At E3 this year, Final Fantasy VIII got a remastered edition announced, which is partially significant for how the game just never seemed to get ported anywhere else after release unlike the other PlayStation titles in the series. It was also a big deal because it seemed like, from the brief trailer, that significant work was being done to update the graphics. While it wasn’t a Final Fantasy VII Remake-style overhaul, it was not a simple resolution bump, either.

Today, Square Enix used a well-known joke about the game to advertise how big that difference can be. The image below circulates around social media sites, showing Rinoa Heartilly complimenting protagonist Squall Leonhart in order to convince him to dance. She tells him that he’s the best looking guy there, while the next image shows a close-up of Squall’s PS1-resolution face.

Today, Square Enix tweeted this from the Final Fantasy Twitter account, referencing the same joke.

The video also does give us a chance to directly compare what has been improved. While it doesn’t look like a ton of work was done on the backgrounds, the character models look generations better than their PS1 versions. While the font is higher-resolution and slightly different, an effort was clearly made to make it look like the original game’s text, which has not always been the case with Square Enix remasters.

As someone who defends Final Fantasy VIII a lot, and by virtue of not getting a chance to play it through various ports over the years, I’m pretty excited for a Remastered version with an apparently noticeable bump. Final Fantasy VIII Remastered releases sometime this year on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, and PC. 

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