12:45 FYI: as John mentions that turning off motion blur is not an option in the current, release version. But over the past weekend, Yoshi P mentioned (during the Japanese Pre launch livestream) they will add an option to “Turn Off” motion blur in an upcoming patch.
@@BorisTheGoose92 agree. I’m also not a fan of motion blur. However, I recently got my first OLED TV just in time for this game and it helps when playing “Graphics” mode. The near instantaneous pixel response time stuttering is a lot smoother at 30fps than other games. At least in my case.
@@teddyholiday8038 yeah. More people are going to wait out until the patches before playing this now. But for me, with a story this grand, don’t want spoilers. At least by the time I get to New Game+, hopefully all that is implemented and performance is improved.
The Grape segment was hilarious as an FFXIV player who was there for all the grape mocking during the Endwalker launch! I’m hesistant to watch much more to avoid spoilers though.
It’s never gets old listening to John talk about video games, just like Rich, he has a way of describing everything that’s so appealing to listen to and you can hear his passion for the game while also being able to critique the finer details.
@@dante19890 Well that isn't somewhat insulting to actual add folk... 😑 To be fair, i have add and I managed to watch at least 25 minutes before I started to lose interest. But I was busy eating during most of if so you know, was kinda already distracted 😅
@@SwordsandMushrooms Thank you bro, you might just saved my game experience from being destroyed. I immediately paused the video when I saw this comment😧
Yeah I've always been a long time final fantasy fan since I first bought FF7 on the Playstation 1 as a kid. His review really shows the love, care & respect he has for the game which is surprisingly uncommon when it comes to many game reviewers. (I'm liking the like minded sentiment of this comments section)
Totally agree. Jon, this is a great video and your passion is appreciated and accentuates the quality of this game. If people don’t want to hang around they will drop off once they’ve got the message. But the rest of us are all here for the moments you feel enamoured enough to write a love letter to a work of art!
Yeah it's (sadly) a real feat these days to have close to no game breaking/major bugs in a game of this magnitude. I salute the team, what a great effort!
@@a9udn9u-vanced that's true about minor ones but with the gaming industry critical ones come day one and a few months down the line that's the problem you see
@@leftyfourguns No and it's worse before because of modern software development processes. The only reason you feel games are more buggy nowadays is because modern games are exponentially more complex than older games. When you code 1+1 it's difficult to have bugs in it.
John, I was not expecting a section on the music alone and I can't say enough how much I appreciate that you included it for this particular game for the DF Tech Review. Definitely felt like a conscientious decision for fans of the series.
Music is part of the tech progression in video game, even though there are no limitation now, it is essential to the presentation and experience a player can have with technology, I'm a bit disappointed there aren't in depth review of special sound effect and music immersion. Example like how a sword slash the skin or armor of the enemy, or how the music transition between different stages of the battle, they all contribute to the experience of the game even though the player barely notice the diminutive detail comparing to the graphic.
He has done it before, but is really one of the reasons I love john reviews, he really explores the audiovisual department from every direction, is great tbh.
I feel like Final Fantasy 16 and Final Fantasy 7 Remake solidified that the series is no longer held back by technical limitations. These visuals were envisioned by the devs from the start and this is truly how they wanted the series to look.
Probably neckbeard-scratchy, but the main material property (i.e: BRDF property) shown at 6:27 is not Fresnel, it's Rayleigh backscatter. Backscatter is a key component of material properties like velvet/silk/suede (especially in generating the dual visual colorations often visible in those materials) or even hair (hair 'halos') Fresnel is more of a standard reflectivity component in metalic/dielectric materials, and is a standard inclusion in any Microfacet BRDF model. The Fresnel equations simply quantify the distribution of the light energy reflected and refracted when interacting with a surface, so it has no way to model the fuzzy fiber simulation that causes backscatter (simulation because rasterization or ray tracing of such fine elements defined as geometry would be too expensive). And yes, it's likely simulating both (as mentioned, Fresnel is standard in Microfacet BRDFs; energy dissipation is usually modeled in all material shaders!), but the focus in this shot is on a velvet/suede material. Also, just because a shader "varies on viewing angle" does not make it a Fresnel material, as many material effects use the surface normal relative to the view vector -> in other words: a cow is indeed an animal, but an animal is not by definition a cow. Sorry for the neckbeard scratching, but because of the high standards set for DF, this seems like a fair correction.
31:09 I am sure that I am gonna be dead by the level of goosebumps I am gonna get at this moment, soundtrack alone is some of the best thing I have ever heard in my life
I remember wishing for this while playing FF7R - walking around town is fine at 30 FPS if it looks significantly better, but during combat, it's definitely 60 FPS or bust.
I believe I'm nearing the last leg of the game at this point. I remember years ago when I dreamt of have a game that looked like all those beautiful CG cut scenes we would get in the PS1 and PS2 Final Fantasy titles, and now we are as close to that as ever, even better at times. The combat is really solid and I adore the narrative in this game. The hours of cutscenes are completely fine with me as it is telling one of the best stories in the Final Fantasy series. Thanks for the video breaking everything down and going into such great detail.
@fernandoblengio didn't realize I wasn't relaxed? If you read my comment in a manic tone, that's on you. Being critical of something is not the same as being manic.
@@jamjam445 if you're talking about the fps for the game, I think its hardware limitation at this point as even PS5 can barely keep up with FF16's software demands in performance so its pushing the hardware to its limits while keeping it playable and enjoyable as possible. They provided some quality of life improvements though including adjusting motion blur for 1.03 Patch
@@LS95774 Yeah was about to say, can't trust PC ports to fix things when they usually turn up even worse lol. If you want 60fps with a reasonable resolution, seems like PC and multiplatform games are still the only way to go. That or keep playing PS4 games on PS5, those look and run pretty great.
@@seanpitt27t's not the consoles. Devs are lazy and have outs and excuses. Xbox granted hasn't proved its power yet but ps5. Look at all the exclusives, insomniac for example. SM remastered, SM miles morales, ratchet rift apart. All have performance ray tracing modes. Flawless 1440p 60fps with RT. Look at HFW, 1800p 60fps locked. Ragnarok, Demon souls, tlou part 1. All running superbly. It's the Devs being lazy. The fact we're going back to 30fps being the norm is a joke, unfortunately when it comes to third party pc is the way. This game is a ps5 console exclusive running and looking like absolute sh*t. No excuse it's a joke. This is why I've stopped pre ordering games, I waited to see this video to determine whether or not I was gonna get this. Cause that's modern gaming. You can't just rely on good faith that the game will release in a polished state. It's so bad. I ain't getting this game now. Wait for a deep sale.
They've been a great source of info for years, but I think console players starting to care about performance vs quality has seen DF get more attention.
Needing to drop to 720p to reach 60fps is crazy, going from high 30's to 60 all the time is jarring as fuck. Also using FSR1 to upscale the image doesn't make sense, this is not the Switch, at least use the much better FSR2.
By now I think most people won't take "open world" as positive anymore as it often implies massive open areas which are largely empty, boring and repetitive.
Dips into 720 resolution and choppy performance mode and this is a good launch? Idk I can’t help but feel DF has resigned itself that we will always have bad performance on consoles. Had a good laugh when your suggestion was just never to switch to performance so your brain never knows better lol. I’m so disappointed with the promises of these next gen consoles. The hopium was real…
These next-gen consoles can handle 60fps in certain cases, but when you see how detailed they are and the AMOUNT of systems in work, 30fps in itself is a miracle at times when you really think about it. How Zelda Totk on the switch runs flawlessly is a mystery.
Well if you check all the poor PC games recently I would say that it's just the gaming industry and game development problem in general. The PS5 and XSX perform really close to their PC counterparts (a Ryzen 3600X + RX 6700 class) but for 500 bucks (I would even say 400 for the PS5 digital edition). On PC to really get performance, you really need to aim for high end components: RX6800/6900/7900 or RTX 3080/3090/4070/4080/4090 to really beat the consoles and all those GPUs alone cost the price of the console or much more, you then have to add the CPU, Mobo, Memory and SSD. So credit to consoles makers, with the price point they were targeting, they offer the best they can. I have the feeling that modern development/engines enable easy development but have a lot of overhead in terms of resources consumption. It is unacceptable to see the poor textures of a lot of recent games chugging with 8GB of VRAM, the stutterings due to shaders compilation even on beefy machines etc...
You get used to very quickly, I prefer stability so I'll quality mode. The graphics and visuals are amazing so it helps with an even better picture quality, but I understand if a majority find 30fps hard to play at.
The motion blur is far worse than what is mentioned in this video. If you stand in a bright light anywhere then move your right analog stick from left to right it literally triples the image of the sword hilt making the blur more like a fast disorienting image duplication method instead of a blur at all.... I have no idea how Squenix did not realize that blur is horrible.
