Will the upcoming be released in multiple parts? Sure seems like it.
Says a press release that was sent out tonight (bolded emphasis mine):
LOS ANGELES (Dec. 6, 2015) – During this past weekend’s PlayStation Experience in San Francisco, SQUARE ENIX® debuted a new trailer for FINAL FANTASY® VII REMAKE, the full remake of the award-winning role-playing game, FINAL FANTASY VII. The new trailer features the first CG scenes as well as gameplay footage. FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE will be told across a multi-part series, with each entry providing its own unique experience.
We’ve got a query out to Square Enix for clarification on this, since it’s a bit vague, but that doesn’t leave much room for interpretation.
Comments
109 responses to “Sounds Like The Final Fantasy VII Remake Will Be Episodic”
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vLOAoksNY1Q/URFUvHAoV6I/AAAAAAAAJXE/ebJVVqBVqKE/s1600/not-like-this.gif
Yuck.
Hey you. Yeah, you. The guy that spent the last decade saying “I will give Square Enix all my money for a FF7 Remake”.
Your move.
*hands money to Square Enix*
Multiple times!
I’m sorry, i was totally that guy. I’ve immediately regretted every minute of it when they started announcing all the changes. Be careful what you wish for =/
*Sighs deeply, closes wallet*
Prepare for microtransactions like XP boosters, Gold Chocobo DLC and a premium currency to use at the Golden Saucer. We asked for the game to be updated to 2015 standards but forgot how far standards have dropped. 🙁
Do you pay additional to get Cloud as a playable character?
Naah… you get Cloud… wether he gets other gears besides the Buster Sword and any Limit Breaks all depends on the size of your wallet! 😀
You can pay to revive Aeris because according to some game devs money > integrity.
My friend and I were actually discussing a DLC campaign where Aeris lives… For only $25!
SquareEnix: “What’s that? You guys want a remake of this game?”
Everyone: “Yes”
SquareEnix: “Which one? This one? Final Fantasy II, right?”
Everyone: “…No, Final Fantasy VII, you know, the breakthrough one that everyone has been begging you for for years now?”
SquareEnix: “Oh shit, right, ok, you got it. Final Fantasy VI remake with a glossy and cheap artstyle. Done!”
Everyone: No, fuck. Not that. We want Final Fantasy VII, remade, hell, even just a re-release would be fine at this point.
SquareEnix: Re-release, cool, ok done. Sorry, I gotta get back to these games about Lightning now.
Everyone: God, ok, but you better be working on Final Fantasy VII.
SquareEnix: Actually I have really awesome news for you! Final Fantasy All The Bravest is out! Cloud’s in it! It’s got micro-transactions too!
Everyone: No.
SquareEnix: Ok, seriously, here, Final Fantasy VII remake! Here’s the announcement trailer, no release date or any information though.
Everyone: Well I guess we’re all used to that from you by now.
SquareEnix: Sorry it took so long guys, here’s some gameplay. We’ve fixed the gameplay for you guys!!
Everyone: Nobody asked for that, this isn’t fixed, this is just different. This is looking like a completely different game now.
SquareEnix: It’s episodic too.
Everyone: Jesus christ.
… A RPG with Episodic elements?
That sounds bad then the dlc that auto lvls you up
i mean honestly is lvling up so hard these days that we gotta dlc it and wait for more story content…
God dam our youthful gaming is destroyed forever at this rate
Whoever made this decision should be locked up and forced to watch Advent Children.
Hate to break it to you, but the remake is clearly going to be influenced by Advent Children.
I quite liked Advent Children actually. What was wrong with it?
Um, Advent Children was awesome. Yeah, the plot was a load of nonsense, but it contained some of the greatest action scenes (including what is unquestionably the greatest swordfight) in history.
I may have missed something but not really understanding why this is such a bad thing? Seems to be a lot of hate about this. The trailer they showed on the weekend looked fantastic. If its a bunch of fantastic episodes who cares?
Don’t get me wrong, I think the new combat style will be awesome if it is truly real time and not that pseudo real time bullshit they’ve been pulling in the last couple of games, but episodic is a purely greed based decision.
