As Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth finally escapes PlayStation prison, the JRPG's director says "I recommend the PC version" for the "improved lighting"

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Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is out on PC in January

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth Aerith and Tifa suited
(Image credit: Square Enix)

Square Enix revealed at The Game Awards that Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is at last receiving a PC version on January 23, and director Naoki Hamaguchi is looking forward to what that means for the JRPG's fancy lighting. 

"I recommend the PC version of FF7 Rebirth," Hamaguchi says in a Twitter post, "because of the improved lighting. I'm looking forward to many game fans getting to experience this game."

Prettier sunsets are certainly a welcome token of appreciation for PC players; Final Fantasy 7 has been locked away in PlayStation purgatory for nearly a year, ever since Square Enix first released the earth-shaking remake in February. 

"I've never seen worse lighting than in Rebirth," one frustrated player writes recently on Reddit. "Walking outside looks like I'm walking into Bahamut's [practically atomic attack] Gigaflare every single time. Visually, this game is incredibly disappointing."

"Put your sunglasses and sunscreen on," instructs one generous commenter in a separate Reddit thread about the same issue.

So Hamaguchi's pleasant acknowledgement that Final Fantasy 7's PC version cures it of its pervasive lighting problems is hitting PlayStation cops like an asteroid. "PS5 should have this lighting update, too," one fan replies to Hamaguchi on Twitter. "Now that's really not normal." Though, to be fair, neither is naming a man "Cloud."

Final Fantasy 7 Remake director had to swap his inspirations from The Last of Us to The Witcher 3 to make Rebirth's open world.

Ashley Bardhan
Ashley Bardhan
Senior Writer

Ashley is a Senior Writer at GamesRadar+. She's been a staff writer at Kotaku and Inverse, too, and she's written freelance pieces about horror and women in games for sites like Rolling Stone, Vulture, IGN, and Polygon. When she's not covering gaming news, she's usually working on expanding her doll collection while watching Saw movies one through 11.