@@xtr.7662 "for some reason" because its a good game and alot of reviewers/people enjoy it? I get everyone is entitled to their own opinion and nothing can please everybody, but you act like you have NO clue why this game is praised. like cmon lets not act clueless lol
@@GlazeonthewickeR It's a good game trapped in the body of a bloated open world. I really wish the trend of making every game open world would die already. FFXVI's model of having large, independent spaces is a great middle ground.
"One of the most polished games in last years." "FPS dropping up to 30-40 in some areas in performance mode." Are you honestly thinking that we can call it "polished" ?
Oh no. One of the best games ever made in the graphical department can’t hit 60 at all times on a 400 dollar console. There’s more to a game than hitting 60 fps for every second. In 20 years, no one will look back at this game and say, yeah that game sucks. It only ran at 45 fps in the open world. 😂 bruh that’s not what makes a game good. Did you miss the rest of the review?
@@tehCostHDeveryone bitching about the graphics either: 1. Never played the demo so have no idea how much fun the gameplay loop is. 2. Never had any intention of actually buying/playing it.
@@eh-ronlocke7164 exactly bro. The internet is swriously depressing. Everyone is doom and gloom about everything in existence. No one can enjoy anything anymore. Tiny details matter to people more than the bigger pictures and it’s seriously fucking depressing.
I have become such a fan of 60fps in the past year or so that I think I’m gonna have to play it in performance especially since it seems to be stable in combat. The 60fps in combat is where I think it really counts specifically for this game. Having that fast fluid combat at 60.
Except that resolution drop is almost Switch level bad, I would personally prefer a reasonably sharp image at lower framerate if the alternative was a smudged image.
Yea DF continually recommends 30 and then I put it on 30 and it’s just so unplayable for me . Part of me wishes I never experienced 60 so I can just stick to the quality mods, but atlas I cannot.
Motion blur kills my brain man. Really sucks that you can't turn it off. It's fine when I'm just running around and mostly looking straight forward but when I'm exploring an area and whipping my camera around to scope out what's around me it almost gives me a headache. I tried, I used it for about an hour, but I just couldn't keep going using it. As much as I hate the inconsistent frame rate of the performance mode it's much more tolerable than the killer motion blur. If I could turn that off I'd take the consistent frame rate for sure.
30fps needs to die. The jump from 30 to 40 is much bigger than 40 to 60. 40fps really is the Savior for this new gen low framerate crap. Aim for 40 devs!
Blows my mind that i have to even consider playing my my ps5 game in 30fps. Games shouldn't even be made in anything but 60fps. Damn we were promised 120 fps.
I think with CBU3 and Yoshi-P being behind this and 14, we’ll be in good hands. They clearly didn’t half ass this game, you can really feel the passion behind it
You don’t even notice it when you’re playing. Played the demo multiple times on performance mode and not once did I do a double take at it when combat began. Upscaling solves it.
How can you say this is as close to a perfect release as youve seen in a long time when Dead Island 2 ran near perfect and didnt run at 7th gen resolutions. This is incredibly biased.
@tehCostHD It runs at a near constant 60FPS and looks better when doing so yet John states that FF XVI is the most polished game we've had in quite some time which is just a flat out lie. This review was nothing more than a fanboy showing his bias.
Just finished the game (in performance mode) and for me it is the game of the year so far. The motion blur in graphics mode made me appreciate the performance mode. I play even on pc most of my games in 40~60fps (like witcher 3 or cyberpunk with ray tracing) and normaly I don't see a difference between 45 and 60 fps. Lucky me, I gree up in a pal region.
No option to disable Motion Blur? It’s 2023. Who in there right mind wants Motion Blur on. Even better, who wants to develop a game with it on and no option to turn it off.
you "forgot" to mention that in the recommended by you "graphics" mode the game is unplayable due to vomit and dizziness inducing motion blur implementation.
Ive been playing for a few days now and been using graphics mode in Sanbreque ( performance mode tanks here) while running around and exploring then shifting to performance for big fights. Thanks for confirming this DF!
Last few months I was reading many comments here on TH-cam about how amazing the graphics of this game are. I guess that's what hype does, it distorts people's vision of reality.
I finished the game yesterday. And oh my god. I FUCKING LOVED IT! The music, oh my god the music, the story got me to tears sometimes, the gameplay is sooo good! Performance wasnt perfect though. 9/10 from me.
I know some people don't want to hear this, but a game with so many performance problems in performance mode shouldn't get so high ratings. This is a wrong sign for the developers. Look at Jedi: Survivor. The game still runs horrible in performance mode on consoles, including screen tearing. In the FF 16 demo i even noticed extrem frame drops in nearly empty small rooms in the castle. I personally won't buy the game until this is fixed.
Publishers use FOMO and fanboys to run damage control for them. Put out a poorly performing game and have their rabid fans tell anybody that complains that they're wrong; that they don't notice any dips; and 18fps was fine for Ocarina of Time when we were kids so why care? This can join Jedi Survivor on the forget about list. So much other choice out there.
@@shinramiddlemanager7949 I remember asking EA for a patch and got answers from people like "The game runs PERFECT on my PS5" or "Maybe don't buy your PS5 from wish next time". This is so weird. I mean everyone benefits from a stable 60 FPS mode.
@@joshsmith2629 I am talking about a PS5 game not a Switch game. I mean you know that there's a difference? Just watch the performance analyzes, the performance mode is constantly hovering from below 40 to 60 FPS with a resolution at 720p at times.
@@joshsmith2629 This is a problem with optimization and not with the hardware. There are many games out there with a lot more graphical fidelity, like Forbidden West or Far Cry 6, and they all have a stable 60 FPS performance mode. I guess they developed the game for 30 FPS and at one point later in the development realized that the game needs a performance mode too.
Yet the clown Alex thinks the consoles still have SOOO much to give no pros are needed this generation. I'm mainly a pc player and absolutely hate he is the pc tech guy on this site
@@SPG8989 I think its mostly due to incompetent devs or garbage engines. I'm curious to see what Forza Motorsport will look like in game and its resolution, frames, and RT will look like.
Run Time is perfect for a mainline Final Fantasy game. Especially when its excellent like this one. Awesome and detail tech review as always! Wonderful job!
So to get 60 fps we need to drop down to 720 p… and doesn’t get locked 60 while exploring. There’s no point of a performance mode it it can’t reach locked 60 I guess it’s shouldn’t be a problem that starfield is only 30 fps now then?
then you will never be able to buy this game if the performance patch didnt do anything to improve fps that means they are finished with the games optimization already
The music, especially the boss battles, is alone worthwhile picking the game up. I haven't been this excited for the title in a long time. Look forward to jumping into FF16 world this weekend. Excellent review John, thank you.
You know I’ve said before that I wish there was a mixed mode, where it was 30/40 fps high fid during exploration and kick into 60 fps during combat for the fluidity.Almost seems like they did that here, feel like it could be a cool thing if better implemented. Not sure how many other people would want that though or how practical it would be to implement. Almost like a car shifting gears.
I wish it was more granular, not just a flip between the two but just let you chose how you want to balance quality vs performance. At the very least have 3 modes, quality, performance, and something in between balance mode or something. shouldn't be hard to implement since it's just a matter of changing the resolution, and turning on/off certain graphic settings like you can in every single PC game, it sohuld only take a few lines of code I would think (though i could be completely wrong, I know nothing about programming)
@@Misfiring89 I think would depend, if you want from like a locked 40 to locked 60, and it was happening at predictable points like entering and exiting combat, I don’t think it would be too bad . But you may be right though.
It's the first new main-line FF that I'm currently enjoying ( in 17 years ) that feels as close to what an FF should be thats been missing for a long time ( great story, characters, realism & fantasy elements with over the top spectacle and solid world-lore that's easy to follow with a consistent, banging soundtrack on top ) though it's not perfect but the pros are easily outweighing the cons, in 17 years since FF12 in 2006 on the ol PS2, that's how long its been from an old-school fan, so I don't know what they're ( reviewers ) talking about or this rancid comment section for that matter.
31:50, looks like Gandalf fighting the Balrog! This whole game looks gorgeous to my eyes, possibly my favourite visuals so far this generation - particularly the forest sections you show here.
Ha, if you haven't played the game yet, you might not know just how right you are... there's a shot in the game that is a direct copy of the wide shot of Gandalf and the Balrog falling into the deepest depths of Moria. If it's not an intentional homage, I'd be extremely surprised.
