FF7 Remake "Multi part series"

[Wolf_]

I do not share your optimism. I feel like I have been lured into a false sense of happiness and when my guard was down got sucker punched. The only way this will be bearable is if each episode is 50+ hours each.

Kitase: “I don’t want the remake to end as something nostalgic. I want to get the fans of the original version excited.We’ll be making adjustments to the story with this feeling in mind.”

That terrifies me...

 

[hian]

People shouldn't get their panties in a bunch quite yet.

If they meant that the original game will be presented through episodes they would probably have phrased it that way.
The fact that they went with "multi-part series" and each part being its own unique experience seems to me to be indicating tht they do indeed plan to remake/rewrite the entire compilation I.E that the new FF7 will probably have pre-crisis and post-crisis parts as well (maybe even crisis momenfs following other characters).


So maybe we'll get a Zack part, an aftermath part and maybe even, if you're really lucky, a Turks or a Sephiroth part to flesh out the plot.
That's how I optimistically read it anyways.

 

[Theozilla]

People shouldn't get their panties in a bunch quite yet.

If they meant that the original game will be presented through episodes they would probably have phrased it that way.
The fact that they went with "multi-part series" and each part being its own unique experience seems to me to be indicating tht they do indeed plan to remake/rewrite the entire compilation I.E that the new FF7 will probably have pre-crisis and post-crisis parts as well (maybe even crisis momenfs following other characters).


So maybe we'll get a Zack part, an aftermath part and maybe even, if you're really lucky, a Turks or a Sephiroth part to flesh out the plot.
That's how I optimistically read it anyways.

The interviews clarify and make explicit that they they are only referring to the OG being remade into episodes, not the compilation.

 

[hian]

People shouldn't get their panties in a bunch quite yet.

If they meant that the original game will be presented through episodes they would probably have phrased it that way.
The fact that they went with "multi-part series" and each part being its own unique experience seems to me to be indicating tht they do indeed plan to remake/rewrite the entire compilation I.E that the new FF7 will probably have pre-crisis and post-crisis parts as well (maybe even crisis momenfs following other characters).


So maybe we'll get a Zack part, an aftermath part and maybe even, if you're really lucky, a Turks or a Sephiroth part to flesh out the plot.
That's how I optimistically read it anyways.

The interviews clarify and make explicit that they they are only referring to the OG being remade into episodes, not the compilation.

Yeah I juat read it. I hand't refreshed the thread so I missed it the first time around. That's what yiu get fod optimism I guess.


I'll get unto translating the interview myself. I never did like the gematsu articles that have been rushed out.

 

[Wolf_]

Lol

 

[Claymore]

Wow. Now that's a heck of a piece of news to wake up to ... but, you know what, I'm 100% ok with this. The game world is huge, and just looking back at the quality and details of the previous trailer, I don't doubt the cost involved of just getting that far - which they have clearly stated is a serious issue time and time again concerning a VII remake. If releasing it in an episodic format will generate the company the cash AND provide fans with the massive open-world VII remake they've been craving for ... then yeah, I'll support this 100%.

I want Wall Market to be massive. I want to explore every single freaking floor within the Shinra building. I want to fly around the world in the Highwind. I want to waste numerous hours travelling in a submarine looking for treasure. I want the Golden Saucer to have full-fledged G-Bike style games. And yes, I want new Materia, Weapons, DLC content and patches based on user feedback to keep this dream going for as long as possible.

If doing it in an episodic format grants both sides their wishes, then heck, I'm on board. I've got no complaints.

 

[Wolf_]

I admire your faith in square enix (as misplaced as it may be). Could it really be open world though? Surely by the time you get to the last 'episode' you've got the hole game on one disc anyway. The thought of me not being able to zoom about in boredom with the highwind frightens me. Chocobo breeding requires you do dart across the map at a moments notice as well as finding the keystone, and the temple music key thing. They have the story, they have the voice actors, they have an engine they can use in ffxv. is it really that hard to just render maps and make everything look pretty?

