Developer Square Enix announced the remake of the massively popular Final Fantasy VII four years ago. Since then, it's shown precious little footage and the last of that was about a year ago. Today, the long anticipated game showed signs of life. Square Enix showed off footage of the game during Sony’s State of Play—an online showcase of upcoming PlayStation games.
I am… concerned about how some of the gameplay seems to echo FFXV? It’s such a small snippet though, it’s hard to really tell what it’s going to play like.
I wasn’t excited for this. FF7 is one of those games that I played through and enjoyed but never really felt a lasting connection with. (Compared to, say, FF6, which shaped my young mind.)
Then I heard Aerith’s theme and the nostalgia dam broke. I’m probably going to have to buy this now.
I haven’t played FF15, but it looks like vaguely like 13 in that you only control one character at a time and kinda have to time button presses, well… Y’know what’s fun and strategic? Selecting actions from a menu for each character. But it’s hard to tell from the way it’s cut. It could just be flashy. It does look like certain actions are bound to buttons though.
Also it looked like they had “Aerith” instead of “Aeris”, so I guess that has truly switched over. I’m not too sure about her voice though. Hopefully that’s just placeholder. The other characters sounded good though. Hope they don’t make Cloud so insufferably mopey as he was in any of the post-7 stuff, since he was more aloof and snarky for most of the game.
That scene of Aeris praying instantly makes me well up with emotion though. Every time.
I need to see more gameplay to know what I think. If it plays like FFXV that would be bad, what if it instead played like this one game that was very popular back in the day… I think it was called FFVII?
I still don’t really “get” this. I mean, I understand the financial incentive for Square Enix, but is this really gonna be what people want when they get their hands on it? I’m still pretty convinced this is gonna be a big ol’ disappointment
I know this is only a teaser, but something about the way this trailer is cut makes me feel like this game isn’t even close to coming out this generation. I worry that ffvii episode I is going to be the only thing that comes out of this project. It all just feels kind of ephemeral.
Gameplay looks a lot like FFXV, which gets a thumbs down from me; although you can see a Kingdom Hearts-esque shortcut menu at 0:21 in the corner, so I have a little hope it won’t be so meh?
I wonder why they used “Return” over “Reunion” in the opening quote, though? Would’ve been a better way to tie into the story…
I’d wager a guess that most if not all of Episode 1 will be Midgar only, but yeah, given that literally all we’ve seen over four is just Midgar, there’s definitely a reason to be worried.
part of me wants to live in a world where we can have different versions of video games, in the way we have different adaptations and productions of plays. and another wishes this were weird some self-reflexive meditation on what it even means to remake something that is, fairly or not, treated as a foundational text by so many folks (doubtlessly a lot of devs on the project).
there’s a quote from an essay by a writer, Susan Howe, “a film you love when you are young is never what you know you saw,” that i’ve been thinking about a lot in terms of the games i loved as a kid. if i really went back to FFIX and stuck with it past the 1st disc, would it be the epic i remember? or would it be a 40.5 hour commitment that i don’t know how to fit into my life anymore? i dunno, it’s been a long time! i want a FFVII remake that’s about that.
… and a more cynical part says maybe neither one of those is at the heart of this project, when “REMAKE” is bolted on like “DELUXE” or “SUPER” and “64” would have been 20 years ago.
Hot take: I hope it plays like Final Fantasy XV, a game that is very fun and good.
I’m very much down for this, regardless of if I can find the time to play any of the original at some point. I wanna experience final fantasy VII in some form, at the very least.
Well, the bulk of the combat in FFXV revolved around an ability that Cloud doesn’t have, so it’ll have to be at least slightly different. Though if they’re going that route I would rather them go with something more to the “character action” side of things. FFXV and Kingdom Hearts have always felt like clunky in-betweens that needed to pick a side.
I know that Barret always has been a walking stereotype of a black man, but hearing the two lines he says in this trailer soured the whole thing for me. The localization team had a chance to make him into more of a character, but it seems like they didn’t bother and instead went full racist instead. So disappointing. Do better Square. Y’all are a big company and have the money for quality localization.
Yeah, that was my first thought as well. It’s the voice that you’d assume comes from a voice director saying “hmmm … doesn’t sound quite {euphemism} enough, can we get another take?”
I’m curious how it’s going to be, esp. considering they’re obviously going to have to make some changes (so much of what I love about the tone of the original comes from the sense of looseness to it all, where seriousness is balanced with levity and silliness / there’s a sincere sense of innocence and wonder to it). If they just remade the original as-is but with nice modern graphics, it just wouldn’t work, imo.
I’m hoping that it won’t be a case of just sanding off the charm and replacing it with gritty JRPG angstmeisters.
Not going to lie: I kind of want some kind of Twin Peaks: The Return-esque subversion of the very idea of remaking / returning to something that carries such nostalgic weight with it. Nothing would thrill me more than playing up to where Aeris dies and having the game totally wrong-foot me so the story suddenly goes off in a completely different direction.
I’ve been watching Tim Rogers’s video series “Let’s Mosey” on kotaku’s YouTube, and it seems like the original has so much charm and goofiness that this self-serious remake seems bad? I’ve never played FFVII, but it’s also like $15 on Switch and I feel like it’s so cheap that it won’t even be worth it to buy the remake.
