PS5 Pro tech analysis shows "huge image quality improvements" to Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth's awful 60 FPS mode

(Image credit: Square Enix)

We're finally getting an extended look at what to expect from PS5 Pro thanks to some fresh gameplay footage of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth running on the new machine. Tech analysis suggests that the whole PS5 Pro promise of no longer making players compromise between performance and quality modes is coming true, and the results are particularly pronounced here given how bad Rebirth's 60 FPS mode looked in the first place.

The folks at Digital Foundry were provided seven minutes of FF7 Rebirth footage showing the opening of chapter two - the game's first big open-world segment - running on PS5 Pro. In short, the upgrade "delivers huge image quality improvements at 60fps." The results are "basically exactly as Mark Cerny claimed - the Pro provides the high quality graphics that the PS5 is capable of at 30 FPS, at the higher frame rates that gamers typically prefer."

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On Pro, Rebirth runs at 60 FPS with visuals similar to - and in some cases, better than - the original 30 FPS quality mode on base PS5. According to DF's analysis, this is largely achieved through the new machine's PSSR upscaling technique, which takes native resolutions averaging around 1200p and makes them look similar to native 4K. It sounds a whole lot like the magic of Nvidia's DLSS, which has proven to be one of PC gaming's best FPS boosters.

PSSR actually makes the game look a bit sharper and more detailed than the old 30 FPS quality mode in many cases, though it's not completely without compromise. The upscale appears to introduce some visual artifacts that you'll see in fine detail - stuff like the strands in Tifa's hair, the stitching on Barrett's vest, and distant leaves. It'll be a matter of preference whether you'd take those bits of visual noise over the slightly blurrier look of the old 30 FPS mode, but considering PSSR is bringing the whole game to 60 FPS, I think the tradeoff is more than worthwhile.

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Dustin Bailey joined the GamesRadar team as a Staff Writer in May 2022, and is currently based in Missouri. He's been covering games (with occasional dalliances in the worlds of anime and pro wrestling) since 2015, first as a freelancer, then as a news writer at PCGamesN for nearly five years. His love for games was sparked somewhere between Metal Gear Solid 2 and Knights of the Old Republic, and these days you can usually find him splitting his entertainment time between retro gaming, the latest big action-adventure title, or a long haul in American Truck Simulator.