http://www.gamespot.com/articles/final-fantasy-7-remake-will-be-multiple-full-sized/1100-6438387/

Kiatse said they are using the Final Fantasy 13 model in terms of size and length of the parts. Which is basically saying that the game is 3 parts long and 30 hours per part I think?

However I hope that does not mean that we are in a hallway simulator with nothing but combat, no side optional content and no overworld with this remake....

I thought they were making it in parts because they couldn't fit a game world of FFVII's size in one modern game? I assumed that meant they were trying to make it open ended.

So it's like the 3 discs of the original game are being broken down into one $60 dollar game each?

That seems pretty crazy, even the fact that we have 3 full priced games where all your progress presumable carries over from one to the next. I don't think that has been done since Mass Effect.

Its mirroring the 3 disc structure of the past. whoop whoop.

Mass Effect has more parallels to FF7 that everyone thought!

I kinda thought this is what they said before, but the internet just didn't "believe" them or whatever? Like all the hulabaloo was about how FFVII was now going to be a Telltale-style series.

Three games that expand on the original, are re-imaginings in many ways and bulk up the story (especially the 3rd act, which the team has many times admitted was super rushed and short) sounds perfect to me, at least on paper.

FFXIII is a lot longer than 30 hours or my memory is busted. Maybe XIII-2 and XIII-3 but isn't the first one longer than that? To be fair I'm real slow in most games, so, maybe not.

I've honestly no idea how this is going to make SE any money.

Not sure if you ever heard of it, but back in 1997 a game came out on PS1 called Final Fantasy VII and a whole freaking lot of people loved it. It sold so well they built up the name with rereleases, weird side-quels for PS2 and PSP, and movies. Millions have been clamoring for a remake for years.

Its going to make lodsemone by name recognition alone.

I'd go as far to say FF7 is Square Enix's Super Mario equivalent. It prints money.

Yeah the internet is super bad at listening, oftentimes deliberately so it seems.

You're not wrong about Xiii

http://howlongtobeat.com/game.php?id=3532

Even as someone who loves the game, those hallways can make that 50 hours seem like 500. I think personally I dropped 85 or so into it

I'm super slow too man, I got a bad case of "pickup all the shinies"-itis and I generally like to poke and prod around gameworlds to see all the stuff. And I got a superbad habit of reloading saves to see if if Play something differently how ti changes.

I'm playing through Mass Effect for the first time (I know, I know, but I didn't get to play much of 2006-2011 at the time for life reasons) and I think I've already got 50 hours in what is supposedly a 20 hour game.

@jinoru: Condescension aside it sounds like SE is going to be spending a lot of money to make this "3 full game" size remake.

How many copies do they need to move to actually make a healthy return (2x the total cost at minimum) on this investment? 8-9 million for each release at full price?

Nintendo can wrap SMB in a VC release and make money. That's a big return on little investment.

SE is starting over and hoping people will be into the changes they make to their childhood memories. You can hopefully see why I'm concerned.

This is pretty much how I interpreted it when the news first came out. I really don't know how they're going to pull it off. Final Fantasy 7 is like a 40 hour game, with maybe 20 hours of side quests. So if they want each release to be roughly the size of the 13 sequels there's going to have to be a lot of original content. Personally I would rather they release 3 shorter games, but I seriously doubt that will be the case. I really hope they don't throw in a bunch of padding, and I have very little faith in their ability to create original content. It still remains to be seen how things like character progression, and the world map even translate across 3 releases.

@skullpanda1: Don't worry, they've spent the last few years re-re-releasing every final fantasy from 1 to 10 on everything they can from console, virtual console, mobile, handhelds and pc.

They're just repeating what they said months ago. Basically we're going to get FFVIIR, FFVIIR-2, and Cloud Returns - FFVIIR.

Having played the entire FFXIII series myself, I'd say that FFXIII took me about 80-100 hours to finish the story. FFXIII-2 about 60-70, and Lightning Returns about 50.

Yeah. Figured.

In B4 Aeris lives and Cloud marries her and they live happily ever after...