I'm totally not a FF guy but more of a racing guy but man the quality of video's you guys bring out are so good lately that while watching this I can even get excited for what you guys bring to the table. The way of explaining, the passion, the level of detail. No other group of guys can match that and then I haven't even spoken about the editing... Pffff I'm so deeply impressed by that and I believe Oliver does the edits for these video's... Well sir... Hats off to you. I'm absolutely deeply impressed and you all can be extremely proud of the work you deliver for this channel. Hope to see a lot more of your work in the future. Greets from your neighbour (Dutchman)
Another thing about the combat going to 60 could be that they have completely turned off loading, as when exploring they will need to load new assets and such as you walk around. In combat they can reasonably expect you to stay in an area for a time so loading new assets in the distance wouldn't be as necessary.
Hate to say it, but this is incorrect, I make games reviews and tech comparisons on my channel so I’m passionate on it and I’ll give you a good detailed answer! Loading games uses power from the SSD read speed and CPU threads. Anything graphically related like fidelity and fps output will come from the GPU. Sometimes your type of TV can positively or negatively affect the fps as well, for example Sony branded TVs have a high quality option for smooth Motion Interpolation to help insert fake frames to make games appear at 60 fps even when they aren’t. LG TVs have the worst motion interpolation implementation in the industry, so theirs looks awful and can result in your image looking washed out. VRR is also key to matching your TV frame rate to the output of the console. In short - the game rendering a larger map to avoid in game loading has nothing to do with the frame rate as it’s using a different part of the console’s power to process it. It’s also not how FF16 works either as the maps aren’t being entirely rendered, only what you can see on screen in front of you is rendered and then what’s in the distance is low poly as they explained in this video to save GPU strain. This is why it has slight ‘texture pop in’. Unfortunately FF16 is badly optimised and this is evidenced by every single other PS5 game offering the same size map scale that has 1-2 seconds load time and offers high frame rate mode at 120fps or 40fps mode with VRR. It’s important to remember FF16 is not an open world RPG, so we should not be talking about it losing fps due to high demand - when there is no specific high demand. It doesn’t have hair strand features like Resident Evil remakes, it doesn’t officially state any ray tracing capabilities, and it forces motion blur on players. It also forces cut scenes to play in 30fps even if you choose performance mode so it is very jarring on the eyes as it flicks between 30 and 60. As they explained again in this video, there are parts of the game that even use pre-rendered video files as cut scenes instead of the actual game engine. Even COD warzone (the first one from 2020) runs at a dynamic 4K120fps as long as you are using HDMI 2.1, and that map is significantly larger than the smaller area sizes of FF16. Loading times are only slightly longer there as it’s finding other online players, but as I explained before anyway the loading time is not connected to the frames per second. That fps is a very impressive stat considering the fact that it’s a completely online experience with up to 150 players per match all pinged in generating server lag pulling down the games performance. FF16 is offline so no excuse. Assassin’s Creed Valhalla (also from 2020) runs at a very near native 2160p 4K at full 60fps with a 12x larger map and no load times in between segments either. The FF16 maps are not fully loading in when you fast travel to a location, despite being woven together. They use very low poly models and shadows until you get closer to the point where the game renders it in fully, so there really is no excuse for not achieving 60fps, even though it’s not what we want to hear 😢 blurring out the background during combat to achieve a higher fps in FF16 combat is actually a smart idea, but very very lazy and not the high quality we expected from Square Enix, hence why it’s been so widely discussed at the moment. We are in the middle of the PS5’s life cycle, it’s not a release title game, so this should have been a better effort from SE. They have acknowledged their mistake by putting out a patch to improve performance but it hasn’t worked. I’m hoping for a better patch soon because right now $70 is a steep asking price for something that is visually on par and in some cases worse than 2016’s FF15
@@Krampus6-1-6 there’s always one like you 🥱 it kinda is that deep if you care about games, which you obviously don’t. You also don’t need to read it. Keep scrolling buddy
Coming back here now that the PC demo is out and I finally get to experience this game myself, and damn, this game *is* impressive, very amazed by the cutscenes because for the first time in my life as a gamer, I genuinely felt like the scenes looked identical to pre-rendered FMVs from the old days. At first I was upset that they were locked at 30fps, but I think this is mostly there to mask the transition between real-time graphics and FMVs (the game uses a few of them as transitions to hide loading screens, apparently, but they were all rendered with in-game graphics). Since both are at 30fps and the FMVs are extremely high quality (probably 4k), I genuinely wouldn't even be able to tell there was an FMV playing in the first place if it wasn't for my fps counter in the corner.
I never comment but this time I really feel the need to compliment this beautiful video. Really from start to finish a very good presentation and the passion you've put here almost makes me want to buy a ps5 for this game alone. I didn't even felt the length and in fact I would've enjoyed watching more. Thank you John!
It's bad optimization. There are several games out there with much more visual fidelity and they run with flawless 60 FPS and higher resolution. Forbidden West for example, Far Cry 6 and many more.
@@ms7b101 Yes of course: The open world has much more complexity in it's geometry in it's presentation and even active physics, running at rock stable 60 FPS at 1440p (i think). That's just one example. The main problem of FF16 is the engine in my opinion, it's just not very good optimized.
I play a lot of DMC + esports games and still played this in the graphics mode @30 fps, and enjoyed it. Like with Bloodborne, it sucks it's not on PC @4K60 but it's a good enough game it's fine as is.
I dont like the motion blur at all it looks so bad on a OLED tv with VRR i have stopped playing making characters faces look like a blur mesh when moving around
It is a rare game where virtually everything that was promised is delivered in full. Regarding those voices, it makes me very happy that they have European actors to act unlike most games using American ones when it is appropriate and when it is not.
You give developers an inch by offering hardware that can do 4K 60 FPS... And somehow developers take a mile, just 2 years later by turning that into 720p 60 FPS. This is a PS5 exclusive too, meaning they had ONE JOB.
An action RPG that forgot the "RPG" part. It's just an action game. I was disappointed with that, but I'm sure some will be happy. I just wish they'd make another Final Fantasy game. The Metacritic score is probably too high, but pretty close to the reception, I think. Edit: I just wish we had an option to lock at 30fps. Also, turn off bloody motion blur! Edit 2: Loading times for me are over 10 seconds. Nothing like Tsushima or the like.
@@SE-fq4gf Which is nice, but rather than a fluctiating fps, just lock it there and don't go higher. I fear the next generation won't have a 30fps mode at all.
@@SE-fq4gf Yea. It's all about options. 60fps makes people like me vomit and we need 30fps to play comfortably. Motion blur does the same to a lesser degree. Of course, it all depends on the game. Still, having that toggle to go from locked 30fps to unlocked to allow for better hardware or patches would help everybody as that could potentially lead to even higher than 60fps as the years progress.
@@SE-fq4gf it's really easy to do as well. We can just lock our pc gpus to 30fps system wide. It would be pretty easy to do that on the ps5 as well. For those that want higher frame rates, there could be flexible options. For example, set it system wide for all games, but have program specific settings when a game runs poorly under those conditions. Luike I say, options are good, but right now we have very few in console world.
I'm sorry I've said it before on here and I'll say it again, I have no clue what this weird disparity between PC and Console analysis is that you guys are doing atm. When John was waxing lyrical about how amazing and polished a release this was I actually assumed that the performance mode was considerably improved from the demo and that they'd pulled off a miracle. Then to get to the framerate analysis and see it waving around the 40-50 fps range really pissed me off. This is an amazing accomplishment? Why? Because it's Final Fantasy? It absolutely does not appear to be pushing to the boat with visuals enough that they shouldn't have been able to produce a mostly solid 60fps mode. Everything outside of the giant summon set pieces seems fine enough that 1080p upscaled and 60fps is more than reasonable based on comparative titles. Even worse is that that mode has such awful image quality it's actually beyond belief. This forced use of FSR is a terrible crutch being used in recent releases and is making games look absolutely awful in motion. This game is not open world (A Good thing imo btw) and is not a graphical showcase any more-so than cross gen Sony titles like Ragnarok and Forbidden west which both run at 60, so how this has such a positive slant I really have no clue. More importantly, if this was released on PC and with console equivalent hardware you could only achieve the framerates from performance mode, even when FSR is clearly cranked up as high as it is, it would be considered an abject failure and Alex would be tearing it a new one (Rightly so). I get you've decided 30fps is OK for you with this one John and honestly that's absolutely fine. I think it's terrible console games have abandoned 60 now because the games don't even look better than their cross gen competition and are hardly more ambitious (Starfield may be a fair exception). But it seems really unfair to be slamming every PC release left right and centre while giving this a pass when realistically you could cap all your PC games to 30 and probably have similar "Quality" mode experiences and ignore everything Alex says atm. That would be a joke, nobody on PC wants to do that, but there's a very clear double standard going on here that seems wrong to me. And btw just to clarify PC performance on recent releases have been crap so Alex has been very much justified recently, it's just most of the time the console versions are pretty much as bad and sometimes even worse. Case being Jedi survivor's Performance mode where the image quality is absolutely shocking. You won't get a locked 60 anywhere but at least it looks nicer on PC... Anyway I'm very excited to eventually play this when it's fixed up (If it ever is) and the game itself looks very cool. But the positive slant on the technical analysis here doesn't seem right because I think the technical performance of current gen games is an industry wide issue not isolated just to the PC platform like DF seems to imply with their videos recently. I mean seriously how on earth are Cyberpunk 2077 and Horizon Forbidden West a solid 60 on consoles despite the complexity of their open worlds and this isn't, it just doesn't add up. Not hating here guys I do love your content but I think some more clarity about when 30 is "Fine" and when it isn't would be nice so we know where expectations lie in the future
8:45 this is where I disagree. The character "idle" animations and such in Forbidden West were extremely overdone. It was like everyone had ADD or something. I've rarely see humans move as much as the characters in that game. Very unrealistic and distracting
Really hoping they'll drop a 40 fps patch for 120hz screens. The hit to the visuals are noticeable in performance mode, but quality mode is just unplayable to me 😣
Unless you have a medical condition that causes severe motion-sickness while playing at 30fps then ( vey rare condition ), no, its not unplayable to you, you only have convinced yourself to think it is. I can play both and there is a difference but no where near unplayable, sub 25 to 20 maybe unplayable but that's another story.
