Final Fantasy VII Remake - finally on PC

[sepheronx]

Spoiler: cool idea

Spoiler

I just want to see Zack and Aerith together bruh, after that ending they showed the post ending scene in the DLC expansion.
Whoever is a fan of CloudxAerith no no no no, CloudxTifa yes or even CloudxBarret sure lol but not Aerith. After experiencing Crisis Core its ZackxAerith all the way.

Well, Crisis Core was once again, added way later than initial FF7 thus they added in things that never existed in FF7 in the beginning. Nomura's work. So the whole Cloud and Aeris was there long before Zack and Aeris.

Crisis Core was good besides that whole Angeal and Genesis thing. Oof, that was cringy with the whole Loveless thing.

Spoiler

As much as purist would hate it I would rather there be a way to save her.

If it isn't part of the main story but a cool side thing to do that can change the story or throw it in another direction, then I would all be for it. Would be an awesome thing to add honestly.

 

[Ruru]

I think I'm just gonna watch this... AGAIN. And wait for this FFVII milk job to complete.

Same graphics anyway

Have that on bluray

 

[kurosagi01]

Spoiler: cool idea

Well, Crisis Core was once again, added way later than initial FF7 thus they added in things that never existed in FF7 in the beginning. Nomura's work. So the whole Cloud and Aeris was there long before Zack and Aeris.

Crisis Core was good besides that whole Angeal and Genesis thing. Oof, that was cringy with the whole Loveless thing.



If it isn't part of the main story but a cool side thing to do that can change the story or throw it in another direction, then I would all be for it. Would be an awesome thing to add honestly.

Spoiler

I know Crisis core was added way later than initial FF7 but i'm pretty sure there was hints to why Aerith had interest in Cloud to begin with, which i'm sure it was because he reminded her of Zack..Now I know this will probably dive into the whole FF7 lore debate but I am a ZackxAerith fan so i'm going to stick with it lol.

If Aerith stays alive in the remake then it just pretty confirm there is..a multiverse in the FF7 universe right lol but jokes aside it would change the whole direction which would make it a "true" remake.
As it already has differentiate itself away from the original to certain degree anyway, the fact people are fans of Jessie now from the Remake is a telling that people liked the CloudxJessie romance and they added some other new characters or something.

 

[sepheronx]

Spoiler

As much as purist would hate it I would rather there be a way to save her.

Spoiler

I know Crisis core was added way later than initial FF7 but i'm pretty sure there was hints to why Aerith had interest in Cloud to begin with, which i'm sure it was because he reminded her of Zack..Now I know this will probably dive into the whole FF7 lore debate but I am a ZackxAerith fan so i'm going to stick with it lol.

If Aerith stays alive in the remake then it just pretty confirm there is..a multiverse in the FF7 universe right lol but jokes aside it would change the whole direction which would make it a "true" remake.
As it already has differentiate itself away from the original to certain degree anyway, the fact people are fans of Jessie now from the Remake is a telling that people liked the CloudxJessie romance and they added some other new characters or something.

Still the games story direction sucks. But if they make a two direction - one where she dies and one where she doesn't, it would be interesting. Multiverse stuff to me is just another way to retconn stuff with lazy writing but I've already made my point earlier. But at least try to make it interesting.

The love story/triangle whatever wasn't the main purpose of the story. I just don't see love interests in such stories are important. The main idea in the end of the game was sacrifice and facing up to your demons. Each final fantasy had such a moral story to it. It's just that the story sold so well, that they knew us fools would buy anything they threw at us regarding it. The stuff from crisis core was so many years later, so I doubt they had much idea on the background beyond what was already mentioned in final fantasy 7 OG. Others got involved and added their own stories to it. If one enjoys it, that's fine.

 

[oxrufiioxo]

Still the games story direction sucks. But if they make a two direction - one where she dies and one where she doesn't, it would be interesting. Multiverse stuff to me is just another way to retconn stuff with lazy writing but I've already made my point earlier. But at least try to make it interesting.

The love story/triangle whatever wasn't the main purpose of the story. I just don't see love interests in such stories are important. The main idea in the end of the game was sacrifice and facing up to your demons. Each final fantasy had such a moral story to it. It's just that the story sold so well, that they knew us fools would buy anything they threw at us regarding it. The stuff from crisis core was so many years later, so I doubt they had much idea on the background beyond what was already mentioned in final fantasy 7 OG. Others got involved and added their own stories to it. If one enjoys it, that's fine.

