Square Enix recently showed off new footage and details regarding the long awaited Final Fantasy VII Remake.
At E3 we learned a bit more about the game's combat, characters, and setting.
The game now has a release date for March 3rd, 2020 with a normal, deluxe, and even a big collector's edition which costs $329.99.
The internet near exploded when Tifa's redesign was shown- to mostly positive results- who is an important main character that had not been shown until then.
All of this is fantastic, but one question on some people's minds was, "Why are they only showing the Midgard portion of the story?"
Well one answer would be that Square Enix announced that Final Fantasy VII was just way too big to be done in one part.
An announcement was made a few years ago that revealed Square's plan to release Final Fantasy VII Remake as an episodic adventure- to some disappointment of many.
Square has commented few times on the intricate details of FFVII Remake's length and distribution of its story per part, but Nomura has commented in recent years since the big 2015 reveal of the game's production, that there were specific reasons as to why Square finally decided to make FFVII Remake.
Some of these reasons include convenience for the developers themselves and their schedules opening up or matching up, that some of these guys who worked on the original game like Nomura, Kitase, and Nojima, are all 45+ in age at this point. They figured in remasters of FFVII on newer consoles, like the version on PS4 and the one that recently came to Nintendo Switch, and thought that those remasters would be enough for everyone in the meantime. Speaking of the meantime, Nomura commented that if new clean remasters were coming out and they hastily created a remake, they'd have a "better FFVII" and a "little bit better FFVII" and they didn't want that.
As a whole, the team wanted to have great remasters come out on new consoles, then build a huge, beautiful, Remake.
But just how long is this huge, beautiful, remake going to be?
At first the games-journalism world was repeating "3 parts", which seems pretty believable.
But the real fact? Square Enix doesn't actually know.
Kitase himself doesn't know and can't comment, because no one knows.
In an interview with Kotaku, Kitase was asked about this.
Kitase commented that while FFVII Remake is being polished up and finished at the moment, the team is beginning to plan out the second game.
Kitase: We can’t reveal that many details about this.” also saying: “Before we actually started working on this, we knew it was going to be a large amount of content,” as well as saying: "When we started out planning the plot for the first game, it hit us again… at that point we decided we were going to focus first game on Midgar and what happens in Midgar. Unfortunately we can’t say anything more about the future games, because we don’t know ourselves.
I don't really care for episodic games unless its done in either of two ways: Final Fantasy XIV is considered somewhat episodic by many because every 2 years has an expansion that is usually the size of the base game itself, stacked on top of the rest of the content. Besides that, every 3-4 months, roughly quarterly, the "patches" the game receives are huge content updates that often bring new features to the game and also advances the story.
So playing FFXIV feels like a big new episode comes out every 3-4 months, with the expansions being like a big interactive movie every 2 years.
The other way is the common method of modern episodic games like Life is Strange, or the way Telltale games come out.
Thinking of Final Fantasy VII Remake in the way of either of those mentioned, just doesn't sit right with me, but I must say that it is now its becoming pretty clear to me how FFVII Remake will be organized, as Square continues to refer to each 'part' or 'episode' as an 'entire FF-length game'. Game is a big keyword here, as opposed to DLC or episodes.
(At least they say they're that big.)
Thinking of how FFXIII finished up as a trilogy, I am a lot more comfortable thinking of FFVII Remake as a trilogy.
I assume, or hope, that data like materia lists, equipment, and character levels will carry over between each game.
It might be too early to say this, probably close to a decade too early in fact, giving Square's current record of completing or producing Final Fantasy games, (which I sometimes don't mind as long as they make great games)- but I feel like I can see a "Final Fantasy VII Remake Complete Edition" for PlayStation 5 in our inevitable future.
But hey, we still don't have a Final Fantasy XIII Trilogy on PS4 do we?
There's no telling how long Final Fantasy VII Remake will be, what they'll cut out, if Cloud wears a dress or not, or how long its going to take Square Enix.
For now, there's some sweet remasters available on current generation consoles (unless you hunt down a PS1 copy to play), Crisis Core on PSP and Vita, Dirge of Cerberus on PlayStation 2, the Final Fantasy VII Advent Children Complete movie on bluray, and the entire FFVII OST now on Spotify too for easy/convenient listening to scratch that FFVII itch!
Haven't pre-ordered your copy of FFVII Remake yet? Get your copy or your deluxe edition here and help support RA:N at the same time:
Regular
Deluxe
Keep running around with me here at RA:N for more FFVII Remake news!
Want to keep running around with us? Stay connected!
RA:N Facebook | Kazu's Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | G+ | Flickr | YouTube | LinkedIn | RSS
