The use of polygons in games has increased over the years and with the advent of increasingly powerful generations of hardware. Square Enix has delved into this topic in a very interesting way by looking at the number of polygons Final Fantasy VII characters have used in the various games that have come to market, and the jump is huge.
The cloud from the original Final Fantasy VII on PS1 used 900 polygons in combat, which was a more complex model and with a lot more polygons than the Cloud mini we used to navigate the scenarios. Cloud’s version of Final Fantasy VII Remake used about 110,000 polygons, while Final Fantasy VII Rebirth’s version has about 220,000 polygons.
This means that Square Enix has doubled the polygon count for this character in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. In total, all characters in Final Fantasy VII had about 900 polygons in their combat model, which was limited to combat. In Final Fantasy VII Remake it was between 100,000 and 110,000 polygons, and in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth there are models that go up to 230,000 polygons like Kate Sith.
The difference is noticeable in all objects in the game. For example, in the original game, the Cloud’s Buster sword used between 50 and 100 polygons, while in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, it consists of around 8,000 polygons. The monsters are also much more complex, with some bosses going from around 3000 polygons to using 260,000 polygons.
That Cloud Sword in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth already uses more polygons than all the enemies and characters in the game, already speaks volumes for the graphical evolution that has taken place.