I would consider this spoiler territory.....

I went into the remake thinking it was a remake and not a retelling of the 1997 game and enjoyed it equally. Maybe I'm in the minority but I really like how they basically took the first disk of the original and made it pretty much a whole game. None of the changes bothered me becuase I hate remakes that are identical to what they are based on.

I also think the original and it's story are over rated to begin with it's just for a lot of western gamers their first taste of a JRPG.... I personally would rather have a full remake of 6 to me it's the much better game. Hopefully we finally get a good modern version of it with the Pixel remaster not holding my breath though.

It also a bunmer that this PC version is technically inferior to the PS5 version even on high end hardware to me we should expect nothing but the best version on pc. Kinda surprised becuase FFXV was definitely better on pc than consoles.

 

[kurosagi01]

Hence why i'm saying i'm quite happy for them to go into new direction bringing:

Spoiler

The fact Zack is "alive" is already a huge change in the story compared to the "canon" story from Crisis Core to OG FF7.
If Aerith and Zack reunites that is a win for the ZxA and a change in story but if she actually doesn't get stabbed by Sephiroth then that is another major change to the story.

 

[oxrufiioxo]

So using DX11 completely fixes the frametime issues at least on my 3080ti.... HDR is still broken on my LG C1 though which is a shame because it's pretty impressive on the PS5 version.

 

[chrcoluk]

Friend of mine streaming this today told me as soon as he installed unreal engine separately all his stutters vanished, his theory is the game distributed missing a key component or perhaps outdated version of the engine.

I also just watched some of my recordings from when I played on the PS4 pro and wow the lighting level is so much better than intergrade (on PS5), there is a on/off option for HDR on the PC though so hopefully that gives the better PS4 lighting back for PC.

 

[Ruru]

Played a little more - still on sector 7 yet.

Normally I like Aerith way more but why Tifa must be so damn CUTE in this?!

 

[chrcoluk]

Ok now I have first hand experience, I caved in, as I seen was a £10 coupon which is probably the best its going to be for a while.

After a 10 hour download, I tested it out, it was a brief test at start of intermission. I am tired so brief.

First fired up the game, set my resolution 1440p, 60fps, Character distance to 10, left rest alone and started intermission.

Let the opening cut scene roll, very quickly some minor stuttering, towards the end of it major stuttering. Moved round the immediate area with yuffie, more stuttering and noticeable input lag. I did download the unreal engine files like my friend did, but seems no impact here.

I then installed some mods I plan to use, one of them which disables dynamic resolution, motion blur etc, the usual rubbish to turn off. I added -dx11 to the startup flags, set vsync in nvidia driver and relaunched the game.

Opening cut scene smooth, moving around smooth, did fight with nearby enemies smooth, input lag reduced, although still higher than PS5, slight lag opening menu. But a clear improvement over dx12.

On my 3080 1440p at 60fps, with the DRS enabled is about 40% utilisation, disabled about 55%.
The eye opener, just in this opening area, no NPCs not in a town, 8986 MB VRAM usage. 2 gig of this is OS, so 7 gig by game right at start. It didnt go up with mods loaded.

Loading times on my PCIE3 Samsung 970 EVO are faster than my PS5, so much for PCIE4 been a difference, and direct storage isnt even a thing yet. Although I havent tested rest of game yet, so if this changes later I will update here.

 

[toilet pepper]

I was waiting for this PC port for a long time and the port sucks. I was expecting it to be a little better based on the FFXV port but I guess this wasn't sponsored by either AMD or Nvidia so we get a crappy port. The best that Epic could have done since this is their engine and exclusive is optimize it a little better.

The game works flawlessly with the DualSense 5 controller when plugged via USB. The button mapping shows PS button prompts and haptic feedback works as well.


The game doesn't have native Ultrawide support. When I first launched the game, it hurt my eyes with the low FOV and blurry motion. Almost a third of your screen is Cloud's back. How did they even play these in consoles.

Installed a bunch of mods and tweaked the settings and it runs smooth so far.

 

[chrcoluk]

Some more information here explained by a modder.

Essentially with games that stream textures they "can run" with less VRAM, but there can be consequences such as lower quality visuals and delayed loading of textures when moving around, this usually would not affect FPS numbers, but in remake it has been.

