Square Enix have spilled the beans on their remake of FINAL FANTASY VII.
To confirm previous details, the game is NOT a straight remaster of the first game. Instead, it's a ground-up remake. Square are taking the same story and characters and effectively making the game as if they were making a new title in 2019.
This means dramatically increasing the size and scope of the game, in particular incorporating more open-world elements and new side-quests and extra material. You could complete FF7 in about 22 hours if you really went for it, 30 hours if you were a bit more leisurely and, of course, however long you wanted if you were grinding the world map for levels, materia etc.
FF7 Remake is being split into multiple episodes: the number is unclear but the smart money at the moment is on three. Episode I will be released on 3 March 2020 on PS4 (probably 12-18 months later on PC and XB1) and will cover the opening Midgar part of the game, from the attack on the reactor to the raid on Shinra HQ and our heroes' subsequent flight. This takes about 6 hours or a quarter of the original game, but in the Remake it will fill two Blu-Rays and will be the length of a full-length game (presumably ~30 hours at the lower end). This will be done by adding new subplots and material, such as a sequence where Cloud and Aerith are attacked by shadow monsters on the streets of Midgar. Midgar will also be more open to exploration, unlike the walled-off streets of the original game.
Combat has also been changed to a more dynamic, real-time system where you control character attacks in real time (tapping a button to swing Cloud's sword or fire Barrett's gun-arm) but can pause to issue new orders. When you fill gauges with your real-time attacks, you can then pause to issue special attacks, unleash magic or summons, or use potions. Limit Breaks are still in the game as well. You can also switch between party members (3 in battle, from the same pool as the original game) at will.
The producers have previously said that they envisage the entire project taking as long as the three instalments of FFXIII, which took four years for its three parts to come out.
In addition to this comprehensive remake of FFVII, there'll also be a less dramatic remaster of FFVIII coming out next year as well.
Looks great. I'll pick it up when it's actually complete in 2030.
I started replaying the original, after applying the Remako mod. Very impressed by this.
The main limitation on remastering FF7 has been the low-res scans of the backgrounds. You can replace the 3D character/battle/minigame models all day long (and people have), but without being able to do anything about the backgrounds, the game will remain looking very antiquated.
Remako's technique uses an AI-driven clean-up process. It takes the original art and FMV and reproduces it at 4x the resolution, effectively by taking educated guesses at how many pixels to add to an art element. As it goes through the game it gets better at doing it, and the modders can adjust things it gets wrong.
This is a cutting-edge technology and has worked excellently. There's also some other possibly exciting applications (like taking old video and blowing it up to HD or even 4K, which is otherwise impossible), but for this it's worked like a charm and makes the game look much more modern and more playable. Very impressive.
Been reading up on the spoilers for FF7 Remake (I didn't think spoilers would be a thing for a 23-year-old story but there we go) and they're pretty wild.
Unfortunately this isn't coming out on the PC for a year due to Sony's exclusivity thing, so will have to hold fire until then.
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They have it on sale in the PlayStation Store so I ended up getting it.
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Hope you have fun! I’m reeeeeally excited for the next part, but I’ve been replaying the first one a few times in the meanwhile. It’s goooooood
It should be fun, 7 is the only one I really played, other than Tactics, so I imagine the nostalgia will be deep.
It's pretty good so far, I've only just blown up the reactor and I left off having to make way through some tunnels with Barrett and company.
I figured out Wedge is voiced by Badger from Breaking Bad, so that's pretty cool.
Yep—and Biggs is voiced by Balthier!
Hey, I found the flower girl, she seems nice and surely won't eventually die.
Also I had forgotten about the flashbacks.
At any rate, I didn't get to explore much because of supper and what not.
Tonight I'll probably recover from the first half of the week, I'm working solo tomorrow as my usual co-worker is helping out on a project in Merrimac.
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It's amazing how much of the game is burned into my subconscious.
I think I'll pick up Microsoft Fight Simulator this week. It does look amazing and the way they've approached the game (basically going Google Earth if GE was in mega-HD right down to a far lower altitude of detail) is genuinely crazy. Previous games had certain routes and certain locations in them, this one just has the entirety of planet Earth. If you want to fly a Dreamliner over Antarctica you can. Go nuts. Crazy stuff.
I made it to chapter 3, I can't decide if I hate the commandos (dudes that look like Foot Soldiers from TMNT toy line), guard dogs, or those f++#ing a&!#+~$s with the shields most of all.
The dogs suck because they grab you (and I'm a dog person), the commandos suck because they dodge everything and then the shield guys suck because they have shields.
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Some advice!
Let the Shock Troopers come to you: drop into Punisher Mode and counter their attacks and they’ll be MUCH easier to handle.