I've tried replaying FFVII a few times over the years and never got out of Midgar. I have little-to-no interest in returning to the FFVII world, and it was probably my favorite game (at least until I played Xenogears.) I see no good coming out of this remake. Especially if it's influenced in any way by Squeenix's current output.

i prefer having 3 chunks over having 20 chunks.

Welp. At least this isn't going to take as long as FFXV to develop.

PROBABLY.

@jesus_phish: yes and that makes total sense.

I just have to wonder how many people are like me who want that taste of nostalgia and /may/ buy the first release but feel satisfied with that and ignore part 2 and/or 3.

Especially as the main story of 7 is well known and it would likely be competing with FF 15 sequels if not at retail surely in mindspace.

Mass Effect 1 is longer than 20 hours. It's probably like 12-15 on a first playthrough if you only did the story, but 100% is somewhere in the realm of 35. With the way the environments are so big, a leisurely exploration filled playthrough going over 50 isn't super crazy.

Honestly, my feelings on FF7 original are so weird that I wouldn't exactly mind it being a very directed, linear experience. Sure I'd PREFER an open world game, but that's the case with almost any game with such a broad setting. In this case, if FF7R was "get into battles, level up, fight bosses, repeat" but was just really good at delivering on that, I'd be cool, honestly. I'm not saying "I'm not expecting too much!" or the like. Just that my resting hype for this game is relatively standard.

It prints money? Remember when people still cared about FFVII and Square almost bankrupted themselves making a FFVII movie?

Square is taking a huge risk with this FFVII remake and if they fuck with it too much it will backfire on them.

I really don't care about how they are packaging and selling the game. I just hope that they don't use FFXIII as a model for combat, or world design. I am sick and tired of linear RPGs without much overworld to explore, or an overworld that can be reduced to point-to-point excursions, or a disdain for the levelling systems. I need exploration, freedom of choice, and the ability to level up without being punished for it and I feel that FFVII is the last game in the series that offered those three things (FFXII was damn close though). I have a weird feeling that they will try to design their way around these design decisions like they did with FFVIII / FFX / FFXIII (my least favourite entries in the series) and that will ruin the whole experience for me.

The Spirits Within wasn't a FFVII movie. Advent Children actually did pretty well IIRC.

I'm interested to see what they come out with but totally happy to hang out until the second release to see if they're actually sticking with it.

@gaff: see you in 2026!

@gaff: Yeah, it'll take 3 times as long now.

As one of those FF7 die-hard fanboys, I am kinda ok with this. Like to really give us "FF7 HD" with all the expected graphical, content and etc bells and whistles of a modern FF..wouldn't the budget for that be like 3 or 4 times the biggest budget of any video-game to date?

The story of FF7 is more then big enough to be split into separate 'parts'. And really, if each part is the equivalent of a FF size game in length and etc..so what if its 3 parts of the same story? If FF7 the remake part 1 is as long as FF13 and part 2 and 3 are of similar length, and and they are all good? Sure i'd pay 60$ for each one. Just cause "well they released a game that told the whole story for the price of 1 game" back in 97 doesn't suddenly make them needing/breaking up the story now. Its 2016, its been 20 years of advancements.

Anyone not expecting something like this was kidding themselves. As a big ole fan boy, I want the best remake they can give me. If they need to spend the kinda time and money that means they gotta charge a full 180 for the whole experience? But I am effectively getting 3 FF games out of it? Uh..yah, that's fine.

Again, if. If its 60$ for a linear 15 hours, at 60$ over 10 parts, then heck no. But 3 parts, at about the same length/scope of the last big FF entry? Sure. This is not much differnt then if they have just said "FF13 will be getting 2 sequels to finish up and flesh out the story" before FF13 itself came out. People might have been upset..but its not like they would have been right to be so in the end (again assuming you think those games were worth buying, which I am assuming the remake will be).