How can you break a game like Final Fantasy VII up? It’s got a world map, a huge part of its appeal is the semi-illusion of being able to go anywhere in the game and off the beaten path. Will this mean there is a level cap in each episode? They can’t argue it’s a huge game and they need time, they have had time.
Don’t give us what we have been begging for but with an ever increasing list of caveats, give us what we asked for.
Did everyone just simply forget the game was on 3 Discs back in the day? You cant even play the actual game without changing discs…how is this any different?
Its the illusion of freedom, and it being taken away.
Theres a chance it could work as an episodic game, but it wont be FF VII, even if the story and key parts of it are the same. It just wont be. *edit* and by chance I mean, it should work, assuming the core story stays the same. Thats a big part of what made the original so good
What people want is simple. The original game, with modern graphics. It doesnt need to be any harder than pulling out the old assets and updating them, retweaking for a single install (to avoid the 3 discs), and re-release. It should be so much simpler than what they are making it to be.
…I’m not entirely sure how you think it works but it most definitely doesn’t work like this. Have you looked at the original game? How do you take that and do a ‘simple’ upgrade to it to bring it up to 2015 standards?
They’ve released almost endless HD updates to the original, there’s also mods to make it look fantastic too. Personally, being a gigantic fan of FFVII I’m stoked for this. The storyline and characters are more important than ATB, and the inclusion of Materia is important too. If it has Materia, Characters, storyline etc, then the type of combat is inconsequential as long as it’s fluid and it works. From all reports, the FFXV style combat is highly pleasurable to play, so this probably will be too.
Highly disagree. If the combat in the final version of FF15 is anything like the demo, it’s absolutely horrible.
We’ll have to wait and see, the main issue I guess is people going overboard screaming they ruined it etc. Square announced from the beginning it would be different, so the HD versions are always there for those who want to go back to the purity of the original.
“Different” is fine. But most people are (justifiably) expecting “different” to equate to “much worse.”
Let’s be honest. This battle gameplay looks reminiscent of games such as Crisis Core, Type-0, Lightning Returns and the upcoming FF15… and I don’t think anyone in their right mind would suggest any of those games had a superior battle system to FF7…
I havent played 15 yet. What youre saying is a *lot* of guesswork. I refuse to be someone who writes something off fully before experiencing it.
But thats not a remake, thats a remaster. Also, if I wanted the original game, I’ll go play the original game! Its out for just about every Sony/PC platform known to man in some form or another so its not hard.
What you’ve described there is the recent PC port/update and it’s very recent PS4 release. The remake is re-creating assets from scratch, virtually nothing from the original game could be used other than music, even then, it’ll most likely be updated.
Man people get caught up in details. Fine, its not that simple. Point was more that the hard part was done 18 years ago – creating what we loved – so why does it need to be so hard?
You’ll be recycling the characters, plot, and dialog (mostly), and getting those to work together are what made the game so successful in 1997. Dont focus on a small part, figure what made the game so fun in 1997, and realise what CAN be (and MUST be) reused.
Its that core experience. Graphics are easy, gameplay and plot arent.
But you’re missing the point! Unless you just want an upscaled version of the original (which there already is) then recreating the graphics is the hard part. EVERYTHING has to be remodeled and redrawn/recreated. All those flat environments and backgrounds have to be made into a 3d world. It’s really fucking hard because of the sheer scale of the game. The graphics will be like 80% of the work needed to be done on this.
Modelling, animating and texturing the massive world of FF7 is far from the easy part. Yes, technically, the characters were created years ago, but because of the hardware limitations, they are nothing more than a loose blob of polygons and colours, be it NPC or Main Character, not to mention the 2D environment artwork, with the few 3D buildings popping up here and there. They technically have material to reference, but it’s the same as being able to refer to concept art in development, it doesn’t make it any easier to transfer it to a 3D modern, high-quality model, of thousands of npcs, buildings, roads and land. The graphics are the hardest part of this particular remake truly.
It’s different because you have to pay $40 and wait half a year for the next episode to keep playing.
But there’s not much real freedom in VII until you get the boat and later the airship – it’s midgar, first continent, second continent, and only then you can go anywhere in the world.
