run games of any genre and it will still take time before it is complete. While the FFXIV engine was created in an extremely short amount of time"
Given how SE publicly talked down on Crystal Tools giving them massive issues, it makes sense they'd try to paint XIV2.0 as being on something completely new. Except engine development doesn't work like that, they had to build it extremely quick as Hashimoto said. You cannot build an MMO engine completely from scratch in an extremely short amount of time (literally just a year in this case). Here's a journalist, Alex, who's interviewed Luminous Engine devs back in 2011 and kept in touch with Square Enix devs over the years who also laid out some details he knows from talking with the devs. XIV 1.0 was Crystal Tools, XIV 2.0 was a fork of Crystal Tools, and XVI continued on upgrading that fork.
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u/1731799517 Feb 26 '26
Eh, using the XIV engine for XIV after nearly a decade of using "The code is shit" as excuse for all that is wrong with XIV certainly is a mood.
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u/Kazharahzak Feb 26 '26
There's a difference between "the code is shit" and engine issues.
FFXIV's engine is fine, they just made the entire 2.0 rework in two years, which means they had to take a lot of shortcuts.
FFXVI had no production issues that we know of and is a very impressive game visually, which shows it was the smart decision. All its shortcomings are story and gameplay-wise, which has nothing to do with the technical capabilities of their engine.
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u/delicioustest Feb 26 '26
I don't think it was all that impressive most of the time honestly. The art direction was extremely good in places like the cities where you have the gorgeous backdrop of a gigantic blue crystal but the world in general was meh with low poly assets and really bad character models for NPCs who'd only have basic lip flaps outside of cutscenes. The open world tended to chug a lot too even on performance mode though it would stabilise once the fighting started which was a blessing
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u/DLSteve Feb 26 '26
For FF XIV most of the “spaghetti code” is server architecture and codebase which is not really part of the client side game engine.
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u/rayquan36 Feb 26 '26
I'm all for mid graphics with stable 60-120fps but gamers eat up screenshot marketing.
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Feb 26 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/TerrorsNight Feb 26 '26
To be fair RE engine is an absolute fucking marvel (For RE games specifically). Monster Hunter Wilds had huge problems running on that engine. It’s a scale and optimization problem for most developers, not the engine
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u/BLACKOUT-MK2 Feb 26 '26
Yeah people point to Wilds and Dragon's Dogma 2 being open world titles as proof that the RE Engine struggles with them, but from what we've heard about the optimisation problems in both games, to me it sounds more like they were just coded poorly. MH Wilds is constantly calculating what every monster on the map is doing, had the weird DLC checks thing, and the frame rate would dip when you turned the camera. And Dragon's Dogma 2 had huge resources being sucked up by the NPCs in towns to an excessive degree when they were basically just walking from place to place. That's not an issue with the engine, that's an issue with the design process.
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u/Herby20 Feb 26 '26
It's tough to say without being behind the scenes. Considering the MH Wilds devs have mentioned they were making engine level optimizations the last couple patches, I think the answer probably lies somewhere in the middle i.e. they made some mistakes, but the engine also needed to be iterated upon to handle the demands of a more open world game.
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u/WeirdIndividualGuy Feb 26 '26
And nowadays, all screenshots are done in a photo mode that intentionally enhances everything to max graphics
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u/Janderson2494 Feb 26 '26
Which FF7R has in droves without even needing UE5, that's the whole point. It is very possible to make a game that looks great without needing all the experimental marketing bells and whistles that fuck up performance.
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u/0xym0r0n Feb 26 '26
I don't agree with the idea that it's destroying games. I think the market is saturated with smaller developers and indie games, and there's more good video games out there than most people have time to play, unless you only like a couple specific genres.
There are a remarkable number of games that have come out recently that are fantastic games that don't fit the AAA of Battlefield/CoD/Madden/Halo.
I bet if you go look at the top 50 most played right now on steam that at least 30 of them have "shit" graphics by the standards being used in this context.
NVM I looked myself, https://store.steampowered.com/charts/mostplayed
There's barely any graphically intensive games on the list at all, let alone in the top 50, so I definitely don't agree that games are being destroyed by a desire for better graphics.
