The road to release for the Final Fantasy VII remaster has been a long and arduous one, that’s for sure. From rumors of cancellation, to team shifts, to creative differences, the path of seeing a fan favorite once more hasn’t been easy. Now director Tetsuya Nomura is offering a small progress update on the remake.
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The director sat down with Famitsu to talk a little bit about the state of Square Enix and all of the projects it is currently working on. He also touched on mistaken information about the Final Fantasy VII Remake’s progression, stating that earlier rumors of it being halted completely for Kingdom Hearts 3 was inaccurate and that progress has been made “favorably” even since E3.
The miscommunication seems to be that the PR aspect of Square Enix was focused on the upcoming Kingdom Hearts 3, but not the developers themselves. This is good news, given that the original rumors seemed to bode ill for the future of the remake so many are looking forward to.
In an interview earlier this year with EDAMAME Arcade channel, series producer Yoshinori Kitase went full Final Fantasy when discussing the series as a whole. He also decided to tackle some of those pesky rumors floating around, especially the speculation surrounding Aerith’s ability to be revived, “I have heard there were unofficial ways to have Aerith in your party. But officially there is no way to bring her back to life.” We should just call him the dream killer.
He was pretty dodgey when answering certain questions, like whether we’d see a Final Fantasy VIII PlayStation 4 port. “That’s a difficult question,” he said. “I’m saying no, but not ruling it out in the future.” But he did get to work settling more than a few rumors concerning the franchise and its characters like when he answered the question if Jenova and Lavos (Chrono Trigger) were a part of the same species: “They aren’t but both games were worked on at the same time and enemies from space was a trend at the time. It’s false, but they are loosely based on each other.”
We also know that the game is episodic. In large part, because this is a reconstruction, not an individual shot recreation. Kitase added that “a proper HD remake” just wouldn’t fit into one installment and maintain the “same feeling of density of the original.”
“We’ve seen everyone’s comments and reactions to the news that Final Fantasy 7 remake will be a multi-part series and many have speculated correctly as to the reason why we have made this decision,” he said, “If we were to try to fit everything from the original into one remake installment, we would have to cut various parts and create a condensed version of Final Fantasy 7. We knew none of you would have wanted that.”
“I hope that by explaining a little more about our design decisions that you can appreciate the size of this project and what we have planned for this remake,” Kitase continued. “Going beyond the scale and depth of the world, narrative and gameplay from the original to deliver something that feels familiar yet new. As I said before, we like delivering surprises.”
With Sony no longer having a presence at E3 next year, we’re wondering when the next big reveal will be. It’s been a long-time coming, and we know we are not alone in wanting something a bit more definitive.