Remember that FF 14 and 15 took about 10 years to develop and 13 took 6+ years, so this one may not be finished this decade.
Wutai will be dlc.
Except all disks where available in ONE go and was done because of *storage limitations* it’s not a “story” design by choice. Which is why the PC and the next gen console ports don’t need “disk swapping” anymore it’s all in one nice file you can run.
False equivalence much?
Um… completely? You bought FFVII, 3 discs and all, and play the game through to completion. No being forced to stop after you finish Midgar and wait for the next part of the game to be released and no having to fork out multiple times to get your hands on it when it is.
If you can’t see something this bleedingly obvious then I weep for you and all of mankind.
After a couple of seasons of The Walking Dead and one of Game of Thrones, I am well and truly done with episodic gaming. I will wait for this to be finished and then decide whether or not the entire package is worth the asking price.
I’m really over episodic stuff as well. I was already waiting for entire seasons to be released before playing them after I went through the drawn out pain with the first season of The Walking Dead. They always promise month by month, but it never works out that way. It’s just far more enjoyable to have all the episodes on hand and then play them back to back.
For me it’s more about time management. I.e. right now I have time to play this game. 2 months from now when the next episode comes out, I might not have the time to play it then.
So yeah, that’s why I’ve decided that Game of Thrones season 1 is my last one. I’m sick of the whole Telltale thing now so I won’t buy any more of those at all. Other episodic stuff that looks interesting (e.g. Life Is Strange) I’ll be waiting until it’s finished and then think about it.
Exactly this!
I like my games like I like my TV. That’s exactly why Netflix is such a godsend. I should be able to binge the whole thing in 1 go if I like.
I always wait for the entire series to be out now.
Playing Siren: Blood Curse in full is also clearly the real way to enjoy it.
Well maybe it can work if someone other than Telltale does it.
I agree Telltale’s format has worn really thin but that hasn’t made me give up on the idea of episodic games entirely. Especially since it has a good chance to work well in this case considering 99% of the story is already locked down.
Don’t.
Don’t do it, Square.
You hold the key to infinite fortune in your hands. Half-Life 3. Pokémon MMO. FFVII Remake. One part of this holy trinity lay with you. Don’t squander this gift. Do it properly. Don’t nickel and dime your fan base. Treat them with respect.
PLEASE do NOT fuck this up!
Out of touch and out of their minds. Just release the damn game as a whole, the way it should be.
No FF7 “fan” would pay the asking price for that game, which would almost certainly run into triple figures IN THE US.
Will buy…
…but if each episode costs me $50 they can eat a dick.
The combat to me looked cool, I loved the reimagined Midgar…
But episodic?
How the hell will you do Episodic without losing a giant part of what the game is?
And what happens once you hit the end of an episode? Do you have to wait for the next one? Or can you keep wandering around, exploring, grinding etc etc while you wait for the next part? These questions need to be answered!
They didn’t say how many episodes. For all intents and purposes, I played the game over 3 episodes back in the day. My mate bought the game, when he was finished with disc one, I borrowed it. Then had to wait 2 months for him to finish with disc 2, then after another 4 months waiting for him to finish the game so I could check out the final disc, I went and bought myself a copy anyway. The game could work in a similar fashion, but you wouldn’t be able to play episode 1 and 3. Im not even sure how something like Walking Dead would even work if you only bought the final episode, and would be pretty silly to do so.
I don’t think you’d lose a big part of the game, unless after the first 2 episodes they run out of money from people hating it that they don’t finish the game.
Original game was split into 3 disks back in the day. Maybe they are structuring the game similarly to that. It seemed to work pretty well in 3 chunks before…Yes pricing will be important information, but lets see.
They haven’t specified anything so I dont know why people are crucifying them so early. Its like everyone wants them to fail unless it is exactly the same game…this isnt a remaster guys.
If that’s exactly how they do it, it could work. But only if after the final episode is out, it’s able to collate into one big uninterrupted game too.
I’m wanting this to succeed, just the episodic nature of it seems bizarre to be honest, multiple disc or not. But that being said, it may work? Bite sized chunks MAY work, given the hundreds of hours, possibly a thousand or so, I put into FF7, who knows. History may repeat.
