The first two entries in Square Enix’s Final Fantasy 7 Remake trilogy are huge technological feats of graphics engineering both built within Unreal Engine 4. With the trilogy’s finale now in development, the team has opted to stick with the older version of Epic Games’ development tools, which has surprised fans.
Final Fantasy 7’s final entry is currently in development on Unreal Engine 4 with Square Enix keeping lower-power hardware targets in mind. In the past, the development team revealed that the new game is targeting both Steam Deck and Nintendo Switch 2 to provide a better experience for all users on all platforms.
In a recent interview, Final Fantasy 7 Remake director Naoki Hamaguchi was taken aback by the online sentiment regarding the team’s decision to stick with Unreal Engine 4 instead of upgrading to Unreal Engine 5. While some of the online discussion has been positive, a large amount of it has been negative, questioning the director’s decision.
“It became quite the topic online, and it made me realise anew how much interest people have in that side of things,” Hamaguchi told Automaton. “But I think most people aren’t necessarily familiar with the actual differences between Unreal Engine 4 and Unreal Engine 5.”
Hamaguchi explained that Unreal Engine 5 was “entering its pre-launch phase” when development on Rebirth began, and the team didn’t want to tie their development schedule to that of Unreal Engine 5’s progression. “We would have risked out own progress being stalled if the engine encountered any kind of delay,” the director said.
With this in mind, the team created a “graphics pipeline built in-house, which also makes optimisation and porting to various hardware more straightforward”. This means that the Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth version of Unreal Engine 4 isn’t just a stock version of the engine, the team has made a number of changes to work more efficiently and develop the type of game fans want.
“The quality will certainly not drop, and we’re working hard to deliver something even better. Production of the third installment itself is progressing very smoothly.”
Final Fantasy 7 Remake director Naoki Hamaguchi
The director explained that “it’s far more efficient to use Unreal Engine 4” as they would otherwise have to rebuilt their graphics pipeline from scratch for the new engine. While it’s true that it’s easier to upgrade from UE4 to UE5 than some prior engine generations, there’s still a lot of work that goes into moving from one incarnation to another.
“With all of this in mind, we judged that continuing with Unreal Engine 4 would definitely lead to a better third instalment for our customers,” Hamaguchi said. “I never imagined it would become such a hot topic (laughs), though a lot of people took it quite positively too.”
Even with Unreal Engine 4, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth did receive some criticism on launch for its rather soft, low resolution. While the director didn’t reveal any resolution targets for the new game, they did explain that the “quality will certainly not drop, and we’re working hard to deliver something even better”.
Additionally, Hamaguchi revealed that “production of the third instalment itself is progressing very smoothly”. Final Fantasy 7 Remake Part 3 has not been shown in any capacity, or even officially named, but fans are expecting a reveal later this year after the upcoming late release of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth on Nintendo Switch 2 and Xbox Series machines.
