‘Not a simple remake’
Zack Furniss couldn’t pull much about Final Fantasy VII when he interviewed Square Enix’s Tetsuya Nomura (in what was a Kingdom Hearts 3 focused meeting), but crumbs of not at all unexpected news about the for-real Final Fantasy VII remake have come from Famitsu and Dengeki Online.
For example, this is not a simple HD remake or remaster like Final Fantasy X HD or even the one-year-younger Grim Fandango, which recently got prettied up.
“I can’t get go into details,” Nomura said, “but this is not a simple remake. Let’s say for argument’s sake that we only pretty up the graphics for current gen hardware, I don’t think that would surpass the original version.”
Obviously. People’s thirst for this project for years has given me plenty of time to think about it, and even the original game’s environments don’t scale for people that are human proportioned and not made from Mega Blocks. That’s to say nothing for 20 year old game systems and a story/writing that definitely aren’t as good as you remember.
The original version is a game that came out in 1997, and if you look at it today, you can feel how dated the graphics and the game system are,” before noting that even its flaws and restrictions are very much considered as part of the package. “We haven’t shown any gameplay yet, but since we’re updating them quite a bit, please look forward to that,” Nomura told Dengeki Online.
“Since we now formally revealed Kazushige Nojima’s name for the scenario, there will be more plot devices in the story, so I think you can also look forward to that,” Nomura said. “if you are going to do a full remake, you have to take a different approach and make something that suits the times.”
I’m completely with Nomura here. A straight Final Fantasy VII remake would be fine, but I’m glad Square Enix seems to be trying to do something bold and make appropriate changes rather than end up with something like Gus van Sant’s Psycho.
We may see more at Tokyo Game Show or maybe Sony’s PlayStation Experience if they do another one of those Vegas shows and Square stays mum on what other platforms its coming to for a while.
フルリメイク版『ファイナルファンタジーVII』＆『キングダム ハーツIII』について野村哲也氏を直撃【E3 2015】[Famitsu]
『FFVII』は安易なリメイクではない。『KHIII』を含めて野村哲也氏へインタビュー【E3 2015】[Dengeki Online]
The Final Fantasy VII Remake Won’t Be Exactly the Same [Kotaku]