Here is a link to the page.

Stutter-Free Seamless Gameplay

Correct algorithm settings to truly eliminate stuttering for a seamless gameplay experience.

www.nexusmods.com

On my 3080 a 10 gig card, I went to the title screen and 4.2gig was used, with 5.8 gig available, the recommended amount available for texture streaming for the game to be smoothing at high texture quality is a whopping 5.7 gigs (apparently also need another free gig on top of this for particles), the game defaults to 4 gig (to increase have to mod the files). So to adhere to these suggestions I need to close my browser which frees up some VRAM.

This is what I will be doing when I start playing and if I find the stutters come back, hopefully they wont.

Another mod which allows you to increase quality, notes to do so VRAM usage will skyrocket, raising shadow, mipmaps quality etc. Disabling texture streaming stops stutters, but also skyrockets VRAM usage. Loading the remake barely uses any of my system ram.

 

[Ruru]

On my 3080 a 10 gig card, I went to the title screen and 4.2gig was used, with 5.8 gig available, the recommended amount available for texture streaming for the game to be smoothing at high texture quality is a whopping 5.7 gigs, the game defaults to 4 gig (to increase have to mod the files). So to adhere to these suggestions I need to close my browser which frees up some VRAM.

But is it used or just allocated? Afterburner for example shows the VRAM allocation, not the real usage AFAIK.

 

[chrcoluk]

But is it used or just allocated? Afterburner for example shows the VRAM allocation, not the real usage AFAIK.

It doesnt matter in this as documented by the modder this usage on the screen excludes anything for the texture streaming which doesnt get allocated until you actually start playing the game.

If I actually start a game as said in my earlier post the VRAM is almost immediately close to been maxed out (so more is allocated when you start a game, a lot more).

In effect the texture stream buffer is allocated when you start the game, not in menu (you see this in afterburner), I do agree with you at that point it may not all be immediately used by textures, but allocated VRAM is not free VRAM, the modders who have tested this have discovered that the default 4 gig buffer is not high enough to keep performance issues down when high textures are enabled, hence the suggestion to boost it to 5.7 gig, but of course 5.7 gig will allocate another 1.7 gig, on top of this if you dont have 1 gig unallocated (effectively meaning you need 6.7 gig), then particles may cause stutters.

I think DX11 mostly solves this as the implementation of it in the game uses a more efficient way of loading textures that doesnt block rendering.

 

[LifeOnMars]

I play on DX12 with an 8gb 3060 Ti, after the very brief initial stutter whilst textures were caching at the start of the game I have had no stutter since. I'm very sensitive to stutter or bad frame pacing and this game has been rock solid.

 

[chrcoluk]

I am attaching my editor.ini file to be used with ffvii hook. For those with no issues fair enough, but if you got issues I hope this helps, but I would try just enabling DX11 first.

The disable DRS lines are commented out as they set with a disable DRS mod I have loaded.

Sadly I had to tune the game, as soon as I hit sector 7 I still had stutters even in DX11, I also do need to close my browser.

To use this file, you need the ffvii hook installed, which basically is the debug console and allows loading in engine settings at bootup of game. Also unzip it, I had to zip it to attach,

The file goes in F:\Users\<username>\My Documents\My Games\FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE\Saved\Config\WindowsNoEditor

The ffvii hook can be grabbed here.

FFVIIHook - INI and dev console unlocker

Unlocks the dev-console, giving access to console commands & easy changes to the games CVars - along with allowing loose INI config files to be loaded in from the games config folder

www.nexusmods.com

Disable DRS here.

Dynamic Resolution Disabler

Stops the game from using dynamic resolution entirely.

www.nexusmods.com

Basically I buffed the texture streaming pool from 4 gig to 5.7 gig, this prevents excessive texture swaps in towns.
Disabled depth of field and motion blur, Disabled volumetric fog (its way overboard on PS5/PC, this makes it like the PS4 which looks much better), increased shadow and reflection precision but also decreased shadow resolution to save on precious VRAM. Also enabled partial async of texture/shader streaming.

With browser not loaded, I peak at around 9200MB VRAM usage in sector 7. I was about 900MB short with browser loaded. (11 gig VRAM would have got me there keeping browser open).

To fix stuttering cut scenes I had to set "prefer max power" for the game, as it was downclocking memory and saturating memory bandwidth.

