The PlayStation 3 and PS Vita HD remastering of Final Fantasy X and X2 (set to be packaged together on the PS3 as X|X2) is coming on apace with a new trailer released today shows us not only what the texture upgrades and resolution improvements have done, but also how much more work has been put into the audio this time around.
It sounds like they've recorded new expressions for some of the main characters, including grunts and moans as they get hit or put extra effort into an attack. On top of that the music sounds excellent and has certainly been modernised.
Visually, it's all quite old school looking still, but everything is cleaner looking. With older games, while texture resolution was low and there wasn't a hint of anti-aliasing, the biggest problem (for me at least) was how blurry everything looked at that low resolution, especially on modern digital TVs which can't downscale without blurring everything even more.
With this new version, everything is crisp, lines are clean and the textures used have seen enough of a bump that it feels like something from within the past five years instead of the past 12.
Still, Final Fantasy X and X2 are all well and good (the latter, if you like dress up games) but where's the graphical overhaul for Final Fantasy VII? That's the one everyone's clamoured for ever since Sony teased us with that PS3 tech demo of the opening. All we got with that was a PC re-release with save states and buyable trainers. You can download trainers for free here, why would we want to pay for them?