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Yes, Final Fantasy VII Remake is Still Episodic

Nomura Tetsuya has shown time and again that though he had a good run as a character designer between FFVII, FFVIII and FFX - Tidus, Selphie and Lulu are way *too much* for my tastes, but whatever - he has proved himself a director incapable of delivering projects on time and under budget. All of his major initiatives (FFXIII Versus, KH3 and now this remake) take forever to ship and burn through piles upon piles of money. In fact, Final Fantasy has only ever married commercial success to critical acclaim under three directors (Sakaguchi [FFI-V], Kitase [FFVI, FFVII, FFX] and Matsuno [FFT]) and everyone else kind of stained the bed in one way or the other.

I always thought we spent too little time in Midgard (IMO the whole disc 1 should have been set there) but nothing in this project makes me think it'll be anything other than a glorified mess. The K-Popfication of Cloud's design, Jessie's anime-y tropes... That being said, VII has some of the strongest world building in the whole franchise and the impact of seeing that rustpunk, futuristic dystopia rendered in 4K might be enough to carry all the games. That being said, I'm sure they'll pull a .hack (remember?) and pad the *** out of every title to justify forcing us to purchase the same game over and over.

It's been 3 years now and not a peep about FFXVI has come out. 3 years after VII, we already had VIII in had. 3 years after X, we already had news about XII. Guess the remake is sucking up all the money and talent.
 
Even if episodic, I still think each "episode" will be a complete game for itself, with its own conclusion.
There is no way remake will be just current technology 1:1 version of FFVII, or something like each episode covers one disc.


Also, a lot of years passed in the meantime, different FF games were released, generations of graphics happened, and evolution of gameplay...
So, FFVIIR also won't be "original vision hindered by weak PS1" crap, either...

It will only be what it can be at this point - a reimagination.
 
Nomura Tetsuya has shown time and again that though he had a good run as a character designer between FFVII, FFVIII and FFX - Tidus, Selphie and Lulu are way *too much* for my tastes, but whatever - he has proved himself a director incapable of delivering projects on time and under budget. All of his major initiatives (FFXIII Versus, KH3 and now this remake) take forever to ship and burn through piles upon piles of money. In fact, Final Fantasy has only ever married commercial success to critical acclaim under three directors (Sakaguchi [FFI-V], Kitase [FFVI, FFVII, FFX] and Matsuno [FFT]) and everyone else kind of stained the bed in one way or the other.

I always thought we spent too little time in Midgard (IMO the whole disc 1 should have been set there) but nothing in this project makes me think it'll be anything other than a glorified mess. The K-Popfication of Cloud's design, Jessie's anime-y tropes... That being said, VII has some of the strongest world building in the whole franchise and the impact of seeing that rustpunk, futuristic dystopia rendered in 4K might be enough to carry all the games. That being said, I'm sure they'll pull a .hack (remember?) and pad the *** out of every title to justify forcing us to purchase the same game over and over.

It's been 3 years now and not a peep about FFXVI has come out. 3 years after VII, we already had VIII in had. 3 years after X, we already had news about XII. Guess the remake is sucking up all the money and talent.
And yet, over the years, Final Fantasy IX became the most beloved, and appreciated game in series.
 
And yet, over the years, Final Fantasy IX became the most beloved, and appreciated game in series.

Pffft. Not really. Its got a vocal support amongst a certain group of people on the internet, but generally, and especially in Japan. Its not especially liked or respected. Very much the least well regarded of Square's PS1 trilogy.
 
And yet, over the years, Final Fantasy IX became the most beloved, and appreciated game in series.

The least successful mainline title, sales-wise, after the series started using disc-baed formats. It came out one year before X, in a platform with 100 million active owners, and managed to sell half of what FFX did, even before the PS2 crossed the 40 million mark.

I love the game, though, don't get me wrong.
 
I didn't express myself well enough...

What I meant to say was, at this point, FFIX is immaculate FF game, and even things people complained about in the past, such as battle system, and overall being ignored, only helped it become some sort of an underdog game.

Even most popular titles FFVII, and FFX are often criticized as being overrated, while nowadays FFIX is considered untouchable RPG fairy tale, and PS1 game at its finest.
 
I think people are underestimating the importance of this Remake and the need for it to be a success.
There's a reason why SE was cautious about doing this and I'm pretty certain that this being a flop will have far more severe consequences for SE as a company than any mainline FF could have.

SE won't be unaware of this.
And tbh, they already have the game set in stone. Everything is there already, story, characters, art direction. Gameplay changed, but so did times.

I'm willing to bet that the naye-sayers will be put in their place.
 
Here's my overall thoughts and reasoning as to why this game being episodic doesn't bother me. First it's already been done before with FFX-2, FFXIII trilogy and even FFIV The After Years, and each episode FFVIIR is said to be just as long or longer. The problem with those games was the sequels were never as good, but we already know that wont be a problem with FFVII. Heck if we look at Crisis Core, certain story elements will be implemented in the Remake, and Crisis Core was a good game in its own right. Secondly I always thought Midgar being the most fascinating locale of the original FFVII, think of it as Raccoon city. So of course I always wanted to explore more of it in the original, but because we were limited by the technology of that time, we could only explore a small portion of it. Imagine if we could explore every corner of this cyberpunk city and interact with all of its citizens, just thinking about it blows my mind! :messenger_astonished:

Finally look at it this way, with Resident Evil 2 Remake we could think of it as a full game, or we could consider it as another episode of Raccoon city, because as we know the saga continues in Resident Evil 3. If they remake it using the same engine as REm2ke, which they probably will, we could consider REm3ke as episode 2 in a way. Jill Valentine story is just another perspective of the overall arcing story, that could've been connected and told in RE2 as one longer game, but no one had an issue with it being split into another game, because back then no one gave it a second thought as a possibility.

So to be fair the original FFVII was a long game on 3 cd's, but each locale was never as explorable with as much detail as Raccoon city for comparison. If that were the case, FF7 would have been even longer than it already was! With that in mind, each episode of FFVIIR should be as long as REm2ke at the very least, so if you're upset with FFVIIR being episodic, you should also resent REm2ke for that same general notion. Taking everything into account, it's clear and understandable why they went episodic with more focus on details and exploration, and still being a full game. They can also keep the hype train going for the following games, so I'm looking forward to it! But that's just my overall opinion on the episodic nature of this game, I feel like a kid experiencing 1997 all over again lol. :messenger_grinning_sweat:
 
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Wake me up when they release the remastered PS5 GOTY edition, with all episodes and DLC included.

I'm calling sometime in 2030 and that's being generous.
 
I personally don't know about the whole exclusivity thing, it'll still launch only on PS4 and they were in talks to keep exclusivity early on, so now it could just be a PS4-PC timed exclusivity ordeal or it'll come to Xbox One, but not Switch unless they pull some sort of magic and figure out some way.
 
I think people are underestimating the importance of this Remake and the need for it to be a success.
There's a reason why SE was cautious about doing this and I'm pretty certain that this being a flop will have far more severe consequences for SE as a company than any mainline FF could have.

SE won't be unaware of this.
And tbh, they already have the game set in stone. Everything is there already, story, characters, art direction. Gameplay changed, but so did times.

I'm willing to bet that the naye-sayers will be put in their place.
I think everyone knows that this is going to sell gangbusters despite squenix and playstation's ethics committee. It's gonna sell gangbusters about 7 or 8 times based on how many episodes and rereleases and remasters (next-gem incoming) each episode will get and then even more once the complete compilation edition releases.
 
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