@shauryatyagi2017 Xbox prints 8k on the box and GPU but Starfield is still 1200p. At least the PS5 has an 8k rendered game. Unlike Xbox.😂😂 cmon don't be salty.
I wonder if some parts of this engine tech is getting used in FFXIV 7.0. I'm especially liking the lighting and facial animations in XVI and hope to see more of that in XIV's next expansion (new detailed animations might be a stretch)
It seems very likely honestly. Because the style of this game gels very well with 14 and they are for sure using an upgraded version of that engine. The models in particular give strong hints to this, as well as the very first trailer they had released way back when.
@@Synkhan I remember watching it and having the same exact thoughts. Technically XIV has come a long way from 2.0 days. Heavensward added DX11 support and with it Tessellation and reflections. Texture, model and visual effect fidelity went up throughout expansions. With XVI it's exciting to see what the team could have in store for XIV 7.0. Can't wait to play the game tomorrow.
This was confirmed a while ago. Can't remember where, but 16 is using an upgraded version of the game engine from 14. There are plans for 14 to get a major graphics overhaul in the near-ish future.
12:45 FYI: as John mentions that turning off motion blur is not an option in the current, release version. But over the past weekend, Yoshi P mentioned (during the Japanese Pre launch livestream) they will add an option to “Turn Off” motion blur in an upcoming patch.
Thank god too. I was hating it in the demo.
Should have launched with the option
@@BorisTheGoose92 agree. I’m also not a fan of motion blur. However, I recently got my first OLED TV just in time for this game and it helps when playing “Graphics” mode. The near instantaneous pixel response time stuttering is a lot smoother at 30fps than other games. At least in my case.
@@teddyholiday8038 yeah. More people are going to wait out until the patches before playing this now. But for me, with a story this grand, don’t want spoilers. At least by the time I get to New Game+, hopefully all that is implemented and performance is improved.
I'm sure the motion blur toggle is included in the 300mb day 1 patch.
"Grapes per second" must become the unique quality measure for any new game.
Came to the comments to write this XD
I can not find the timestamp, where is that line?
@@nefertumdark@16:44 lol
It's almost like the Seconds to Crate metric OldManMurray dreamed up so long ago.
@pigjedithe guy never said he watched the video, just said he can't find a time stamp
The Grape segment was hilarious as an FFXIV player who was there for all the grape mocking during the Endwalker launch! I’m hesistant to watch much more to avoid spoilers though.
🤣 We were dying. We had to pause the video. Grapes Per Second!!!! 🍇🍇🍇
Yup, I'm dying right now. Had to come to the comments for extra fun 😂
🎶Tales of Loooosssss, and fiiiiire, and graaaaaaaapes...🎶
Those OG Endwalker grapes were 11/10
Hahaha so good!
They added a motion blur slider in an update today! You can set it from 0 to it's default setting of 5.
5 looks great for 30 imo but 60 fps could do with 2 or 3
Let's take a moment to appreciate John's "Ode to the Grapes of Final Fantasy". Top job sir.
DF stays unrivaled, I don't think we've had a moment this magical since the Chad Warden ps3 retrospective intro.
@@ghostcula That reminds of df retro, i don't think there is anything like DF retro on entire youtube..
It’s never gets old listening to John talk about video games, just like Rich, he has a way of describing everything that’s so appealing to listen to and you can hear his passion for the game while also being able to critique the finer details.
Love it, but… i absolutely hate when he doesn’t like a game, oh man he’s unbearable. Lol
Run time was perfect, don't apologise. Great to witness somebody just loving a game and wanting to share it! Well done.
IF this review was 20 hours id have watched it lmao
I never noticed the run time. I only realized I'd spent 30 minutes after hearing him apologize, lol.
its too long for ADD audience
@@dante19890 Well that isn't somewhat insulting to actual add folk... 😑
To be fair, i have add and I managed to watch at least 25 minutes before I started to lose interest. But I was busy eating during most of if so you know, was kinda already distracted 😅
You damn hypocrites hate starfield for being 30 fps but you’re fine with this shitty game terrible performance lol
If you guys don't want anything spoiled, just listen to the video, John describes everything well.
I didn't expect that MASSIVE spoiler at 31:05 🙁
@@SwordsandMushrooms Thank you bro, you might just saved my game experience from being destroyed. I immediately paused the video when I saw this comment😧
@@SwordsandMushrooms dude you can't even describe what is happening
Fkn poosis spoilers don't ruin anything
@@SwordsandMushroomsYou are my hero ❤️ Thank you
Wonderful video. Do not apologize for the length. This is so well put together. Amazing work.
It's great to see you excited about a new release.
Yeah I've always been a long time final fantasy fan since I first bought FF7 on the Playstation 1 as a kid. His review really shows the love, care & respect he has for the game which is surprisingly uncommon when it comes to many game reviewers.
(I'm liking the like minded sentiment of this comments section)
Totally agree. Jon, this is a great video and your passion is appreciated and accentuates the quality of this game. If people don’t want to hang around they will drop off once they’ve got the message. But the rest of us are all here for the moments you feel enamoured enough to write a love letter to a work of art!
Yeah it's (sadly) a real feat these days to have close to no game breaking/major bugs in a game of this magnitude.
I salute the team, what a great effort!
fucking sad indeed
No software is bug free.
@@a9udn9u-vanced that's true about minor ones but with the gaming industry critical ones come day one and a few months down the line that's the problem you see
Bug free action games didn't exist before FF16?
@@leftyfourguns No and it's worse before because of modern software development processes. The only reason you feel games are more buggy nowadays is because modern games are exponentially more complex than older games. When you code 1+1 it's difficult to have bugs in it.
John, I was not expecting a section on the music alone and I can't say enough how much I appreciate that you included it for this particular game for the DF Tech Review. Definitely felt like a conscientious decision for fans of the series.
That's how I feel about the grape section!
Music is part of the tech progression in video game, even though there are no limitation now, it is essential to the presentation and experience a player can have with technology, I'm a bit disappointed there aren't in depth review of special sound effect and music immersion. Example like how a sword slash the skin or armor of the enemy, or how the music transition between different stages of the battle, they all contribute to the experience of the game even though the player barely notice the diminutive detail comparing to the graphic.
He has done it before, but is really one of the reasons I love john reviews, he really explores the audiovisual department from every direction, is great tbh.
It deserves it. The music is sensational.
@@carpetfluff35 Oh I know. I am a major Soken fan. I plan to buy the soundtrack too.
I feel like Final Fantasy 16 and Final Fantasy 7 Remake solidified that the series is no longer held back by technical limitations. These visuals were envisioned by the devs from the start and this is truly how they wanted the series to look.
Probably neckbeard-scratchy, but the main material property (i.e: BRDF property) shown at 6:27 is not Fresnel, it's Rayleigh backscatter.
Backscatter is a key component of material properties like velvet/silk/suede (especially in generating the dual visual colorations often visible in those materials) or even hair (hair 'halos')
Fresnel is more of a standard reflectivity component in metalic/dielectric materials, and is a standard inclusion in any Microfacet BRDF model. The Fresnel equations simply quantify the distribution of the light energy reflected and refracted when interacting with a surface, so it has no way to model the fuzzy fiber simulation that causes backscatter (simulation because rasterization or ray tracing of such fine elements defined as geometry would be too expensive).
And yes, it's likely simulating both (as mentioned, Fresnel is standard in Microfacet BRDFs; energy dissipation is usually modeled in all material shaders!), but the focus in this shot is on a velvet/suede material.
