A new version of Final Fantasy 14’s Benchmark for Dawntrail has been released, offering players a far better look at how their Warriors of Light will appear in the graphical update.
Originally released in mid-April, the Benchmark is typically more to ensure players could run the game on PC. However, as the graphics update in 7.0 will be drastic, FFXIV developers opted to include it in the Benchmark so that players could test it better—and see how their characters appeared once that overhaul goes through.
As Square Enix staff mentioned in prior updates, including one several days ago, the Benchmark software had a lot of feedback of varying levels of criticism in regards to how characters looked. Some feedback was regarding the remodeling of certain races, and Yoshida discussed in a prior Live Letter how some adjustments were made to more direct character feedback.
More notably for all players, this new 1.1 version of the Benchmark has drastically improved its lighting, which will make characters look better as a whole. Lips, eyes, and general facial textures didn’t render very well in the first Benchmark’s lighting, nor was ambient lighting as powerful, making faces seem flatter and washing out skin tones, especially for darker-skinned characters.
For comparison, here’s my character, shown in the old benchmark versus the new one:
Also, personally, I found that the benchmark ran better this time around on maximum settings, and others have had similar experiences. If you weren’t sure if Dawntrail was going to be smooth for your computer, you might want to give it another go.
Does your Warrior of Light still look good? Or, are you going to use the new free Fantasia when it comes around? Give the Benchmark a go and let us know!
