PlayStation 5 discs should have made multi-disc games obsolete. Using Ultra HD Blu-rays, which can store up to 100GB when triple layered, PS5 discs can hold twice as much data as PlayStation 4’s Discs. This means that a PS5 game could have twice the texture data and be twice as big as a PS4 game and still use only a single disc.
Yet, for some reason, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is using two discs. But, that’s not all. Square Enix nearly needed three discs for the upcoming sequel.
As pointed out by @ILovecloti on X, an interview with the members of the FF7 Rebirth at the Taipei Game Show in Taiwan has reaffirmed Square Enix’s ambitious content plans for the game. Motomu Toriyama confirmed that the production team had to work hard to fit the game’s content onto two discs.
This isn’t the first time Square Enix has hyped how much larger Rebirth is compared to Remake. It’s safe to say that it’s confident the game will deliver.
Some key points from this interview with the FF7 production team (Taiwan trip)#FF7Rebirth #FF7リバース pic.twitter.com/KTGaTg7ntq
— 皆實(Sea) (@ILovecloti) January 28, 2024
FF7 Rebirth will retell the latter half of Disc 1 of the original Final Fantasy 7 game. It will presumably end the same way as the first did: with Aerith dying at the hands of Sephiroth (or sword, rather).
But, Square Enix has suggested the FF7 Remake Trilogy isn’t a simple modernized version of the 1997 title. Instead, it’s taking place across multiple alternate timelines. For example, Zack Fair is alive and will be playable. There are implications that different versions of Sephiroth exist in FF7 Remake as well.
Nevertheless, the amount of content Square Enix claims it packed into FF7 Rebirth is both good news and bad news.
On one hand, FF7 Rebirth is too big for one PS5 disc. This should take care of any discussions about whether nor not it’s worth the price – the game will easily contain one hundred hours of gameplay if not more. It will be bigger and longer, with more locations and much better graphics compared to FF7 Remake.
However, this also raises legitimate concerns about its file size. FF7 Remake was 100GB on PS4. The PS5 re-release, FF7 Remake Intergrade, took up 81GB due to PS5 compression mechanics it could take advantage of. But returning to the central theme of this article, FF7 Rebirth will take up two discs. The closest comparison is Horizon Forbidden West Complete Edition on PS5, a two-disc game that takes up 121GB of space on PS5.
The best case scenario is that, because FF7 Rebirth is a PS5-exclusive title, the production team took advantage of the PS5 SSD’s proprietary compression technology to turn what could’ve been a three-disc game into a two-disc game.
The bad news is that, no matter how you put it, FF7 Rebirth will cost a huge chunk of the 825GB SSD on your PS5 when it comes out on February 29.
We can only shudder at the thought of what Creative Business Unit I, the internal dev team at Square Enix working on Rebirth, have done to harness the power of the PS5. The game’s creative director, Tetsuya Nomura, is probably ordering everyone to model every unique strand of Cloud Strife’s golden locks as we speak!
All jokes aside, we’d be surprised if FF7 Rebirth isn’t pushing close to 200GB by the time the expected Day One patch is released.
