Final Fantasy comparison has gamers longing for the days of generational graphics leaps

The two images you see above are from Final Fantasy 7 and Final Fantasy 10, which were released four years apart from each other. A tweet with that comparison shot has gone viral as gamers remember just how much harder the generational upgrades hit back in the day.

FF7 launched in 1997, a few years into the life of the PS1, and FF10 launched in 2001, shortly after the release of the PS2. For a modern comparison, you could probably look to God of War in 2018 versus God of War Ragnarok in 2022 - that's an impressive technical leap, sure, but those two games don't feel like they're from completely different galaxies, as is the case with the two Final Fantasy games in the comparison.

And yes, obviously, there were two other Final Fantasy games released between 7 and 10, each of which offered its own graphical improvements, not to mention lengthy stories filled with memorable characters that remain beloved to this day.

These days, technology like ray tracing can make games look better and the detail on display in modern 4K resolutions can be dazzling, but the added detail is, well, all in the details. It doesn't have the immediate impact it had back in the day. (And in fairness to modern games, that FF10 screenshot doesn't communicate how stilted and plastic-y the character animations were back then.)

But then we have to ask - is all that graphical fidelity a good thing? Games are now more limited by what their developers have time to create than they are by technology, which means development cycles for triple-A titles are ballooning toward a half-decade or more. It'll be nearly seven years since the launch of FF15 before Final Fantasy 16 comes out. In the seven years starting from 1994, we went from Final Fantasy 6 to Final Fantasy 10 - that's five mainline games. Scales of development and expectations from fans have changed in a major way.

If you want to get angry about a website's ranking of the best Final Fantasy games, we've got you covered.