In a discussion with Philippines-based gaming site, One More Game, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth director Naoki Hamaguchi has said that the recently launched game’s Performance Mode would be graphically improved via an upcoming patch.
Performance Mode is a special settings feature that allows players to prioritize gameplay at 60 frames per second over maximized graphics. While the tradeoff is meant to be reduced visuals for increased performance, player reports of blurriness and scary lighting suggest that a deeper issue is afoot. These Performance Mode visual woes have been known since the game’s demo and were supposed to have been settled with a demo patch that would carry over to the game’s full release. This process hasn’t gone as straightforwardly as the development team had hoped, but Hamaguchi has assured players that the Rebirth team is aware of the problem and is working to remedy it soon.
He tells One More Game, “We’ve received a lot of feedback on whether the graphics in the performance mode will be improved or not. We hear you, and we are currently working on an update patch to improve that aspect. I don’t think the release date would be far away from now.”
Further details about this upcoming patch’s contents couldn’t be shared, but he does elaborate on some of the Performance Mode visual issues being addressed.
“We have heard from players that in certain situations, the facial lighting makes some character shadows look very scary. So that’s one part of the update that we are working on.”
While Performance Mode hasn’t had the smoothest start, its issues have had little to no effect on Final Fantasy VII Rebirth’s critically acclaimed reception. The game that launched on February 29 has a Metascore of 92 which beats out its predecessor Final Fantasy VII Remake’s score of 87.