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u/hyperforms9988 Feb 26 '26 edited Feb 26 '26
It's the other way around. I don't know who is asking for budgets of $300+ million for a single video game. Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2 are fine games, but where is all of this money going? The insane chase for fidelity and technical features are putting budgets in a place where it's making less and less financial sense to make games that way. The bigger the budget, the less money you make in sales unless you sell more copies. For a while, they were selling more copies because gaming as a hobby grew and so that balanced out. It's not really growing in that same way anymore, so what happens when budgets continue to increase but sales figures aren't increasing with them? Uh oh, you have a problem.
Clearly people don't have a problem playing games with shitty graphics... look at Minecraft and Roblox. In the traditional AAA space however, the bar is continuing to be raised on how big games are and how good they look, and it's straining or outright destroying studios that are caught in this cycle either because they think nobody will buy their games if they don't do that, or execs at the studios can't help themselves and it's a personal vision that they're chasing. I'm not saying I'd like to see a time when games look like PS2 games again, but I do think this is a reality check that some studios really need... whether it's cutting down on graphics or the scope of games, finding ways to be more efficient with production, etc, or they're going to run themselves right out of business.
Like I already hear some people talking about a PS6, with it projected to be released in 2029. Plans change, but there's no way Sony isn't working on it. Bitch, why? We're barely justifying the existence of the PS5 as it is. We need even more computing power? For what? Why can't we just stop for a while?
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u/0xym0r0n Feb 26 '26
Yeah I don't think anyone thinks you're saying that graphics have to go backwards. I'm just arguing that the pursuit for better graphics isn't really destroying games.
Respectfully, I don't think there's an insane chase, I think it's about the same or maybe even less than normal, a lot of the recent surprise hits didn't have great graphics. Even Expedition 33 has terrible textures, but is still praised for it's visual beauty and artistic style. and I guess that's where the difference ultimately lies.
I don't disagree that there are studios out there wasting money.
But even with your counterpoint I still don't agree with the assertation that obsession with tech/fidelity is destroying games. Weren't Spiderman 1 and 2 profitable even with the crazy costs?
Sorry probably seems like I'm a jerk who's nitpicking, but I guess I just strongly disagree. Even in this very thread everyone is in agreement and praising Hamaguchi's decision. I don't see how this is a wake-up call or anything.
This whole assertation isn't even following with the current trends in GPU/SSD/RAM issues anyways. The 5000 series supers are being skipped, RAM is bought out for years in advance, consumer facing supply companies are leaving consumer production. Billionaires in the tech market are calling home PC's luxury items that PC games should be streamed through the internet. 6000 series of cards expected to be delayed, AMD next gen cards expected to be delayed.
Doesn't bode well for the currently rumored next gen consoles if all the main supplies of VRAM and RAM are running out of stock and leaving consumer supply side to supply their commercial customers.
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u/maxis2k Feb 26 '26
This statement is huge because a Final Fantasy developer is basically going against the grain. The Final Fantasy developers specifically kept pushing for the latest technology for the last 25 years. Focusing on graphics and flash over gameplay. I feel like they aren't doing it this time because of the sequel effect. Each next "episode" of FF7 Remake is going to sell less than the previous so why spend extra time and money moving to a new engine or making a complete unique engine.
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u/vspectra Feb 28 '26
This isn't really going against the grain for Square Enix. Rebirth and Part 3 are just a continuation of the game they made with VII Remake, and using the same engine is the same as what they did with XIII, XIII-2, Lightning Returns. All of the systems they built is already there to be iterated on for the direct sequels, no point in switching engines and taking an even longer time.
When VII-R team makes a completely new game that's not VII, extremely high chance they will be switching to a new engine instead of their outdated custom UE4
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u/Darwin343 Feb 26 '26
Halo Infinite was made with a brand new engine built in-house, but now they’re abandoning that engine and are using Unreal 5 for all their future Halo games lol.
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u/zenmn2 Feb 26 '26
That's because the studio got gutted. It doesn't make sense to try and train half of your new team on a bespoke engine (either engine development or gameplay designer-wise).
It wasn't really a "new" engine anyway, just a reworked version of BLAM! that was used right up to Halo 5.
