The new issue of Famitsu, the famous Japanese gaming magazine, has revealed new info about the Final Fantasy VII remake. Most notably, the game will have more focus on Biggs, Wedge, and Jesse, as well as a fully explorable Midgar.
Square has been slowly dripping out info regarding the remake of the classic game, and not all of it has been received positively. In recent gameplay footage, the new battle system was revealed which does away with much of the turn-based elements of the original game in favour of a system resembling that of the FF XIII series. There has of course also been the decision to split up the game into “episodes”, which will be sold separately. There has been no word on how many of these episodes there will be.
It’s hard not to be sceptical of the Final Fantasy VII remake considering what a terrible, terrible, terrible company Square Enix has become. Seemingly second only to Konami in how disconnected it is from the fanbase that still tries its best to support it. Having said that, I don’t think the decision to radically change some of the content from the original game is a bad one. If you want to justify selling this thing for more than 60 dollars, splitting it up into multiple parts, you better have some new content to justify it. Give me more of the city to explore, give me cyberpunk chocobo races, GIVE ME MORE DRESSES TO PUT CLOUD IN GODDAMMIT
*Coughs*
The point is, if Square Enix is going to get away with charging multiple times for a remake, it does need to add new content. Now of course, that is no guarantee that the new content will be good. This is modern Square Enix after all, but I really can’t fault them for trying to take the game in a new direction, especially since a port of the game has already been made available on the PS4 earlier this month for 15 bucks. It is already perfectly possible for folks to play the original game on modern consoles, so to justify the price tag, Square will have to do something radical. Let’s just hope that this new direction doesn’t turn out to be as bad as the previous six “new directions” Square Enix has tried over the past decade.