 

[chrcoluk]

Hi guys sorry for the other new post. But another update.

So basically playing the game on spindle kills all stutters during game play, SATA SSD removes the vast majority and only micro stutters left (on out of the box untuned game in DX12 mode).

Using a MSI utility which allow you to adjust interrupt priorities I discovered that by setting NVME interrupt priority to low it makes my NVME drive behave as well as my SATA SSD. I will speculate because NVME can load data faster it hogs more resources and enough to strangle something else to cause stuttering during background texture streaming. (this is almost equivalent to my above tweak's of capping texture streaming throughput but without the downsides of the tweak).

Now after these changes I still had judders on FMV's which I think but not confirmed are down to sound/video sync issues. I managed to fix those by disabling virtualization on my CPU, As I understand it certain security features in windows rely on virtualization, so it seems disabling that stuff fixed my FMV's.

 

[Bones]

Still the games story direction sucks. But if they make a two direction - one where she dies and one where she doesn't, it would be interesting. Multiverse stuff to me is just another way to retconn stuff with lazy writing but I've already made my point earlier. But at least try to make it interesting.

The love story/triangle whatever wasn't the main purpose of the story. I just don't see love interests in such stories are important. The main idea in the end of the game was sacrifice and facing up to your demons. Each final fantasy had such a moral story to it. It's just that the story sold so well, that they knew us fools would buy anything they threw at us regarding it. The stuff from crisis core was so many years later, so I doubt they had much idea on the background beyond what was already mentioned in final fantasy 7 OG. Others got involved and added their own stories to it. If one enjoys it, that's fine.

OK - I know I'm quoting an older post but just now saw it to give a possible answer.
In the original PSX game I remember it was rumored there was a way to keep Aeris alive BUT then Tifa would have to die.
That from what I can recall was never proven as fact.

BTW in the original version her name was Aeris, not Aerith.
I mean hey - They can call her whatever they want, it's their game, their character and can change it if they want and obviously did with the remake.

Apparently there is a way to get her back in the steam version:
FFVII- Steam Version: How to save Aeris! (using Yuffie Warp glitch) episode 6- Surviving Jenova-Life - YouTube
It does show the player doing it so..... Maybe this is legit - Maybe not but there it is.

One of these days I will replay it since I have the game, system, strategy guide (Gameshark ) and whatever else I'd need to.

 

[Ruru]

BTW in the original version her name was Aeris, not Aerith.
I mean hey - They can call her whatever they want, it's their game, their character and can change it if they want and obviously did with the remake.

AFAIK it's always been Aerith, that's just an translation error.

 

[Bones]

AFAIK it's always been Aerith, that's just an translation error.

Nope - Shows it as "Aeris" in the original game, strategy guide and wherever else that's from back in the day including gaming magazines and so on.
If it was an error I would have heard about it and believe me, I was a VERY active as a console gamer back then and still have a good sized collection of games and so on here because I never sold any of it.
I even have one of those V-RAM modules that's the equivalent of 60 memory cards.

 

[Ruru]

Nope - Shows it as "Aeris" in the original game, strategy guide and wherever else that's from back in the day.
If it was an error I would have heard about it and believe me, I was a VERY active as a console gamer back then and still have a good sized collection of games and so on here because I never sold any of it.
I even have one of those V-RAM modules that's the equivalent of 60 memory cards.

Hmm.. https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Aerith_Gainsborough

In the original English release of Final Fantasy VII, Aerith's name was transliterated as "Aeris" by SCEA. The transliteration stems from the nature of the katakana writing system and how it is used to represent loan words. The name in kana is エアリス, "e-a-ri-su". Because the Japanese language lacks a pure "th" sound, ス (su) is used as a best-fit substitute for the sound when spelling out loan words.

Since Kingdom Hearts and all related appearances since, the official English spelling of her name was cemented as "Aerith". Prior to this, Japanese publications referring to the character with a Latin-text name have always used the name "Aerith", including the game manual with the Japanese edition of the game,[72] and in the Final Fantasy VII Official Establishment File prior to its release.[73]

However, within the code of Final Fantasy VII, she is called "Aerith" by default before her name is selected by the player. As the first time her name appears is after the name select screen, in which her name defaults to "Aeris", the player would not see this unless the name selection screen was bypassed. This is also true of Cloud, who is named "Ex-SOLDIER" in the game by default until his name is selected in the player, and of Red XIII, who is named "Red" before the name select screen.[74]

I remember my friend also having that "multi-page" memory card on PS1 though sometimes it was pretty unreliable (or incompatible) with some games.