 

[Theozilla]

I admire your faith in square enix (as misplaced as it may be). Could it really be open world though? Surely by the time you get to the last 'episode' you've got the hole game on one disc anyway. The thought of me not being able to zoom about in boredom with the highwind frightens me. Chocobo breeding requires you do dart across the map at a moments notice as well as finding the keystone, and the temple music key thing. They have the story, they have the voice actors, they have an engine they can use in ffxv. is it really that hard to just render maps and make everything look pretty?

An open-world that's to-scale would have to be segmented (separated into different regions) regardless of whether the remake was episodic or not. Creating an entire planet as an open-world that's also to-scale is just unfeasible unless you want it to be obvious that the planet/globe is really small.

If you want to traverse the entire globe unsegmented it would have to be with a not-to-scale world map, which it doesn't seem like SE is going to be going for.

(though a separate not-to-scale world map might be used for flying the Highwind around the entire planet/globe in the remake)

 

[Claymore]

"My personal goal is to implement an airship that can fly around in full-scale," Tabata said.

It does seem improbable, but that's in regards to collaborating with the Just Cause 3 developers on the technology behind aerial concepts and controls for FFXV. XV is going to be the testing ground for this. For the VII Remake, we'll get a flyable Highwind ... but we just don't know what form that will be in yet.

The subject of cut content has cropped up quite a lot in several threads when we've discussed the battle system, materia, the story, the game world ... this news really isn't a shock when you think about it. They could never have released a remake with less content than the original, regardless of how pretty and polished it might have looked. How many years would that have taken to have a complete game all on one disc? Even outsourced? After Versus / XV, that's a commitment that they simply can not make.

I'm happy for this compromise.

Yes, in the end you're gonna end up paying a lot more than you would for just a complete base game - but call me stupid, I've wanted a Remake for years. I'm ok with this.

 

[X-SOLDIER]

I admire your faith in square enix (as misplaced as it may be). Could it really be open world though? Surely by the time you get to the last 'episode' you've got thew hole game on one disc anyway.

Assuming that the final size of the total content is under roughly 25 or 50GB (depending on your BluRay layer limitations and what the PS4 is capable or reading, since I think it maxes at 2 layers currently), it might need to be a multi-disc game by the final episode anyway -- hence their initial concerns of everything they want to put in the game not needing to be cut/constrained.

It's basically the StarCraft II scenario, except we have a much more clear idea of what we'll be getting.




X

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

As long as they do a good job with it, this works for me, especially if it means I get to see more of Midgar and all the other locations. I don't often have time to sit down and play a full RPG from scratch (like, never). Anyway it's what we're getting, and I'll take what I can get.

 

[Lord Noctis]

I'm gonna level with you all, I'm not entirely sure why people are mad over this. Like, whats the downside here?

From what I can tell based on the available information all this means is that we will start getting to play sooner than expected, and the developers can take more time to make each part of the game as good as possible.

I feel like maybe we're having a bit of a knee jerk reaction here simply because its different from what we expected. I'm not trying to judge anyone for feeling negative about this mind you. Perhaps some of you see something about this that I don't, and if so I'd be open to hearing it.

I'm not totally happy about it myself, I'd prefer to get the whole game at once, but I also see no reason to say that this will definitely go poorly.

Overall I feel cautiously optimistic right now.

 

[Geostigma]

It's basically the StarCraft II scenario, except we have a much more clear idea of what we'll be getting.




X

As someone who really likes the SC universe and lore, the story progression of SC2 is really annoying
I mean we got WoL 6 years ago and barely got Legacy of the Void like a month ago lol.

Also still waiting for Half Life 2 : Episode 3.


Ofcourse thats not to say its proof positive that FF7's remake will be that pain painstakingly slow. Obviously with much of the groundwork established for it they should be able to crack it out.

It's just still annoying to know day 1 on launch we will not have access to the full game.

 

[Suzaku]

Reading the Famitsu interview, I'm feeling considerably more optimisitic than I was before.