Also, just because a shader "varies on viewing angle" does not make it a Fresnel material, as many material effects use the surface normal relative to the view vector -> in other words: a cow is indeed an animal, but an animal is not by definition a cow.
Sorry for the neckbeard scratching, but because of the high standards set for DF, this seems like a fair correction.
Wow! This video is an art in itself. Very enjoyable to watch like in the old times.
31:09 I am sure that I am gonna be dead by the level of goosebumps I am gonna get at this moment, soundtrack alone is some of the best thing I have ever heard in my life
Agreed. It’s so good.
Music is so good, Soken and Okabe (Nier series) are my favourite game music composers at the moment.
@@xSG1969x Same here. Love their work.
720p - 1080p in performance mode 💀 truly next gen
I would 100% be happy with a 'balanced' framerate mode that offered 30fps during open world/exploration but cut to 60fps for battles.
Me too
I remember wishing for this while playing FF7R - walking around town is fine at 30 FPS if it looks significantly better, but during combat, it's definitely 60 FPS or bust.
thats terrible
no that would be jarring. 40fps no fsr please. it's not rocket science
@@whodatninja439 it drops into the 30s in some cities and during eikon fights its clear there are cpu and gpu bottlenecks a locked 40 isnt possible
No need to apologize for the length! You're attention to detail is what you do best. Keep doing you John!
再加上TQQQ 跌了4.3%，但SQQQ只涨了2.3%，三倍ETF会贬值，但是狼王没警告大家不能常持
I believe I'm nearing the last leg of the game at this point. I remember years ago when I dreamt of have a game that looked like all those beautiful CG cut scenes we would get in the PS1 and PS2 Final Fantasy titles, and now we are as close to that as ever, even better at times. The combat is really solid and I adore the narrative in this game. The hours of cutscenes are completely fine with me as it is telling one of the best stories in the Final Fantasy series. Thanks for the video breaking everything down and going into such great detail.
Close to PS1 and PS2 CGI Cutscenes? We are past that Graphics wise. FFXVI looks better than any CG Cutscene in the PS1 and 2.
We are 10 years way passed that.
That active time lore or w/e it's called is one of the best unique feature they came up with and I'n sure other games will follow in it's footsteps.
@@ZeltorI pray this become a default option for all large rpg games
Agree 100%
Its so frustrating that key performance patches come later. I always feel punished for buying it day 1
Relax.
@fernandoblengio didn't realize I wasn't relaxed? If you read my comment in a manic tone, that's on you. Being critical of something is not the same as being manic.
@@jamjam445 if you're talking about the fps for the game, I think its hardware limitation at this point as even PS5 can barely keep up with FF16's software demands in performance so its pushing the hardware to its limits while keeping it playable and enjoyable as possible. They provided some quality of life improvements though including adjusting motion blur for 1.03 Patch
@@Mirage4492i think it's mainly due to ray tracing. Modern consoles struggle w that
@Mirage4492 I was honestly mostly upset that we didn't have an option at launch to disable motion blur. But that's patched now.
How convenient. I was literally just thinking to myself wondering when DF would drop their review
Basically the same time everyone else did, on account of the Square Enix embargo lmao
And they say we don’t need pro consoles.. wow it’s not looking good for the next 4 years!
@@seanpitt27 Heh, PC port can't come soon enough, eh?
Let's hope it turns out better than the AAA releases this year
@@LS95774 Yeah was about to say, can't trust PC ports to fix things when they usually turn up even worse lol. If you want 60fps with a reasonable resolution, seems like PC and multiplatform games are still the only way to go. That or keep playing PS4 games on PS5, those look and run pretty great.
@@seanpitt27t's not the consoles. Devs are lazy and have outs and excuses. Xbox granted hasn't proved its power yet but ps5. Look at all the exclusives, insomniac for example. SM remastered, SM miles morales, ratchet rift apart. All have performance ray tracing modes. Flawless 1440p 60fps with RT. Look at HFW, 1800p 60fps locked. Ragnarok, Demon souls, tlou part 1. All running superbly. It's the Devs being lazy. The fact we're going back to 30fps being the norm is a joke, unfortunately when it comes to third party pc is the way. This game is a ps5 console exclusive running and looking like absolute sh*t. No excuse it's a joke. This is why I've stopped pre ordering games, I waited to see this video to determine whether or not I was gonna get this. Cause that's modern gaming. You can't just rely on good faith that the game will release in a polished state. It's so bad. I ain't getting this game now. Wait for a deep sale.
This game is a testament to how gorgeous baked lighting still is to this day.
I absolutely adore John's DF Tech Reviews. The craftmanship of each video is remarkable.
720p?!?!?!?! Did we go back to the PS3 , XB 360 era?
What a shambolic mess.
John, you're hillarious. That grape segment made my day. Great review. After watching this and playing the demo I'm so excited to play the full game.
How did I not find Digital Foundry until recently. Great work John and everyone
They've been a great source of info for years, but I think console players starting to care about performance vs quality has seen DF get more attention.
Glad you found them! They're amazing and really just give the facts 🙂
@@TheRikuideFurame My first technical review and so impressed at the level of detail they go to to give us consumers all the information we need
The only one good reviewer is Tom, no bias no bullcrap fanboyism, the rest are meh biases cry babies.
You weren't looking hard enough
Needing to drop to 720p to reach 60fps is crazy, going from high 30's to 60 all the time is jarring as fuck.
Also using FSR1 to upscale the image doesn't make sense, this is not the Switch, at least use the much better FSR2.
By now I think most people won't take "open world" as positive anymore as it often implies massive open areas which are largely empty, boring and repetitive.
Open world is just unnecessary. Large zones are way enough.
Dips into 720 resolution and choppy performance mode and this is a good launch? Idk I can’t help but feel DF has resigned itself that we will always have bad performance on consoles.
Had a good laugh when your suggestion was just never to switch to performance so your brain never knows better lol.
I’m so disappointed with the promises of these next gen consoles. The hopium was real…
These next-gen consoles can handle 60fps in certain cases, but when you see how detailed they are and the AMOUNT of systems in work, 30fps in itself is a miracle at times when you really think about it. How Zelda Totk on the switch runs flawlessly is a mystery.
The amount of systems and detail...in this game....my God no
Well if you check all the poor PC games recently I would say that it's just the gaming industry and game development problem in general. The PS5 and XSX perform really close to their PC counterparts (a Ryzen 3600X + RX 6700 class) but for 500 bucks (I would even say 400 for the PS5 digital edition).
On PC to really get performance, you really need to aim for high end components: RX6800/6900/7900 or RTX 3080/3090/4070/4080/4090 to really beat the consoles and all those GPUs alone cost the price of the console or much more, you then have to add the CPU, Mobo, Memory and SSD.
So credit to consoles makers, with the price point they were targeting, they offer the best they can. I have the feeling that modern development/engines enable easy development but have a lot of overhead in terms of resources consumption. It is unacceptable to see the poor textures of a lot of recent games chugging with 8GB of VRAM, the stutterings due to shaders compilation even on beefy machines etc...
@@SPG8989uhhhh yes? Did you even watch the first half of this review?
@@sup3rAVATARtlafAN It's definitely not flawless, have you seen how hard the framerate tanks in Kakariko Village?
The work you put into the analytics of this video...brilliant. Thanks for your hard work! Can't wait to play!
Just wish the exploration mode will be fixed for 60 fps , i find hard to play at 30
You get used to very quickly, I prefer stability so I'll quality mode. The graphics and visuals are amazing so it helps with an even better picture quality, but I understand if a majority find 30fps hard to play at.
it wont be fixed its not as simple as hitting a button it must be cpu bottlenecked by the looks of it
The motion blur is far worse than what is mentioned in this video. If you stand in a bright light anywhere then move your right analog stick from left to right it literally triples the image of the sword hilt making the blur more like a fast disorienting image duplication method instead of a blur at all.... I have no idea how Squenix did not realize that blur is horrible.
720p!? Oh boy.
I love that number.
So pogged to be back in the early 00s again
Great video. I love the idea of tiered cut scenes. Forbidden West is truly miles ahead of anything in this regard.
Too bad the game suxxxx
@@GlazeonthewickeR its decent about as good as control another mediocre game praised by people for some reason
@@GlazeonthewickeR it's an okay game, nothing too great but nothing to scoff at
@@xtr.7662 "for some reason" because its a good game and alot of reviewers/people enjoy it? I get everyone is entitled to their own opinion and nothing can please everybody, but you act like you have NO clue why this game is praised. like cmon lets not act clueless lol
@@GlazeonthewickeR It's a good game trapped in the body of a bloated open world. I really wish the trend of making every game open world would die already. FFXVI's model of having large, independent spaces is a great middle ground.