 

[Bones]

I never saw her named any differently or was it ever mentioned it was different anywhere else.
I can even show you pages from the "Official" guide I've got it's "Aeris" BUT I guess we have to remember European versions are different than US versions and those are different than Japanese versions - And that's probrably explains why.

Don't really care about the name so much, we know to whom they refer anyway right?

In reference to the memory card you refer to, I have a few of those and they are buggy but what I've got plugs directly into the back of the system where a Gameshark would be.

EDIT:
I'll have to find a reference and show you exactly what a V-Mem module looks like so you'll know.
If you ever spot one, just get it - VERY hard to find item these days.

Here ya go - Mine is just like this one.

 

[sepheronx]

OK - I know I'm quoting an older post but just now saw it to give a possible answer.
In the original PSX game I remember it was rumored there was a way to keep Aeris alive BUT then Tifa would have to die.
That from what I can recall was never proven as fact.

BTW in the original version her name was Aeris, not Aerith.
I mean hey - They can call her whatever they want, it's their game, their character and can change it if they want and obviously did with the remake.

Apparently there is a way to get her back in the steam version:
FFVII- Steam Version: How to save Aeris! (using Yuffie Warp glitch) episode 6- Surviving Jenova-Life - YouTube
It does show the player doing it so..... Maybe this is legit - Maybe not but there it is.

One of these days I will replay it since I have the game, system, strategy guide (Gameshark ) and whatever else I'd need to.

Yeah, when I played it, it was Aeris but as said, translation error.

I brought her back to life with GameShark. I also replaced Vincent with Sephiroth but you can't control him, he was same as the flashback. And usually he would instantly die in combat randomly.

Though, end results were a mess of a glitch. To this day, over 20 years later, still can't get the same glitch to happen. Before you fight bizzaroSephiroth, at the scene where the characters are floating and move towards him and he force pushes them away (can't think of another name), 2 of the three parties vanished from screen and only 1 party to fight. And he was super hard. I only read on other experience with that and it was just GameShark screwing the game and that he had more turns than normal.

I did enjoy breaking the game anyway I could. The debug room was interesting.

 

[Bones]

It's cool - Error or not we know to whom they refer by either name.

Both of my Gamesharks can access the debug room of both, FFVII and Xenogears. I had a third one at one time that was a newer version than both of these but since it couldn't access it I let that one go out of the three. The deal was a co-worker wanted one but didn't know where to get them here so I went out and bought it for them. Tried it, compared it to the ones I have now and since it didn't work with these rooms that's the one they got, this was of no concern to them so the debug rooms didn't matter.

Some Gamesharks can do it and for some reason others can't and whether it can or not is totally random, not based on any particular version of it - However, there is a tendency for the newer versions to have access vs older ones and I guess that's why one mag I had back in the day said the older ones coudn't do it but my v2.3 can no prob as well as my v3.1 Pro version.

There are some sharks that can access these rooms but not for both games, luckily I do have these that can do either however I want.

And you thought I broke FFVII - I left a trail of virtual carnage behind when I started messing with Xenogears.

 

[sepheronx]

It's cool - Error or not we know to whom they refer by either name.

Both of my Gamesharks can access the debug room of both, FFVII and Xenogears. I had a third one at one time that was a newer version than both of these but since it couldn't access it I let that one go out of the three. The deal was a co-worker wanted one but didn't know where to get them here so I went out and bought it for them. Tried it, compared it to the ones I have now and since it didn't work with these rooms that's the one they got, this was of no concern to them so the debug rooms didn't matter.

Some Gamesharks can do it and for some reason others can't and whether it can or not is totally random, not based on any particular version of it - However, there is a tendency for the newer versions to have access vs older ones and I guess that's why one mag I had back in the day said the older ones coudn't do it but my v2.3 can no prob as well as my v3.1 Pro version.

And you thought I broke FFVII - I left a trail of virtual carnage behind when I started messing with Xenogears.

Screwing around in old games on the older systems (Genesis and PS1) with a game genie or GameShark was so much fun. Yeah, just glitching games was great fun.

But we diverted the convo. It's all about FF7 remake.