Finally someone who isnt just writing this off as a complete fuck up before they’ve even started. If they do fuck it up, then they deserve all the shit they get, but at the end of the day, I hope its good and certainly the trailer looked amazing so fingers crossed.
Well lets be realistic…
Star Craft 2 was episodic really. That didn’t stop that being friggin unbelievable…
So changing up the delivery method very well could work.
Also Half Life 2, although hopefully we dont get a situation where they just dont release disc 3 for no apparent reason…
I was so friggen mad about SC2 being split up too.
That said. SC2 survives that transition by being more like a books in a series: fully separate stories within the same grander epic, with discrete changes of perspective in each. It also helps that SC2’s ‘episodes’ are content heavy instalments as stand-alone games in their own right that took like 2 years a piece to be ‘continued’.
I disagree. The 3-disc thing was a hardware limitation, not a design one. Splitting up the game was what they needed to do, buuuuuuuut… what matters is that you had the remaining discs right there included in the package, so there was no need to feel like it was split-up; just bang the next disc in and keep going – no gameplay is affected.
This on the other hand, is not bound by hardware and is solely at the developer/publishers discretion. Any time the way a game is re-structured for delivery it will inevitably affect its design and gameplay.
You are absolutely correct!!!! Anyone who thinks that the split up into 3 discs for the original was a designer choice is a fool! The games was just so big at the time that it HAD to be split to give you the full damn game! There is no excels or justification for doing it now! Besides screwing us fans over, and make us pay/ wait for the whole game….WHICH SHOULD BE ON ONE DISC And of course graphics are the hard part! Obvioulsy building the game from scratch is where the work comes in..So what, is their job! Its not like this game is any more expensive to make that the other big blockbuster games coming out today. They are fucking it up!
Yeah, there’s actually very little unique content on Disc 3. Basically only the last two areas (return to midgar and then the final dungeon & boss) are unique to Disc 3. People spend dozens of hours in that disc simply because of the side material, but most of that stuff for example fighting the Omega Weapon can be tackled on disc 2 as well.
They originally wanted it to be on 2 CDs, but the final part of the game was ever so slightly too big to fit.
Well the real deal-breaker was the Full Motion Video files on each disc. There’s no way in hell that FF7 sans video would actually be bigger than 700mb
It’s possible that it could be. Squenix had no real idea what they were doing with 3D, Brand new tech for them, and you could tell that a lot of FF7 was throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks. Very much doubt they had time to think about optimizing their space usage or anything.
But yeah, if it was more than 700mb sans video I’d be surprised too
That’s a tad bit of false equivalence there… as the biggest reason for the “multi disk” is one of hardware not design.
You can’t feasibly “split” the story between the “disks” due to the varied amount of content in between disks.. let alone the story arcs.
Also IIRC the “last” chunk of that “3 disk” episodes your talking about is literally just the last dungeon. Disk 3 was literally end game dungeon.
Look don’t get me wrong I absolutely love the trailers and I don’t get the hate for the combat sample it looked awesome in my books but splitting up a huge “epic” scale RPG into episodes? Just doesn’t sit well with me it completely ruins the flow of an RPG IMHO
My point was that it can be done because it was done before irrespective of the reason behind it. All Im saying is that it confirms that the game can be split without detracting from the final product. Can/Should they go down this path? Maybe not. But at the end of the day it looks that way, and considering the trailer, I’d rather be optimistic because frankly it looked awesome.
At the end of the day, we have 1 line of vague dialog saying its going to be “Multi Part”. Lets wait to see how it’s priced/structured before we go and dismiss it.
I envy you for your ability to be positive 😀
Honestly a lot of gamers as just utterly jaded (myself included) when it comes to design decisions like these. I’m not saying episodic doesn’t work (yey for TellTale!) it’s just when you try to shoehorn attempts like this on a genre that’s more known for really long time investments and long gameplay sessions that has me utterly cynical on the end product. And I’m definitely not the only one that holds this view. If anything the other big reason I hate it is that it sets another stupid precedent for abuse… because whilst Episodic works you can safely bet someone out there will try and shoehorn the approach to games its not suited too.
