Final Fantasy VII Remake Will Be A "Multi Part Series"

The last few days have been a real emotional rollercoaster for die hard fans of Final Fantasy VII. At Saturday's PlayStation Experience keynote, a new trailer for Final Fantasy VII Remake offered a glimpse at in-game footage, including a new, real-time combat system. Across social media and message boards, fans of the series seemed incredibly excited for the game (though some purists voiced objection to the loss of FFVII's Active Time Battle system).

Then, yesterday, a press release revealed that the game would "be told across a multi-part series, with each entry providing its own unique experience," and the tone shifted dramatically as fans began to worry what this might mean for the game's content, release schedule, and narrative focus. It wasn't clear if the series was going to be episodic in the vein of a Telltale game or if "multi-part" meant something closer to the way Final Fantasy XIII spun off two sequels over four years before concluding. More than anything, though, there seemed to be a breach of trust between Square-Enix and Final Fantasy fans. I guess that's what happens when you sneak a pretty major detail about an anticipated game into a press release without offering much detail.

Late last night, Square-Enix began the process of rebuilding that trust by providing some clarification and some new information via interviews with Famitsu and Dengeki Online. Game director Tetsuya Nomura and producer Yoshinori Kitase explained that due to the remake's increased density, making the full game as a single release would require a number of undesirable cuts and it would limit the team's ability to make new additions. So, rather than that, they chose from the beginning to target a multiple part release. Kitase said that the company would provide more information about this release strategy in future announcements.

The two also provided more information about the game's development, combat system, and story. Some highlights (with thanks to Gematsu for translation):

• CyberConnect2, along with other "various companies," are helping with development.
• The developers are aiming for a "seamless active battle" system similar to what is in the Dissidia and Kingdom Hearts franchises, but that will retain some elements of the original Final Fantasy VII's Active Time Battle system (including some version of Limit Breaks.)
• Like the original, the remake will feature a three person party. You'll be able to switch between which character you control freely.
• Some story content will change, some will remain the same. Nomura and Kitase are definitely aware that they need to both keep die hard fans of the original game happy while also updating an out-of-date script. So on one hand, yes, Final Fantasy VII Remake will still feature Cloud cross-dressing for Don Corneo. But on the other hand, Nomura says he wants to "surprise" fans who know the story from start to finish and Kitase says that he wants the remake to be more than just "something nostalgic."

For lots more info, check out Gematsu's story.

While I have my own opinions on this stuff (I'm generally glad that Square-Enix willing to shake things up, but I also think that this has been a real lack of control over the game's messaging), I'm very curious about what Final Fantasy VII superfans think of all of this. Does the "multi-part" announcement ruffle you or are you confident that this will work out in the end? How close do you want the remake to stay to the original? Do you plan on waiting for the whole thing to be released, or playing the game as it comes out, one part at a time? Lemme know!

Really hope they don't change much in terms of story

I'm still unsure how a multi-part RPG would play out. Like how are you supposed to explore a world map if you won't necessarily be able to visit certain places until another episode comes out? Like, I'm sure it could work, I just don't know how it would work.

I don't have too much of a problem with it being a "multi-part series," but I just want to know what they mean by that.

I hope the date with Barrett is still possible and that it's fully voiced.

And that his Jack Skellington tattoo means he sings the Oogie Boogie Song at some point.

I'm generally fine with whatever they want to change in regards to the battle system or story. Those elements need updating the most. This whole multi-part thing has me worried though. They really need to get out ahead of this with some details, and they need to do it yesterday. Roughly how many installments are we talking? What kind of price point? Most importantly, how long is it going to take to get the full game out? Squeenix hasn't done an episodic game before, to my knowledge. Is this going to be a Starcraft 2 situation?

I feel like this is Square Enix giving me permission to not care about this remake. I just want them to fucking remake the original game, as closely as possible. I just played it again a few years ago and it is a ton of fun, but looks like garbage. Clean up visuals, dialogue, etc., but keep everything else intact.

Make a definitive version, not a new game.

FF7 had a decent amount of humor to it, as a lot of text heavy japanese games do. In the modern era FF games became very self serious, so i'll be interested to see if the game can still make fun of itself sometimes.

This basically seems like a new game based on the plot of FFVII. That's not inherently bad, but given Final Fantasy's track record lately, I'd bet money that this thing either goes into pure development hell and never comes out, or it releases in a timely manner and it's not really FFVII in any meaningful way. I'd give about a 25% chance that the final part of this is ever released.

I can't stand how Kingdom Hearts plays, the barebones hack and slash combat with a menu on top of it just doesn't do it for me. I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt here, but ugh.

This basically confirmed everything I expected about this remake. It was kind of interesting watching the joy from the trailer turn to white-hot rage.