Or yah, someone said it. Masseffect always billed itself as a trilogy, I don't give EA crap for charging full price for each entry. (I give them crap for having DLC that is still full prize years later with no "ultimate edition' bundle for anything close to a reasonable price"

As for how they will make money? As it turns out, FF7 has several pretty good climax/new begining points in it. I mean you've got the obvious one that ends the first disk, but there is easily a second one to be found at somepoint between that and end-game. And, given they are adding stuff too this game? Something tells me we are not going to see a 60 hour expereince split into 3 60$ games. But..like people played Uncharted 1-3 for that and if they really nail it and hit it out of the park..maybe that wouldn't be so bad either. Its not like they are holding story behind a pay-wall. Its all nostalgia. They win, Aeris dies, 200 years in the future the planet is healed. There is one last big fight with Sephiroth that you can only see upside down on youtube cause..ok that's the movie. But whatever.

Again, big ole fanboy, so maybe I've got on rose-tinted glasses? but I don't see the 3-part structure being a bad thing. Yah, it'll be 2020 before the last game is released (or 2022..or 2026..) but hey, as long as they are making it, I'm stoked.

I dunno, I don't think it's that strange for people to have expected something more modest from this, especially when Square liked to get out there and say a FF7 Remake was too expensive to produce (until they showed this thing off, obviously).

Or yah, someone said it. Masseffect always billed itself as a trilogy, I don't give EA crap for charging full price for each entry. (I give them crap for having DLC that is still full prize years later with no "ultimate edition' bundle for anything close to a reasonable price"

The difference there being that Mass Effect was a new story that wasn't released as one part previously for one price. We already have a precedent for how FF7 was released/presented/priced. Obviously they can't release the game they're making for $60, but that's kind of not the consumer's problem. The fact that they're just straight up padding it out with side/new content across 3 games so they can charge people full-price multiple times to cover their development costs is super shitty.

It's really going to come down to how many fans, like you, don't have those hang-ups with what they're doing. I imagine if this thing doesn't sell the numbers they want it to, they'll just stop releasing parts, and then who is actually happy then? I dunno, this project is big and messy and unproven so far, and maybe it will be great in the end. Hopefully it will be.

pick-up-all-the-shiniesitis is a killer! Sounds like it got you too, @Slag.

Wow! Exciting. Will be curious to hear what you think about it should you decide to blog it out. The original ME is a real bastard for slowpokes like us. Definitely it's a 20 hour game if you know what you're doing. Want to say my first time broke 50 easy, and I had a second run that was actually longer (I remember thinking, lol, "now I'll really take my time". The game has a vibe that really promotes slowness I think, which is cool. Once ME2 rolls around there's definitely more a sense of urgency. No more cruising in the Mako, hitting sick rock ramps and drifting through the air... *sigh*

I am going to, again, wonder aloud why they didn't just make a full-on sequel to FF7 if they wanted to make a game that is so different from the original.

@teddie: just like starcraft 2.

From what I remember of the plot of 7, you could actually use that exact naming convention.

Also, I had to fight with myself over whether or not to spoiler that line. Should I? The game is about as old as I am but dammit they're releasing it, so does it count as spoilers now? What is this confusing world I live in?

Or really good at denial. :D

Also to be fair, I think it was just a bullet point or passing comment in some press junket or something similar but they didn't make a clear or direct clarification when they were asked to comment previously.

Honestly this game sounds more and more like an epic too difficult to pull off, especially considering the kind of expectations coming from the game's namesake alone.

Makes sense to me. The first game ends at one of the biggest moments in Playstation history, the second when a certain someone goes comatose, and the third is your "finish the fight". Scatter the silly bits around the three for filler, and you got yourself a remake that people thought would be impossible. Now whether or not is good, we will have to wait and see.

I may be in the minority, but my love for FFVII extends basically to the point where that $15 ps4 version looks like a phenomenal idea and this 3 separate full priced games ($80 cdn for me, so $240 to replay a version of a game I got for $9.99 in a Wal-Mart bin about 15 years ago) seems like some kind of nostalgia based extortion.

I like this because it basically means they're going to have to employ some pretty radical changes for this to make sense because there really isn't three games worth of material in Final Fantasy VII, people just like to remember it that way I think.

It might not end up meeting expectations but splitting it into 3 games instead of just one makes it more feasible to try and nail everything that they want to accomplish with less monetary risk and pressure compared to making a behemoth of a game.

@beforet: Yeah, I feel like when an old game gets remade, the duty not to spoil it is reinstated.