But hey thats my *opinion* on the whole mess =P I’m on the wait-and-see camp about this news for now. But as it stands any hype and urge to pre-order has effectively died for me.
How?
Ep 1 covers all of Midgar and starting the hunt for SephirothEp 2 goes through Aerith dying and ends with Cloud sucked into the lifestream etc.
Ep 3 concludes the story
And then they can always retcon the post-FF7 stuff they did and extend the plot in different ways if they want too.
Not quite…IIRC
DISK 3 was literally just the end dungeon. Everything else was unlocked during Disk 2Yes but that wasn’t what I was talking about. You wouldn’t break the game up that way – the game was originally intended to be two CDs, but it didn’t fit so from the return to Midgar onward is on Disc 3.
Episode 1 will be expertly called… Disc 1.
It’ll probably be something like how Golden Sun handled things. The two games on the GBA were originally meant to be one game, but it was just too much content. Still, for the first game, there was quite a lot to do and the world was still pretty big.
Of course they’d do this. It was too good to be true.
Wow. They fucked it up.
Charlie Bucket took the golden ticket and wiped his ass with it.
“You get nothing! Good day sir!”
Ha! something something change is good; ATB in screenshots =P
It looks like ATB UI, but they’re describing it as real-time and if you look, you’ll see Cloud doing attacks on multiple enemies one after the other. So it looks like it’s probably derived from FFXV’s combat or maybe whatever Nomura originally wanted Versus XIII to play like.
Or maybe it’s a hybrid of Chono Triggers and FFX-2’s ATB system.
Stop it, you’re making it sound good and I’m busy being negative. 🙁
What, they writing it for every episode to end on a cliff hanger? We kinda already know the story guys.
This…
There is no surprises if people played it before.
Assuming they don’t go and change that, too…
Aeris doesn’t die, she fights off Sepiroth. Also her name is now Esira.
And Cloud was actually dead all along, that’s why only Tifa can see him.
Keep in mind some players will be the same age as you when/if you played the original release
and they’ll think FF7 remake is ‘some gay shit’ and go back to Call of Duty.
I’m a few months younger than FF7 and currently on disc two. If they can manage the humor from the original then it won’t turn out to be ‘some gay shit’.
What I mean to say is that while not everyone will buy the episodes, there’s sure to be a few people who missed the original and buy it to see what the fuss is about
I’ll skip. FFVII will live on as one of my favourite games of all time in my memory. If I ever want to play it I can just pop the original 3 CD’s into my ancient PS1.
The PS1 version is a great fit on the Vita, too.
What’s the big deal, exactly? Just sounds like a way to get the game out earlier, if in bits and pieces. Works for Tell Tale games. Worked for “Life is Strange”, too, apparently. Doesn’t mean the game it’s self is gonna be garbage and filled with micro-transactions.
I’m frankly surprised we’ve seen as much of the actual game as we have, seeing as it was only announced back in June, especially in comparison to XV.
EDIT: All this griping made me look into a bit more detail on the combat system, so thanks for that, at least. It looks like each “normal” attack fills up the bar which will allow for “limit breaks” (each time Cloud used an attack with glow-y effects the bar was red as opposed to white). Either that, or it’s like a stamina bar that depletes with each attack, meaning you have to be aware of what stamina you have when you attack (think of Dark Souls). Hard to tell which, there’s times when it looks like the bar is going down/going down as he attacks. Sounds a damn sight more interesting than what I’ve seen in Episode Duscae, anyway.
It may not mean the game will be crap, but it does mean you’ll get to buy the ‘game’ several times before you get the complete package; which is, without question, one of the biggest issues surrounding games made today.
Isn’t that really a consumer issue, though? If there’s a market for buying a product in bits and pieces, it’s just stupid not to utilise that, in a business sense.
If people would rather wait until the whole game is out, then again, they just have to be patient until it’s all done and dusted.
There’s plenty of bad examples on how to do this, I agree, but there’s also plenty of good ones, too.
Business ethics and dumb consumers is a great portion of why I want to leave this planet.
It sucks that it bothers you so much, but then you can just wait until the finish the whole thing and buy it at once, while everyone else wastes their money buying in installments. That’s what I plan on doing, anyway, as happy as I am that they’re doing the remake, I don’t plan on wasting the money buying bits and pieces unless each “piece” can be considered a full game a la the FFXIII series/Starcraft II triology..