"One of the most polished games in last years."
"FPS dropping up to 30-40 in some areas in performance mode."
Are you honestly thinking that we can call it "polished" ?
Oh no. One of the best games ever made in the graphical department can’t hit 60 at all times on a 400 dollar console. There’s more to a game than hitting 60 fps for every second. In 20 years, no one will look back at this game and say, yeah that game sucks. It only ran at 45 fps in the open world. 😂 bruh that’s not what makes a game good. Did you miss the rest of the review?
@@tehCostHDeveryone bitching about the graphics either:
1. Never played the demo so have no idea how much fun the gameplay loop is.
2. Never had any intention of actually buying/playing it.
@@eh-ronlocke7164 exactly bro. The internet is swriously depressing. Everyone is doom and gloom about everything in existence. No one can enjoy anything anymore. Tiny details matter to people more than the bigger pictures and it’s seriously fucking depressing.
I have become such a fan of 60fps in the past year or so that I think I’m gonna have to play it in performance especially since it seems to be stable in combat. The 60fps in combat is where I think it really counts specifically for this game. Having that fast fluid combat at 60.
Except that resolution drop is almost Switch level bad, I would personally prefer a reasonably sharp image at lower framerate if the alternative was a smudged image.
it's more like 50fps lol, can drop down to 720p. jedi survivor all over again
@@yellowblanka6058 I didn't think the IQ was bad playing the demo personally. What kind of bothered me most was framerate because it stands out.
as always digital foundry recommends the 30fps. why the hell should we play at 30fps on a ps5????
Yea DF continually recommends 30 and then I put it on 30 and it’s just so unplayable for me . Part of me wishes I never experienced 60 so I can just stick to the quality mods, but atlas I cannot.
I was actually eating grapes in the grape analysis part. Wholesome moment
Motion blur kills my brain man. Really sucks that you can't turn it off. It's fine when I'm just running around and mostly looking straight forward but when I'm exploring an area and whipping my camera around to scope out what's around me it almost gives me a headache. I tried, I used it for about an hour, but I just couldn't keep going using it. As much as I hate the inconsistent frame rate of the performance mode it's much more tolerable than the killer motion blur. If I could turn that off I'd take the consistent frame rate for sure.
30fps needs to die. The jump from 30 to 40 is much bigger than 40 to 60. 40fps really is the Savior for this new gen low framerate crap. Aim for 40 devs!
Blows my mind that i have to even consider playing my my ps5 game in 30fps. Games shouldn't even be made in anything but 60fps. Damn we were promised 120 fps.
I have a 120htz tv that supports vrr. so I love it when dev provide either a 40 fps mode or an unlocked quality mode.
Idk, i have a new tv and even with vrr enabled i can notice alot of fps dips
Thank you for such elaborate and detailed insight into every facade of the game. Incredible work as always.
Sending prayers for them to make a great PC port. Honestly, the "drop settings and resolution during combat" setting would be great on PC too!
I think with CBU3 and Yoshi-P being behind this and 14, we’ll be in good hands. They clearly didn’t half ass this game, you can really feel the passion behind it
Kinda wild that the base resolution is 720p during combat.
You don’t even notice it when you’re playing. Played the demo multiple times on performance mode and not once did I do a double take at it when combat began. Upscaling solves it.
@@eh-ronlocke7164even df said that on the big screens resolution is pretty noticable
@@eh-ronlocke7164stop lying
@@eh-ronlocke7164it looks like an oil painting
Man, y’all circle jerking in here. I guess you all need DF to make up your minds for you.
Love that you kept returning to Stillwind's theme throughout the video. I have not been able to stop listening to it since playing the demo.
How can you say this is as close to a perfect release as youve seen in a long time when Dead Island 2 ran near perfect and didnt run at 7th gen resolutions.
This is incredibly biased.
Because dead island 2 doesn’t do things nearly as crazy as this game lmao
@@tehCostHDThis game seems pretty straightforward to me.
@tehCostHD
It runs at a near constant 60FPS and looks better when doing so yet John states that FF XVI is the most polished game we've had in quite some time which is just a flat out lie.
This review was nothing more than a fanboy showing his bias.
Just finished the game (in performance mode) and for me it is the game of the year so far. The motion blur in graphics mode made me appreciate the performance mode. I play even on pc most of my games in 40~60fps (like witcher 3 or cyberpunk with ray tracing) and normaly I don't see a difference between 45 and 60 fps. Lucky me, I gree up in a pal region.
No option to disable Motion Blur? It’s 2023. Who in there right mind wants Motion Blur on. Even better, who wants to develop a game with it on and no option to turn it off.
SE have already stated they’re working on it.
Honestly for 30fps you kinda of need it to smooth things out some. 30fps with no motion blur is very stuttery to me
you "forgot" to mention that in the recommended by you "graphics" mode the game is unplayable due to vomit and dizziness inducing motion blur implementation.
Ive been playing for a few days now and been using graphics mode in Sanbreque ( performance mode tanks here) while running around and exploring then shifting to performance for big fights. Thanks for confirming this DF!
The game isn't even out yet, do you mean the demo?
@@avalokiteshvara113Early physical copy
@@avalokiteshvara113he’s capping
@cb6667 He isn't. A lotta people got an early copy. I haven't, but in 2016 I had an early copy of FFXV by about a week
@@cb6667 what you are experiencing right now is queefing and jealousy my guy LMAOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Last few months I was reading many comments here on TH-cam about how amazing the graphics of this game are. I guess that's what hype does, it distorts people's vision of reality.
Amazing tech review John, I played the DEMO yesterday and boy oh boy the story hits hard right from the beginning. Have a wonderful evening everyone!
Dad was a true man ..sad
What a high production video. Great work!
Only issue with 16 is the ps5 exclusivity. I have my copy coming later today but would have preferred it on pc
@@MobileTechGamingIt would’ve not been this polished if this wasn’t a timed or platform exclusive.
No word about the horrible ghosting in graphics mode?
I finished the game yesterday. And oh my god. I FUCKING LOVED IT! The music, oh my god the music, the story got me to tears sometimes, the gameplay is sooo good! Performance wasnt perfect though. 9/10 from me.
although the game is 10 years old now, ff13 still looks pretty impressive on pc 4k 60fps
I know some people don't want to hear this, but a game with so many performance problems in performance mode shouldn't get so high ratings. This is a wrong sign for the developers. Look at Jedi: Survivor. The game still runs horrible in performance mode on consoles, including screen tearing. In the FF 16 demo i even noticed extrem frame drops in nearly empty small rooms in the castle. I personally won't buy the game until this is fixed.
Publishers use FOMO and fanboys to run damage control for them. Put out a poorly performing game and have their rabid fans tell anybody that complains that they're wrong; that they don't notice any dips; and 18fps was fine for Ocarina of Time when we were kids so why care?
This can join Jedi Survivor on the forget about list. So much other choice out there.
@@shinramiddlemanager7949 I remember asking EA for a patch and got answers from people like "The game runs PERFECT on my PS5" or "Maybe don't buy your PS5 from wish next time". This is so weird. I mean everyone benefits from a stable 60 FPS mode.
@@joshsmith2629?
@@joshsmith2629 I am talking about a PS5 game not a Switch game. I mean you know that there's a difference? Just watch the performance analyzes, the performance mode is constantly hovering from below 40 to 60 FPS with a resolution at 720p at times.
@@joshsmith2629 This is a problem with optimization and not with the hardware. There are many games out there with a lot more graphical fidelity, like Forbidden West or Far Cry 6, and they all have a stable 60 FPS performance mode. I guess they developed the game for 30 FPS and at one point later in the development realized that the game needs a performance mode too.
Resolution drops to 720p and it STILL can't hold a steady 60fps? Ouch. Thats really bad.
Yet the clown Alex thinks the consoles still have SOOO much to give no pros are needed this generation. I'm mainly a pc player and absolutely hate he is the pc tech guy on this site
@@SPG8989 I think its mostly due to incompetent devs or garbage engines. I'm curious to see what Forza Motorsport will look like in game and its resolution, frames, and RT will look like.
The one thing that no one is talking about is how slow it is opening some doors. Especially for a new generation game.
WOW! Nice to see Square Enix is still able to make games like this.
Run Time is perfect for a mainline Final Fantasy game. Especially when its excellent like this one. Awesome and detail tech review as always! Wonderful job!
its a problem when starfield does it but no one batts an eye when final fantasy runs better at 30fps. they shouldve just made a 40fps mode.
The game probably barely hits 30. Starfield looks better and has much more expansive environments
@@alanlee67starfield looks better than this game ! Are you crazy?
So to get 60 fps we need to drop down to 720 p… and doesn’t get locked 60 while exploring.