The stated goal is to increase the overall content of the game so that when it's done, even if they have to remove some things, it'll be larger than the original. For example, they want to make more of Midgar explorable, and allow you to do other things that weren't possible in the original.

They also talked about the fact that this will let them get it out to players sooner, without having to worry so much about the development schedule.

I completely agree with that. To fit the entire game into a single modern day AAA title would be a monumental task that would require either several years of development or the cutting of large amounts of content, if not both.

The game already has many extremely appropriate act breaks, so I don't think it will be a problem narratively. I do understand the concern if they're going to try and split up the game into several full-price releases, so I hope that's not the case.

 

[Lex]

OK, I've slept.

Initially I wasn't happy about this, but I'm over it. The reason I was unhappy is because I felt duped somehow. SE had managed to make me believe in them again then bang, ruined it. And no matter what shit they pull I can't vote with my wallet, because I will absolutely buy it no matter what they produce.

Here is why splitting it up is a good thing:

You’ll be able to explore various locations in Midgar that you couldn’t explore in the original game.

Nomura: “If we dedicated our time to a single release, parts of it would become summarized. We’d have to cut some parts, and additional parts would come in few, so rather than remake the game as a full volume, we decided to do multiple parts.”

Kitase: “As you can see in the trailer, we showed Sector 1 and Sector 8, but in those areas alone, I think you can see a lot of density. When you’re remaking the entirety of the original version in that quality, it’s not possible to fit it all in one release.”

A lot is still unknown, but I like that they seem to be dedicated to not cutting any content, and fleshing out more and adding stuff based on the original. I am pleased by these things. We've all been wondering what's going to get cut for the game to be made in the modern era, and now we have our answer: nothing is getting cut. We're getting even more. It's just going to be split up.

This "multiple episodes" thing obviously means "at least three or more".

I've decided we don't get to be mad about this until we know how the content is split and how much each individual episode costs. If they're charging full-price game for each part, then I want each part to have about 150 hours of content the same as every other Final Fantasy game.

I speculate that they'll release 4 - 5 parts each lasting about 30-40 hours and costing around £20 each. With that model we could see Episode 1 as early as next year. This is a model I could deal with, but only if there's a period of no more than 6 months between episode releases.

They're really in a lose/lose situation, because people were obviously going to be unhappy about the split, but people would have went nuts at stuff being cut also. The only thing I'd say is that we were all prepared for cut story content, and I'm not sure whether I'd prefer the cut content or the episodic releases.

This news wouldn't have bothered me at all if they said they were releasing it in two parts. Two full games, FFVII Part One and Part Two, first visit to the Northern Crater (end of it) being the halfway point. I wouldn't have had any problem with that.

 

[ero85]

I went through confused-anger-acceptence-positive fase pretty quickly this morning.

1. First episode will be released sooner then we thought, definitly on the 20th anniversery.
2. This will do the game good i believe, because this way the staff feel less pushed and have more time to creating all those beautiful locations.
3. Each locations will have tons of new stuff to do, new areas, new weapons and materia.
4. If there is world map, new locations, new caves etc. The old with the new, i think that will be wonderful. An hidden tiny village close to Junon, finding it and walking through it while seeing the big Junon canon in the background, isnt that great?

I hope they devide the areas properly, like for example first episode Midgar till the Mythril Mines just a little further passed the Midgar Zolom. If you think of it with all the new content, its a pretty big area.

Downside is that the game wont alow you to go further and you will have to wait for the new episode. But then again, gives you more time to explore everything and to level your characters before moving on, and of course building up the tension for the new episode.

We get the remake, after all these years, and now people are so unhappy with things. I would also have seen things differently, but im gratefull this remake is coming, the changes they make feels too tiny for me to worry about it.

 

[Claymore]

Calling it now. Playable demo released with XV.

 

[paleofan]

I'm gonna level with you all, I'm not entirely sure why people are mad over this. Like, whats the downside here?

From what I can tell based on the available information all this means is that we will start getting to play sooner than expected, and the developers can take more time to make each part of the game as good as possible.

