Here's Everything We Know About Final Fantasy VII Remake After E3 2019
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Square Enix made a big impression during E3 2019 with Final Fantasy VII Remake, which debuted a variety of new footage and details during their E3 press conference last week. At this point, we have a clear picture of how this game will play out.
You must have seen the latest trailer, which you can watch above. But just in case you just found out that this project exist, we’ve compiled the latest key details about this upcoming title to give you a better idea of what to expect once Final Fantasy VII Remake launches on March 3, 2020.
Final Fantasy VII will be an episodic game
If you recall the original game, the JRPG was oozing with content that it shipped with 3 discs. It’s a complex game from story to even scale that when Square Enix announced the project's existence I was scratching my head at how they are going to pull off a modern take on Final Fantasy VII. Square Enix is already known for taking its time in developing a Final Fantasy game so it felt like it would take decades before we actually get to play the game. But that worry was put to rest as the first part of the project will be out next year.
Final Fantasy VII Remake Producer Yoshinori Kitase, one of the original developers of the original, is working on the project and they are well aware of how massive this project is going to be, and as a result, they decided to cut the project up, releasing it one at a time. This approach also gives the developers the time and effort they need to fully flesh out characters in the game, and Midgar is the best place to start.
Jason Schreier of Kotaku asked how many games will there be in the remake and Yoshinori Kitase replied saying that they can’t say yet because they don’t know themselves.
The first game will take place in Midgar only
This was an obvious tell as most of the promotional footage so far only show events that occurred in Midgar. Square Enix didn’t go into specifics but we can assume that Final Fantasy VII Remake will start with the bombing run job and end once Cloud and company leaves Midgar, which is the point in the original game that opens up the rest of the world to explore.
In a post by Square Enix, Yoshinori Kitase says that “while many people may think that Midgar is very dark at first glance, we have a design aesthetic where the city has strong elements of color and variety.” they also decided to not use a photo-realistic approach in order to honor the “artistic designs and choices of the original.”
Midgar will keep us busy on March and with that alone, Square has a lot of content planned as Final Fantasy VII Remake’s physical copies will ship with two Blue-Ray discs.
It’s more of a reimagining than a 1:1 copy of the original
The developers are hard at work on the remake but stresses the fact that this is not a carbon copy of the original. It’s more of a reimagining than a straight-up remake, so expect changes from character design, the flow of the story, and also the gameplay, which is vastly different based on the footage shown so far.
Producer Yoshinori Kitase says that “Our goal with this project is to rebuild Final Fantasy 7 for a new era”. “Each game in the project will have a volume of content comparable to a standalone Final Fantasy [game]”, says Kitase, which suggests that we’ll see new sides of Midgar we’ve never seen before.
ATB makes a return but with changes
The remake’s combat takes an action-oriented approach similar to Final Fantasy 15 or even Kingdom Hearts 3 but with the option to switch to other characters in your party. Final Fantasy VII’s Active Time Battle system makes a return but with changes to suit the new direction. Every attack you do with a character helps build your ATB bar (which naturally builds up)faster, and once you fill a bar with one character you can use it to do specific actions like using an item, use special moves like Cloud’s Buster attack, or simply cast spells.
The combat was displayed perfectly when they demonstrated the game’s first boss fight which you can watch below, courtesy of IGN.
Even after all the details of Final Fantasy VII Remake, it’s still hard to grasp that Square Enix is now heavily invested and that the first game is set for release next year.
The first game of Final Fantasy VII Remake will be out first on PlayStation 4 on March 3, 2020.
From Keanu Reeve’s transition to an internet meme sensation to going crazy over how Final Fantasy VII is a real game, Carlos and Migs discussing the big reveals and shockers that occurred during E3 2019’s series of press conferences.