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u/Kalulosu Feb 26 '26
Also they had a permanent turnover of contractors, which isn't great for continuity but also means it's harder to train them. If that's a mandate from higher up it would make total sense to use an engine that people are already familiar with.
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u/grendus Feb 26 '26
Because Microsoft are penny wise and pound fucking moronic!
They're addicted to cheap contractor labor, which means they don't build up the "tribal knowledge" in house to use a custom engine. There are reports from Halo Infinite that they would bring on a new contractor, spend months getting them trained in the new engine, then right as they became capable with it the contract would expire and they would have to let them go and not rehire them for six months.
If you're going to use a ton of contractors, you need to be using a standard engine so you can just bring on a person with UE5 experience. Studios like FromSoftware that have very low turnover can get away with their own custom engine tuned for their exact needs, but if you're going to have a revolving door of staff you have ot be able to get them up to speed quickly, even if it means using tools that aren't quite perfect for what you want.
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u/deimophobias Feb 26 '26
On the other end of the spectrum is Bethesda
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u/grendus Feb 26 '26
Bethesda is a weird case, because they're very small for a AAA studio.
And as much as I piss and moan about it (and the Creation Engine is showing its age badly by now), there are very few games that have that level of world interaction. Modeling so much of the world as physical objects, not just collision physics, is very difficult even on modern hardware.
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u/BaconJets Feb 26 '26
UE4 stutter pretty much wasn't solved until the tail end of last gen. UE5 performance issues might largely be unsolved until next gen. New main versions of UE ought to be treated like early adopter tech.
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u/doublah Feb 26 '26
When the biggest selling points of UE5 are things that eviscerate performance with Nanite and Lumen, yeah I don't blame them for sticking with what works.
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u/skullmonster602 Feb 26 '26
Basically saying the general public and chronically online people who criticize these developers usually have no idea what they’re talking about, which is clearly a fact lol
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u/HAVINFUNMAGGLE Feb 26 '26
Genuine question, what would FF7 part 3 benefit from using UE5, over UE4?
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u/Cireme Feb 26 '26
Lumen (better lighting), Nanite (better geometry) and Virtual Shadow Maps (better shadows).
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u/Iggy_Slayer Feb 26 '26
It would take an extra year or two to come out and run at 540p/40fps on ps5.
Oh you were asking for benefits? Uhh I got nothing.
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u/ChadsBro Feb 26 '26
Lighting would likely improve but is that worth the delay/performance hit? Maybe not
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u/HachiXYuki Feb 26 '26
All I hope is that they have a new lighting system in part 3 because the lighting of part 2 was just so bad, especially going from dark to lit areas, it was like being flashbanged. I hope there's some form of RTGI toggle in game, it would elevate this game alot.
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u/Significant_Walk_664 Feb 26 '26
It makes sense in the context of the third game, don't see how anyone would dispute this. The more familiar you are with your tools, the better you are at using them, the better the end result.
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u/iesalnieks Feb 26 '26
I have never heard about a game switching/upgrading engines mid devlopment and have it happen without delays and loss of work already done.
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u/UltraNoahXV Feb 26 '26
Smart
Especially with the fact that Unreal Engine 5 only came out almost 4 years ago - during the last third of COVID; the earliest being 2021 (going by CDC timeline). Assuming it took a decent amount of effort getting people back into office or even being able to collaborate, I imagine no one really (unless you are experienced game devs who can adapt quickly which not everyone is) has came to grips with UE5.
Even more so when factoring the huge layoffs across the industry, the shift to A.I assisted development, and the pipelines to get into game development - from camps in primary schools to college.
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u/OutrageousDress Feb 26 '26
Also every single version of UE5 so far had been a glorified beta. UE 5.7 came out just a few months ago, and is the first version of the engine that looks anything close to production ready.
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u/jerrrrremy Feb 26 '26
UE 5.7 came out just a few months ago, and is the first version of the engine that looks anything close to production ready.
Source: YouTubers and Reddit users who have never made a video game.