Will do. I know that will be the best outcome for consumers like me. It just rustles my jimmies to understand that these businesses will create these kind of difficulties just for the sake of some perceived extra profit, and that my actions won’t send the message that they were wrong; instead they’ll think nobody wanted the product to begin with.
I get where you’re coming from, it’d be nice to play a game nowadays that doesn’t come bundled with a Day One patch, but that’s just the nature of the beast as it is now.
And there’s money to be made by giving people little bits and pieces over time, otherwise DLC would never of become the big thing that it is, and I hate the idea of DLC.
But, I’m still hopeful that in the end they can make a good game, and then even if it’s not the best FF ever, at least it tells my favourite FF story in a different way. And I can always go back to modding my FFVII on the PC.
An epic JRPG is significantly different to a choice based, story driven adventure game. You’d be better off comparing it to something like Half Life 2’s follow up episodes which had long delays between releases and there’s still no sign of the third episode. For examples closer to home, Final Fantasy IV: The After Years didn’t exactly become a beloved part of the game, and you hardly hear any talk of Final Fantasy Dimensions these days.
I’d say I’d be better off comparing it to what they did with the FFXIII/Starcraft II. Difference being the XIII trilogy was an after thought, SC developed started with the intention to make three games, just like SE is intending (or are they actually?) to make the remake into “episodes” for lack of a better word.
The other thing is, it could so easily be something lost in translation. “Episodic” could so easily be “series”, “trilogy”, “saga”, any other words you wanna use in it’s place.
At the end of the day, precisely no one knows anything about the specifics of what will happen. All the people kicking off are those assuming the absolute worst case scenario. I’m happy to remind myself it might not, in fact, be the end of the world. It could, actually, work out pretty well.
40 episodes.
Does the game need to be released in parts? No?
THEN DON’T DO IT.
Each disk of the original game will be an episode in the remake!
Get ready to answer that phone, my friend.
I’m sure that it will be split according to each individual character’s stories and the only way to unlock the true ending is to buy all of them. Oh, and if you pre-order from specific vendors then you will get access to vendor specific DLC that explains key plot points in the main story which wouldn’t really make sense without it.
This seems like it could be bad for pacing if done poorly. Hopefully they pick good stopping off points. End of midgar, meeting Cid, Temple of ancients, aeriths death, coma cloud. All decent chapter ends.
As Ash said above, the original game came on three discs, all of which “paused” the story at perfectly acceptable bits. Nothing to stop that happening again.
The file-size of the game is so huge that they needed to split it into 3 downloads – paying tribute to the 3 disks back in the day
I guess this will mean we might be able to go back to the world sooner??
Yay, someone looking at a possible silver-lining
If all the changes they’ve made to it weren’t already enough, then this is just the icing on the cake!
They can get fucked
FFVII: Wings of Shinra
FFVII: Heart of the Jenova
FFVII: Legacy of the Advent Childrens
It’ll Final Fantasy XIII version 2.0
3 games, all full priced, plus DLC and microtransactions.
Aeris won’t die… If you buy the “Aeris Lives” DLC pack for $25! Or “free” if you buy the $50 Season Pass!
It’s like wishing for Santa to give you something epic and instead he gives you a bowl of salad…………..
Altogether now…
*sigh*
This shit is just stupid and TOTALLY POINTLESS.
…aaaaannnnd there it goes.
Any enthusiasm I had for this remake just died. Brave, naiive enthusiasm. We will remember you.
Not Episodic. Episodic would be that we would get a single unfinished game release and they would slowly release more parts to the campaign over time. Similar to walking dead and other Telltale games or Resident Evil Revelations 2.
What they are doing is a series more like Xenosaga and.Hack. Which is understandable if you realize just how much content they have to update and bring over into the remake from the original. This in turn means we get part 1 in 2016 instead of a full release 4 or more years down the road.
Be happy we are getting a remake at all some people at Square didn’t want to do a remake in the first place.
As for wanting the old ATB system, it doesn’t hold up anymore, but you can always mod the pc version.