Final Fantasy VII Remake Release Date Potentially Leaked

UPDATE: Please do not take this to mean that Final Fantasy VII Remake has been delayed and pushed back five years. The site director for thelifestream.net, who is responsible for the translation from which we're getting all of this new information, has made it abundantly clear that Kitase was just joking when he mentioned polishing the game until 2023.

Earlier this week, we shared some pretty massive details regarding the highly anticipated Final Fantasy VII remake, but it seems like there was one crucial part of the conversation that many overlooked.

The latest bit of information comes from a translated conversation between the creators of Final Fantasy at a closed doors event during the 30th Anniversary Exhibition held back in January. The conversation was lengthy ... and telling, and we may just have a release, or at least a release window to look forward to. Fair warning though, you might not like it.

The conversation between Kitase and Hamaguchi revealed that they were aiming for a release to coincide with the 35th anniversary of the franchise. The kicker? That's not until January 2023! Though there is a slight silver lining to this. It is very possible we'll see it sooner given that Hamaguchi made a shocked "that's a long way off" response, potentially giving hope that there may be a push for an earlier window.

That would make sense given that the overheard conversation says that production is going smoothly, despite earlier reports that it was doomed. The author on Resetera detailed this about the game's progression in their notes:

"In terms of development, they say the game is progressing very very smoothly.

They're in the process of working out the base "technology", I'd say in this context, refers to the primary game-play base for the game.

They banter a bit talking about how Kitase, Nomura and Hamaguchi have are connected through Line (a social app very common in Japan) and how Hamaguchi will often work on the game till late night, and send messages to the others at 03.00 at night etc.

They're adamant they're making "something we've never seen before' and ask us to 'be excited'.

Hamaguchi goes on, after Nomura leaves, to comment on the long draught of info since the first trailers, and apologizes. He goes on to say that the project has moved completely in-house, and is again, progressing very smoothly. At the current point they're at the stage where they're basically cramming a bunch of stuff into the game, but once they hit the stage of polishing up the look of things and can deliver something with sufficiently high quality, they will be releasing new footage.

He anticipates this will be in the near future due to how smoothly things are progressing.

Kitase then signs us off by making the joke previously mentioned in the thread, saying he wishes to keep on polishing up the game for the 35th anniversary, to which they all laugh and Hamaguchi responds objectingly "Hey that's a long ways off!"

There was tons of information given, including how the characters themselves are different and how the real-time works for the remake. You can check out everything uncovered right here!