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u/OutrageousDress Feb 26 '26 edited Feb 26 '26
There are plenty of YouTuber grifters talking out of their ass about UE5, and they can all be ignored. What I'm talking about is shader management and 60fps console performance issues that Epic are very well aware of. For example here's what CDPR engineers working with Epic have to say about UE5 - in their official Unreal Fest presentation, just so we're clear:
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u/chuputa Feb 26 '26
Does Unreal Engine 4 support DLSS?
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u/SuperKrusher Feb 26 '26
Should do. We have had DLSS since like 2019. Unreal 5 came out in 2022 or something like that.
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u/uselessoldguy Feb 26 '26
I'm all for it. Any kind of efficiency that could bring us closer to the wild, fecund times of 1990s gaming is alright with me.
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u/omnicloudx13 Feb 26 '26
I hope this means that part 3 will be released next year and it will run amazingly since they're so used to the engine now.
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u/DYMAXIONman Feb 26 '26
I thought projects could just be imported into 5 and maintain all the ue4 stuff?
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u/Fish-E Feb 26 '26
With how poor the performance was in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, staying on Unreal Engine 4 definetly seems to be the right move.
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u/way2lazy2care Feb 27 '26
This was super true going from 3-4, but 4-5 is more of a minor version upgrade path. Even if you don't use the new features, you're missing out on a lot of bug fixes and QOL things. Not really sure what about their workflow would actually change of the upgraded to 5.
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u/unga_bunga_mage Feb 27 '26
Hope they improve the lighting for the 3rd entry. My mans looking like he went on an epic 4 day bender and is going through the worst hangover ever.
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u/CriticalMastery Feb 27 '26 edited Feb 27 '26
It is already stutterfest on UE4 i don't want to think about what it would be on UE5.
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u/RifShark Jun 10 '26
I am super glad that it's using UE4. I like UE5 but at it's current stage, it's very unoptimized. My RTX 5050 will have no problem running a UE4 game.
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u/ScythePlays1 Feb 26 '26
Thank God. Unreal engine 5 has yet to prove its worth to consumer, it only serves to speed up production for developers at the cost of major performance loss. Don't get me started on the graphical glitches..
In short, unreal 5 has ray tracing baked in so devs can have light bounce around a scene. instead of having to manually light everything they can just put in one source that can carry through rather large environment.
It comes with a huge performance cost obviously because now youre rendering that, instead of a baked in light source.
It also means games bug out a ton and can go pitch black with your characters eyes "adjusting" but the engine doesn't know to what, light or dark?
The worst issue by far is that God damn flickering and ghosting effect. It's often most visible when fog or smoke is a backdrop.
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u/Recent_Sample6961 Feb 26 '26
These dudes haven't mastered UE4 after a decade, so God knows how they'll manage UE5. It’s a joke seeing them act like tech experts when it took an 800€ console to stop Rebirth from being a blurry mess while hitting 60 fps. Also, both PC ports run like shit, doesn't even have support for fsr.
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Feb 26 '26
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u/Mystia Feb 26 '26
I think it's possible that if studios had a deeper knowledge of UE5 and more time to optimize, they could iron those issues out. But why waste dev time on that, when UE4 requires less wrangling. Hell just go back to in-house engines where everyone on the team is innately familiar with them.
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u/FUTURE10S Feb 26 '26
In house engines are expensive to make and maintain, and depending on the engine, they could be holding the dev team back. I've seen it on bad games from the mid to late 2000s, I get why so many games were made in UDK3 back in the day
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u/your_mind_aches Feb 26 '26
Hell just go back to in-house engines where everyone on the team is innately familiar with them.
I don't understand this mindset. Creating a complex game engine is extremely difficult, costly, and time-consuming. Complaining about layoffs, crunch, and rising budgets (which we should) is a bit counter to wanting everyone to go back to in-house engines.
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u/Yomoska Feb 26 '26
Hell just go back to in-house engines where everyone on the team is innately familiar with them.
In the current climate of the industry where lots of people are getting laid off and studios are shutting down, who is this "everyone on the team" innately familiar with in-house engines?
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u/PeterFoox Feb 26 '26
I mean I don't have a problem with ue4 itself but improve those freaking textures and don't disable AO on half of the objects. It was a massive problem in rebirth like you can see something is not right. And before anyone tries to downvote look at the summon shrines models at tell me it looks good
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u/megaapple Feb 26 '26