There’s no point of a performance mode it it can’t reach locked 60
I guess it’s shouldn’t be a problem that starfield is only 30 fps now then?
Hardly comparable games. Starfield is such a huge and complex game.
I will buy as soon as a stable 60fps mode is available, i don't support 30fps on consoles anymore.
Ok cry while we enjoy the game.
@@mrX666-s9p ok play the game while i enjoy your mom
then you will never be able to buy this game if the performance patch didnt do anything to improve fps that means they are finished with the games optimization already
It's tough at 60fps, not only for the instability but the low res assets. It almost looks PS3 level for character models at 60fps.
The music, especially the boss battles, is alone worthwhile picking the game up. I haven't been this excited for the title in a long time.
Look forward to jumping into FF16 world this weekend.
Excellent review John, thank you.
You know I’ve said before that I wish there was a mixed mode, where it was 30/40 fps high fid during exploration and kick into 60 fps during combat for the fluidity.Almost seems like they did that here, feel like it could be a cool thing if better implemented. Not sure how many other people would want that though or how practical it would be to implement. Almost like a car shifting gears.
I wish it was more granular, not just a flip between the two but just let you chose how you want to balance quality vs performance. At the very least have 3 modes, quality, performance, and something in between balance mode or something. shouldn't be hard to implement since it's just a matter of changing the resolution, and turning on/off certain graphic settings like you can in every single PC game, it sohuld only take a few lines of code I would think (though i could be completely wrong, I know nothing about programming)
Flipping between different FPSs constantly would be extremely jarring.
@@Misfiring89 I think would depend, if you want from like a locked 40 to locked 60, and it was happening at predictable points like entering and exiting combat, I don’t think it would be too bad . But you may be right though.
@@Misfiring89Exactly. It definitely is while playing this mess of a game. The game rules, but it really does run like shit.
Is long as i can still use framerate mode
As a PC Player, everything under 60fps is unacceptable
60 FPS still the best pc exclusive.
PC players play at 100+ FPS, 60 FPS is very choppy same as 30 FPS is choppy
Always grapeful for your excellent work John.
So current gen consoles cant even hit 1080p 60fps in new games. Interesting.
Can't believe anyone would even think to score this the same as Redfall...
Eurogamer 💀
It's the first new main-line FF that I'm currently enjoying ( in 17 years ) that feels as close to what an FF should be thats been missing for a long time ( great story, characters, realism & fantasy elements with over the top spectacle and solid world-lore that's easy to follow with a consistent, banging soundtrack on top ) though it's not perfect but the pros are easily outweighing the cons, in 17 years since FF12 in 2006 on the ol PS2, that's how long its been from an old-school fan, so I don't know what they're ( reviewers ) talking about or this rancid comment section for that matter.
31:50, looks like Gandalf fighting the Balrog!
This whole game looks gorgeous to my eyes, possibly my favourite visuals so far this generation - particularly the forest sections you show here.
Ha, if you haven't played the game yet, you might not know just how right you are... there's a shot in the game that is a direct copy of the wide shot of Gandalf and the Balrog falling into the deepest depths of Moria. If it's not an intentional homage, I'd be extremely surprised.
I'm totally not a FF guy but more of a racing guy but man the quality of video's you guys bring out are so good lately that while watching this I can even get excited for what you guys bring to the table.
The way of explaining, the passion, the level of detail. No other group of guys can match that and then I haven't even spoken about the editing... Pffff I'm so deeply impressed by that and I believe Oliver does the edits for these video's... Well sir... Hats off to you.
I'm absolutely deeply impressed and you all can be extremely proud of the work you deliver for this channel. Hope to see a lot more of your work in the future.
Greets from your neighbour (Dutchman)
If you are a racing Guy then go drive a real car not virtual cars lol
Another thing about the combat going to 60 could be that they have completely turned off loading, as when exploring they will need to load new assets and such as you walk around.
In combat they can reasonably expect you to stay in an area for a time so loading new assets in the distance wouldn't be as necessary.
Hate to say it, but this is incorrect, I make games reviews and tech comparisons on my channel so I’m passionate on it and I’ll give you a good detailed answer!
Loading games uses power from the SSD read speed and CPU threads. Anything graphically related like fidelity and fps output will come from the GPU. Sometimes your type of TV can positively or negatively affect the fps as well, for example Sony branded TVs have a high quality option for smooth Motion Interpolation to help insert fake frames to make games appear at 60 fps even when they aren’t. LG TVs have the worst motion interpolation implementation in the industry, so theirs looks awful and can result in your image looking washed out. VRR is also key to matching your TV frame rate to the output of the console.
In short - the game rendering a larger map to avoid in game loading has nothing to do with the frame rate as it’s using a different part of the console’s power to process it. It’s also not how FF16 works either as the maps aren’t being entirely rendered, only what you can see on screen in front of you is rendered and then what’s in the distance is low poly as they explained in this video to save GPU strain. This is why it has slight ‘texture pop in’.
Unfortunately FF16 is badly optimised and this is evidenced by every single other PS5 game offering the same size map scale that has 1-2 seconds load time and offers high frame rate mode at 120fps or 40fps mode with VRR. It’s important to remember FF16 is not an open world RPG, so we should not be talking about it losing fps due to high demand - when there is no specific high demand. It doesn’t have hair strand features like Resident Evil remakes, it doesn’t officially state any ray tracing capabilities, and it forces motion blur on players. It also forces cut scenes to play in 30fps even if you choose performance mode so it is very jarring on the eyes as it flicks between 30 and 60. As they explained again in this video, there are parts of the game that even use pre-rendered video files as cut scenes instead of the actual game engine.
Even COD warzone (the first one from 2020) runs at a dynamic 4K120fps as long as you are using HDMI 2.1, and that map is significantly larger than the smaller area sizes of FF16. Loading times are only slightly longer there as it’s finding other online players, but as I explained before anyway the loading time is not connected to the frames per second. That fps is a very impressive stat considering the fact that it’s a completely online experience with up to 150 players per match all pinged in generating server lag pulling down the games performance. FF16 is offline so no excuse.
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla (also from 2020) runs at a very near native 2160p 4K at full 60fps with a 12x larger map and no load times in between segments either.
The FF16 maps are not fully loading in when you fast travel to a location, despite being woven together. They use very low poly models and shadows until you get closer to the point where the game renders it in fully, so there really is no excuse for not achieving 60fps, even though it’s not what we want to hear 😢 blurring out the background during combat to achieve a higher fps in FF16 combat is actually a smart idea, but very very lazy and not the high quality we expected from Square Enix, hence why it’s been so widely discussed at the moment.
We are in the middle of the PS5’s life cycle, it’s not a release title game, so this should have been a better effort from SE. They have acknowledged their mistake by putting out a patch to improve performance but it hasn’t worked. I’m hoping for a better patch soon because right now $70 is a steep asking price for something that is visually on par and in some cases worse than 2016’s FF15
@@finnaflexofficialsuch a long paragraph. It's not that deep. Different engines and games. We know what's the issue with most unreal engine games.
@@Krampus6-1-6 there’s always one like you 🥱 it kinda is that deep if you care about games, which you obviously don’t. You also don’t need to read it. Keep scrolling buddy
Coming back here now that the PC demo is out and I finally get to experience this game myself, and damn, this game *is* impressive, very amazed by the cutscenes because for the first time in my life as a gamer, I genuinely felt like the scenes looked identical to pre-rendered FMVs from the old days.
At first I was upset that they were locked at 30fps, but I think this is mostly there to mask the transition between real-time graphics and FMVs (the game uses a few of them as transitions to hide loading screens, apparently, but they were all rendered with in-game graphics). Since both are at 30fps and the FMVs are extremely high quality (probably 4k), I genuinely wouldn't even be able to tell there was an FMV playing in the first place if it wasn't for my fps counter in the corner.
cant wait for your brain to melt during the crazy Eikon battles! most exciting spectacle in gaming history!
There is a mod to unlock the cutscenes to 60fps and its looks fuckin muaw 🤌🏿
I never comment but this time I really feel the need to compliment this beautiful video. Really from start to finish a very good presentation and the passion you've put here almost makes me want to buy a ps5 for this game alone.
I didn't even felt the length and in fact I would've enjoyed watching more.
Thank you John!
Solid review. I like the focus and level of detail and knowledge on light, texture and graphics, don’t see that in most reviews.
Drops to 720p in performance mode, this is exactly what I was picturing next gen being a few years ago.
It's bad optimization. There are several games out there with much more visual fidelity and they run with flawless 60 FPS and higher resolution. Forbidden West for example, Far Cry 6 and many more.