Don't cut any of the stuff with The Turks and we are golden. Also keep Aerith dead.

Square published Life is Strange (oddly enough) which was a great mutli part series that got it's installments out in good time. As a publisher they did fine.

Can't say I know anything about the developers involved or their scheduling histories. I feel like the dev cycle will be more a factor than anything.

What a joke.

@kerikxi: They published Life is Strange so they at least have a little experience with putting an episodic thing out, if not developing one.

Wait, Jet's last name was Black? Fuck, I don't think I ever knew/picked up on that!

I like the episodic idea since it might result in a new game coming out before the 2020s, but I'm worried about how they'll stitch the episodes together. Is the game going to be FFVII served up in chunks? Or is it going to jump from set-piece to set-piece without the sprawling connective tissue that fleshed out the original game? The world map and exploration were central to the experience for me, so an FFXV style world map or a greatest hits game would be a bummer.

The changes to the combat seem the kind of thing that was always going to happen. Nomura's games have been moving further and further away from turn based combat with each release. At least the new system looks gorgeous, even if it's not my favorite style of game.

This a thousand times over. This is my primary concern with this remake. Mix up the combat, release it in 2 parts (they even have the perfect part 1 cliffhanger), whatever. But for the love of god make sure you actually understand what made these old Final Fantasies so different from todays - they were quirky and full of goofy characters and situations and interactions, which you need as a contrast to when it gets serious.

Generally multipart games have been sequential like all the Telltale games. So I worry that they will push FFVII to be sequential/linear where I would rather they pushed towards Witcher 3.

Will we still be able to run everywhere on the map with a Gold Chocobo? Battle the weapons?

Are there any games that have actually benefitted from being episodic?

@planetfunksquad: They could gate it I guess. How much of FF7 could you really visit before you were meant to or needed to? It was pretty linear from what I remember of it. You could have Midgar as one part, then Grasslands/Fort Condor/Junon as the next part. Then over to the Coral Area and on.

And I imagine that, unless it's been said elsewhere, like recent Final Fantasy games this one won't have a world map but will have like a hub system?

@planetfunksquad said:

I've never played FF VII but other RPGs sometimes block your path until you obtain a certain item.

It might not be so bad if they did it in 3 parts with each 'episode' covering one of the original game's 3 discs. I'm not sure how I feel about the new gameplay though.

I don't mind the idea of them splitting the release so long as the core story remains intact. Just think of it as playing disc 1. It will be interesting whether part of the reason for splitting the release is so they can push out 'part 1' asap, before the 'whole game' is finished!

I like what we've seen in the small trailer they have released. It certainly looks like they are on the right track, but there's still plenty of time for them to fuck it up!

If the multi part release of the game is just the base game(first release) with expansions(second, third, and further releases) adding onto the base game like a GW2 expansion or D3 expansion, then I'd be fine with it. As long as all multi part releases come together to form a full game. Allowing you to go back to Midgar in the later releases without having to close the game and opening up the .exe for the first release. Then I'm A-Okay with that.

Yea, I was ok with the new trailer...Not happy that its real time combat, but it looked vastly improved from the older games, and even looked better then FF15. It was all short clips, but it looked more snappy and responsive. But ugh....Three parts, on top of real time combat which will likely suck balls....This seems to continue Squares down hill down slide they have been on since FFX.

Even though I totally understand why they're going for a real time combat system, and would think Square Enix crazy for not changing the combat, I have to say I will miss the ATB combat system. I don't know what it is, but I've always found command based gameplay to be really fun (Maybe I'm "wired" that way, as you would say Austin). I used to think I just had rose tinted glasses on when it came to that kind of stuff, but I've played enough Super Nintendo and Playstation RPGs in recent years to know I still like that kind of combat system.

Although, I do also like Paradox games and CRPGs, so I guess it's not really a suprise.

As one of the "super-fan", had expected this. Episodic stuff I mean. If i had to guess they want the first part to be release 2017 for the 20th anniversary and this is the only way they are going to make it on time. The other thing is ff7, in term of scale, is like nothing that came before it and I will go so far as to say it was like nothing that came after it as well. the player had to spend like 6-10 hours in midgar alone and the moment I thought the game was over, cloud stop to look at the outside world over a broken bridge and the player base collectively realize oh man this is just the beginning.

A game of that scope, in today's development cycle, simply can not be produce. If this will allow it to be made as close/faithful as possible I will buy all three part for 60$ a piece because this game deserves it.

My guess is that the first part will revolve around midgar part of the game. We will probably get more stuff with Avalance team to flesh them out and the tusks as well. Both of those team play a pretty major part in the plot but we know almost nothing about them in the original. That is something they can work with.

and yes this game can work in episodic format.

game 1 end at midgar exit

game 2 end at forgotten city

game 3 end at crater

it actually make a lot of sense to end each game at the end of each "act" in the original.

