I have a fairly naive question to ask, I guess. Everyone seems to be agreed upon the idea that this project in particular will be immensely expensive, etc. which helps justify the multi-part release. I have no problem with the multi-part release strategy, but I have to ask, why is this project in particular being regarded as being an inordinately expensive and arduous undertaking compared to the development of a new FF entry? If anything, a big chunk of preproduction work (character designs, scenario/story work, etc.) are either already done or halfway there.
I'm just saying, if people want to justify a different release strategy because this will be expensive, shouldn't that mentality equally apply to something like XV or any other high end big JRPG these days? Or even any of the huge WRPGs like Fallout, Witcher, etc?
Well, a few reasons
FF7 in itself, first of all, just has a huge amount of variety that even today's games don't really go for, as the formula for big huge worlds has been streamlined a lot over the years. Mostly in FF7's case, it's the variety in locations, scope of the world, cinematics, amount of characters and dialogue and side-content. It's an incredibly expensive endeavour
Now it's not to say it's IMPOSSIBLE to make it all in one-release. Of course it is. But you did mention FF XV, which is also a pretty huge game as it seems. It's also taking 10 years to even come out, due to what happened internally in square during last generation as well as the sheer scope of the project which probably had to be reworked several times.
Fallout is big but Bethesda has had a "lego" aspect to their world since Oblivion/fallout 3. They have a LOT of reusable assets (lot's of their dungeons are just simply repeated) and while having big stories, they're presented in very simple ways. All of their framework is there to save money. Witcher 3 is huge and has a lot of unique content but still works in a fairly homogeneized, slightly less cinematic world with one character (and also the fact that it's made in Poland, a much less expensive country than Japan).
There is obviously a money reason behind the multi-part, but I think it would be selling the creators short in saying that there wasn't also a creative reason (keeping as much as the original) as well as caution. Nomura is coming out of a 10 year dev-cycle with FF XV (a money eater at this point), and Kingdom Hearts 3 is also being made now which is also a big money-eater, I would assume, due to the license. And well there's a bunch of other licenses. So i'm guessing it's a bit of column A, B and C as they looked at it and went "Well the only way we can decently do this without going mad and in another development cycle that is gonna overlap with the next console is to do it this way".
It's far from ideal, and who knows if they were in a different situation they could've pulled it off. But as "a solution" it kinda makes sense.
I'm just going with the notion since the beginning that yes, the game is going to be somewhat different from the original as it's almost a reimagining in a sense. As long as the content from the original is here and the encounters are here...It's mostly not "What will they cut" but if the things they'll replace them with will be equally as fun and impactful in some sense (of course doesn't mean I'd be okay with trashing everything but looking at it so far, that's far from being the case
).
That's why I didn't really lose my shit when I saw the news. My real inquiry has and will always be the actual quality of the content and how faithful it is, and so far we still have little news about that.