@@MarkusFFFFdid you just say far cry 6 has much more visual fidelity than ff16? 🤣🤣
Yeah but if he doesn’t say it dropped to 720 how many people you think would notice it
@@ms7b101 Yes of course: The open world has much more complexity in it's geometry in it's presentation and even active physics, running at rock stable 60 FPS at 1440p (i think). That's just one example. The main problem of FF16 is the engine in my opinion, it's just not very good optimized.
@@MarkusFFFF far cry 6 looks like a PS3 game, no wonder it's a solid 60
That part with him running up the stairs with the wind and dirt blowing around looked so amazing! Mind blown 🤯
Mid
@warumsindalleso
Fanboys will praise anything, this game looks incredibly mediocre in fidelity mode and horrendous in performance mode.
@@originalityisdead.9513 get your eyes checked
@@originalityisdead.9513 mental illness
@@originalityisdead.9513 bait
I play a lot of DMC + esports games and still played this in the graphics mode @30 fps, and enjoyed it. Like with Bloodborne, it sucks it's not on PC @4K60 but it's a good enough game it's fine as is.
11:25 That shot in the forest... just WOW.
look like modded skyrim.
Just wow choppy 30 fps on ps5 in 2023, wow indeed. Ghost of Tsushima looks better, has rock solid 60 fps and is 3 years older. What a fail
Bravo John, this video is simply amazing. Your knowledge keeps us on the edges of our seats.
Please we don't need 30fps ever again! wtf is going on man?
Hmmmm could it be because consoles age
It's an early demo build they said,
The full version will run way better they said
*Full version comes out,runs the same as the demo*
I dont like the motion blur at all it looks so bad on a OLED tv with VRR i have stopped playing making characters faces look like a blur mesh when moving around
It is a rare game where virtually everything that was promised is delivered in full. Regarding those voices, it makes me very happy that they have European actors to act unlike most games using American ones when it is appropriate and when it is not.
Because nothing was promised except of action style gameplay?
Because they promised basically nothing
@@dylanleff373 sure, whatever you say
You give developers an inch by offering hardware that can do 4K 60 FPS...
And somehow developers take a mile, just 2 years later by turning that into 720p 60 FPS.
This is a PS5 exclusive too, meaning they had ONE JOB.
I appreciate the focus on audio quality, and the visuals breakdown
They really need to give us a toggle for turning off ray tracing and motion blur
An action RPG that forgot the "RPG" part. It's just an action game. I was disappointed with that, but I'm sure some will be happy. I just wish they'd make another Final Fantasy game. The Metacritic score is probably too high, but pretty close to the reception, I think.
Edit: I just wish we had an option to lock at 30fps. Also, turn off bloody motion blur!
Edit 2: Loading times for me are over 10 seconds. Nothing like Tsushima or the like.
@@SE-fq4gf Which is nice, but rather than a fluctiating fps, just lock it there and don't go higher. I fear the next generation won't have a 30fps mode at all.
@@SE-fq4gf Generally, yes.
@@SE-fq4gf Yea. It's all about options. 60fps makes people like me vomit and we need 30fps to play comfortably. Motion blur does the same to a lesser degree. Of course, it all depends on the game.
Still, having that toggle to go from locked 30fps to unlocked to allow for better hardware or patches would help everybody as that could potentially lead to even higher than 60fps as the years progress.
@@SE-fq4gf it's really easy to do as well. We can just lock our pc gpus to 30fps system wide. It would be pretty easy to do that on the ps5 as well. For those that want higher frame rates, there could be flexible options. For example, set it system wide for all games, but have program specific settings when a game runs poorly under those conditions.
Luike I say, options are good, but right now we have very few in console world.
If this game were released on Xbox, media would have given it low scores because of the performance problems.
1:37 There's seriously a quest called "Caulk and bawl"? 😂
I'm sorry I've said it before on here and I'll say it again, I have no clue what this weird disparity between PC and Console analysis is that you guys are doing atm. When John was waxing lyrical about how amazing and polished a release this was I actually assumed that the performance mode was considerably improved from the demo and that they'd pulled off a miracle. Then to get to the framerate analysis and see it waving around the 40-50 fps range really pissed me off. This is an amazing accomplishment? Why? Because it's Final Fantasy? It absolutely does not appear to be pushing to the boat with visuals enough that they shouldn't have been able to produce a mostly solid 60fps mode. Everything outside of the giant summon set pieces seems fine enough that 1080p upscaled and 60fps is more than reasonable based on comparative titles. Even worse is that that mode has such awful image quality it's actually beyond belief. This forced use of FSR is a terrible crutch being used in recent releases and is making games look absolutely awful in motion. This game is not open world (A Good thing imo btw) and is not a graphical showcase any more-so than cross gen Sony titles like Ragnarok and Forbidden west which both run at 60, so how this has such a positive slant I really have no clue. More importantly, if this was released on PC and with console equivalent hardware you could only achieve the framerates from performance mode, even when FSR is clearly cranked up as high as it is, it would be considered an abject failure and Alex would be tearing it a new one (Rightly so). I get you've decided 30fps is OK for you with this one John and honestly that's absolutely fine. I think it's terrible console games have abandoned 60 now because the games don't even look better than their cross gen competition and are hardly more ambitious (Starfield may be a fair exception). But it seems really unfair to be slamming every PC release left right and centre while giving this a pass when realistically you could cap all your PC games to 30 and probably have similar "Quality" mode experiences and ignore everything Alex says atm. That would be a joke, nobody on PC wants to do that, but there's a very clear double standard going on here that seems wrong to me. And btw just to clarify PC performance on recent releases have been crap so Alex has been very much justified recently, it's just most of the time the console versions are pretty much as bad and sometimes even worse. Case being Jedi survivor's Performance mode where the image quality is absolutely shocking. You won't get a locked 60 anywhere but at least it looks nicer on PC... Anyway I'm very excited to eventually play this when it's fixed up (If it ever is) and the game itself looks very cool. But the positive slant on the technical analysis here doesn't seem right because I think the technical performance of current gen games is an industry wide issue not isolated just to the PC platform like DF seems to imply with their videos recently. I mean seriously how on earth are Cyberpunk 2077 and Horizon Forbidden West a solid 60 on consoles despite the complexity of their open worlds and this isn't, it just doesn't add up. Not hating here guys I do love your content but I think some more clarity about when 30 is "Fine" and when it isn't would be nice so we know where expectations lie in the future
8:45 this is where I disagree. The character "idle" animations and such in Forbidden West were extremely overdone. It was like everyone had ADD or something. I've rarely see humans move as much as the characters in that game. Very unrealistic and distracting
The grape graphical review was so stellar.
Really hoping they'll drop a 40 fps patch for 120hz screens. The hit to the visuals are noticeable in performance mode, but quality mode is just unplayable to me 😣
Unless you have a medical condition that causes severe motion-sickness while playing at 30fps then ( vey rare condition ), no, its not unplayable to you, you only have convinced yourself to think it is. I can play both and there is a difference but no where near unplayable, sub 25 to 20 maybe unplayable but that's another story.
35fps FSR performance mode. WTF?!!!!! 720p in battles? imagine if they didnt have done that. the performance would tank so hard.
720p... I thought it is ps5 game, not ps3 one
The funny thing is that Sony prints 8k on ps5 box while it can't even do 1080p
@@alextargaryen7886 WoW. Imagine if this game was a Xbox exclusive.
@shauryatyagi2017 Xbox prints 8k on the box and GPU but Starfield is still 1200p. At least the PS5 has an 8k rendered game. Unlike Xbox.😂😂 cmon don't be salty.
@@shauryatyagi2017The PS5 is the only console that actually has an 8K game.
I wonder if some parts of this engine tech is getting used in FFXIV 7.0. I'm especially liking the lighting and facial animations in XVI and hope to see more of that in XIV's next expansion (new detailed animations might be a stretch)
It seems very likely honestly. Because the style of this game gels very well with 14 and they are for sure using an upgraded version of that engine. The models in particular give strong hints to this, as well as the very first trailer they had released way back when.
@@Synkhan I remember watching it and having the same exact thoughts. Technically XIV has come a long way from 2.0 days. Heavensward added DX11 support and with it Tessellation and reflections. Texture, model and visual effect fidelity went up throughout expansions. With XVI it's exciting to see what the team could have in store for XIV 7.0. Can't wait to play the game tomorrow.
This was confirmed a while ago. Can't remember where, but 16 is using an upgraded version of the game engine from 14. There are plans for 14 to get a major graphics overhaul in the near-ish future.
I hope we get TAA and better lighting in FFXIV. Raytraced shadows would also be nice, but for that we would need a DX12 version of the game.
720p in performance mode? Wow!
This makes 3 very well made polished games this year now. Deadspace remake, zelda totk, and ff16. Gotta give GOTY tho to ff16. It's simply the best
oh boy, 30 fps ? here we go again.