For me this just cements the zero confidence I have in them and that they barely know what they're doing. They know they want to cash in with this giant piece of fan service, but as for what that means they're just throwing ideas at it that sometimes seem antithetical to what was enjoyable about the original. I would argue that as a company struggling to make modern games that review well or please their fans, they are no in a position to modernize a classic in a positive way.

Will it be good? Nobody can possibly know at this stage but I'm not filled with confidence. Austin says there's a lack of control over the messaging, I say it's symptomatic of a developer that doesn't really know what they're doing.

I'll probably wait till it's all out until I play it now. Having a hard time imagining how a multi-part release would work without hurting aspects of the game.

I suppose I should say that, in the abstract, without knowing more and having only seen the brief trailer they put out, I don't necessarily object to them making changes to the battle system or even putting the game out in episodic format.

My issue is I have a hard time believing that those changes are coming from the right place, if that makes any sense. In other words, those changes would be fine if they were in answer to the question "Does it make the game better?" The problem is that I find far more likely that the changes were in answer to the question "What are the cool games doing these days?" Is the episodic thing really adding to the game, or they doing it that was because Life Is Strange was successful? Are they changing the combat because it makes the game more engaging, or are they doing it that way because they see ARPGs having success?

Given Nomura's track record with the series in particular, I'm betting on the latter, which is why I'll likely stay far, far away from this one. Plus, the original came out on PS4 recently and I have to say, graphics and translation aside, the core gameplay holds up pretty well. Better than a lot of people who haven't played it recently seem to think it does.

The closest analogue I can think of for what my hunch is telling me, is something like the Xenosaga trilogy on PS2; unfortunately this would mean we shouldn't hold our breaths for a world map -- hopefully won't be as linear as FFXIII, but I'm gonna go ahead and go on record predicting it will have a similar linearity to say, FFX. Which isn't too too terrible, in my opinion. I enjoyed X.

Did Xenosaga benefit from that episodic format? Thats the question... you could argue that they got to tell a much longer, more epic story, and go many more places in the game world than they would have otherwise. You could also argue that the format hurt the games sales overall, with the sales trailing with each subsequent release, as the bar of entry for newcomers is raised. In todays market with development costs vs sales revenue being what they are compared to what they were 10 years ago though, that could be a much more dire thing for FFVII remake than it was for Xenosaga.

So yeah, no answer really but theres my speculations, for what thats worth.

What's the point of a Final Fantasy game if it's spilt into parts released at different points? Adopting Western ideas such as an episodic nature into a giant JRPG adventure is one bad move. Trying to imagine my favorite JRPGS if they were split into parts. What I love about that genre is being tarnished with this plan. Nomura takes far too long to make his games so I guess this is the only way to get it sooner rather than much later. Still not acceptable.

Oh well Persona 5, and FFXV still exist.

I'm happy they're willing to rethink and update the game. I have less nostalgia for it than a lot of people given that I'm a SNES RPG guy at heart, but even through the most rose-colored glasses imaginable that game is real rough in spots. Script, pacing, story, characters, battle system, and more are all either archaic or just plain bad.

I don't think I'd play a straight remake of the game. Though I can see why others would prefer the straight remake given that I still go back and play FF4 and FF6 on occasion. As a pure nostalgia play it seems like you'd want them to stick as closely to the original as possible.

The knee-jerk negative reactions to the details coming out haven't exactly surprised me, since folks don't tend to think things through before posting their reactions. As one of the crazies who's wanted a VII remake since the initial PS3 tech demo, and with VII being my favorite entry in the series, I'm pretty much fine with everything they've said about it thus far. Making some changes to the game had to be expected, and going multi-part is them being possibly greedy but certainly realistic about the magnitude of the game. Until they show something egregious like paid DLC summons or real-world time Chocobo racing cooldown timers, I'm quite optimistic.

I'm a pretty big fan of the original game (not mindless fan by any means, it's not even my favorite Final Fantasy). I think the release schedule depends entirely on the size of the parts released and their price. If they go 60$ for 15 hours of game that's gonna piss a lot of people off. If they go 40$ for 15 hours that's a little better.

I think as far as things changing that I'm ok with it, with a couple of minor caveats. The game should fundamentally have the same theme and they should keep most of the humor.

Firstly I think humor is really important. It helps break the tension and adds moments of relief to the audience. This is what I think is largely missing from later entries. Characters don't goof off or act silly. They are always 100% serious all the time. There's a great qoute from Joss Whedon I'm gonna pull here that sums up my point entirely

“Make it dark, make it grim, make it tough, but then, for the love of God, tell a joke.”

FFVII is really about loss, that's what makes it so emotionally resonant. It's part of the reason the game is still so well loved today. If you really want some insight, check out this retrospective that The Completionist did on YouTube, really changed my views on the game:

Really need to know the style of episodic here. I'm cool with the Telltale style but I don't know that I want the next several years full of FF7 games.

I find it impossible to be up in arms about the episodic nature of the remake right now. There just isn't enough information. I mean, one part for each disk? Yeah, sure, I guess. Or, would Midgar itself be one episode? That's way too short and totally not cool.

I've been replaying the game for the first time since its release (PC version, and I should probably thank Cloud's Smash announcement as the initial spark) and it's doing a good job of putting what the remake could or should be into perspective. Like, original Midgar is probably less than 20 screens, total. That seems far less daunting to render in full 3D than an entire city. But, what route does the remake take? You really don't spend that much time in Midgar or explore much of it at all. Do they change that? Do they keep Wall Market as a tiny town with 3 screens worth of shops whose quest can be completed in less than 15 minutes, or expand it into the bustling marketplace that the game implies it is and really stretch that portion of the game out?

At the end of the day, I'm just really curious to see what the remake is when it's done and playable. As a fan of the original, everything about this is super fascinating.

I see the multipart thing playing out like it did for 13, more than episodic. I really can't see a point in FF7s story where I would think, "hey, let's take a 2 year break". At least the 13 for better or worse (and regardless of how I felt them personally) games felt contained, if anything too divergent. I have no idea how they make that work for 7 if they're trying to keep the story together.

I can rationalize that the time to make this game today versus then is so different, but there is a mental block here for me that says this was a 60$ game and now you are asking me to pay something closer to $200. The language they used was so rough, "each will have a full game content" which effectively means, you're going to pay full price, even if we break this up into 15hr chunks. Especially in a year that gave us so many 100 hour games. It's a bitter pill for me right now.

edit: just to add that I'm skewing on the side that I am because SE has done little in recent memory to suggest they might do something other than "what the market can bear".

THIS! NOTHING ELSE! END OF STORY!

@icarusfoundyou: I feel like a broken record cause I put this in every FFVII thread, but the PC version (the one that was rereleased on Steam) already had a totally cleaned up translation that Eidos did. So that problem was fixed in like 1998.

@gimm3nicotine: The thing is that Xenosaga wasn't actually that good, and that's why people stopped buying it. Mass Effect sold like Gangbusters on a more prolonged release schedule because people liked it.

To the original topic:

The game had disk changes that gated content in the original version. Partitioning out the game into 3 parts would not be a big deal. As with others, I am more concerned with the wait time between installments than I am that the installments exist. Superfans of FFVII are old men (and women) already, don't wait for us to start dying before we get all of what we ask for?

Yeah, this is true. The first 1/2 of the game is just the illusion of freedom, while in reality you're on a pretty linear path.

Just when I thought this thing couldn't get less appealing...

imagine them integrating the "Compilation of Final Fantasy VII" garbage into this.

Reading this brought me from "not really interested" to "generally really excited" about this game. Like I don't know yet if any of this is going to work, but I'm glad they're going to attempt to do something new with it. I'm smart enough to realize FF 7 as a straight up port of what it was in the late 90s is not really something I want to experience (7 was a significant step back from 6 in terms of actual gameplay at the time. It's one of the more bare bones entries in the series from a gameplay standpoint).

Not enough information to really form my opinion, but i have no real problems with the battles or the episodic nature. I rather have the entire game in 2-3 episodes than having a 15 hour campaign that skips out 60% of the content.

No, no, no, no, NO NO NO NO NO!

What if we could charge One Hundred and Eighty goddamn Dollars for Final Fantasy 7? I feel like splitting it up changes the game in a fundamental way that's pretty disappointing. We can't explore a world map if half the world isn't built yet. Do we level our characters up from scratch in each release? I suppose if it was between splitting it and cutting stuff out, then sure, split it I guess. It just feels like they're making every decision I hoped they wouldn't. I'm still glad this is the project they chose, because I have confidence that all their other ideas were terrible, but this was supposed to be a sure thing, and it doesn't feel so sure anymore.

Multi disc JRPGs are back mofos.

It's impossible to please all fans with this game - butts will be hurt.

I feel the best thing would be to overwrite nostalgia with an objectively better game all round. If people are still upset with the end-product after that? Well, 7 still exists.

I was exited beyond belief after that trailer (I'm a big Kingdom Hearts fan by the way) but having an open world RPG dissected sounds terrible. Returning to an RPG is tough, and not to mention that in some regard Final Fantasy VII is a known quantity, that we are going to have to wait to see told entirely?

Also, I do not like that quote about nostalgia. The whole point of a remake is to play largely off of nostalgia. I do not have faith in Square, especially considering what they thought was a good new direction for the Final Fantasy series lately.