I feel like maybe we're having a bit of a knee jerk reaction here simply because its different from what we expected.

That's exactly how I feel. I'm fine with the remake being episodic, actually I think it is the best solution for both players and developers.
Here is how I see it.

Pros:
+ We get to play the game earlier than expected
+ Less parts from the original game being cut
+ More content. With this format the remake might even end up being longer and having more content than the original if you match all the episodes!
+ More overall quality: as we can see in the trailer, the opening is incredibly faithful to the original while adding new things. Focusing on one part at a time will allow the developers to maintain this level of details for the entire story

Cons:
- We'll have to wait between each episode
- The price (which really shouldn't be a problem if you have dreamed about this for a decade)

People don't seem to realize that the episodic format is actually the contrary than rushing things when it comes to this remake. If they made the entire thing into one game they would have to rush up things because people are waiting for it and because of technical limitations. It would end up like FF15, being delayed to PS6 or whatever.

 

[Tetsujin]

I have several thoughts about this that I need to write down or something for when I get back from the Jobcenter or maybe I'll save them for another podcast, I dunno I'm full of emotions and thoughts both good and bad

 

[Purple]

As long as it's quality "episodes" then I wouldn't mind. I hope we don't have to wait too long in between but that's not gonna happen

Part of me is tempted to just wait for all the episodes to come out so as to play it in one massive run but I can't wait 7 years just to do that

 

[anxiousheart]

I've been catching up with all the news (not really a regular poster, forgive me).

To be honest, I'm not really that upset about this news. I'm at uni, so I was counting on the game's release in 2017/18 so that it arrives around the time I finish my degree, giving me time to actually play it. I mean...unless I decide to write my dissertation on storytelling in video games then...research

I've been watching the episodic release of Dreamfall Chapters, and that's worked really well for people. It gives the developers the chance to make their story as dense as possible, not sacrificing the quality of the overall game and segmenting it gives the gamer incentive to explore and get as much out of each installment. Of course, they are an indie developer, so I suppose it's different for a larger development team. It also keeps the anticipation going for a while longer, keeping gamers and interest going - which I suppose from a business point of view makes sense to the folks at Square.

I think the problem is they really have no bedside manner when they deliver this news. They just do it so matter-of-factly like "so the game will be episodic, but that's not important. Let's talk about all of the zips I'm going to be including on the DLC costumes."

I can't see them ripping people off, I'd imagine there'd be one overall cost for the full game...but then I remember the DLC fiasco of FFXIII-2 :/

 

[Elisa Maza]

I don't mind the episodes. I was wondering how they would fit everything, actually. This plan seems to be the best one to fit everything and then some. Yes, it does sound like a plan to get even more money, but hey, that's why the remake is being made in the first place. One disk would have never been enough, and if they think about adding stuff then it's all the more reason to split the story.

Only other way I could see this happen is to give multiple BDs at once. But, how long would that take to come out?

Of course, the ultimate remake-ception would be to remake the first BDs of the Remake when the last BD of the Remake comes out, because it would take many years.

 

[Miscreant]

I'm kind of happy they are doing it this way, instead of getting excited about a single release I will have a part of FFVII to look forward to for the next few years. Also when the game was first announced I was pretty certain they wouldn't manage to release it for the 20th anniversary and now it's pretty much a given. The sooner I can play this even if it's only in part the better.

Also I was worried about the scale of the game at first, FFVII's world is massive, and translating that into a modern game would take ages and more likely result in parts being cut. Also we've all read about how the profitability of AAA games has dropped a lot over the years with the increased cost of production not rising inline with the cost of games, releasing this in episodic format means we will get a polished game that will be profitable to SE. Hopefully if it goes well we might then see other remakes handled in a similar fashion, I would love to see VI or IX next

I honestly loved the trailer, and I feel over the last couple of years we have started to see a better SE, so at the moment I'm going to keep a positive outlook on this and hope for the best.

 

[Lex]

I am entirely unconvinced that the whole thing wouldn't fit on one BD, that's just silly. They're splitting it because they want to do it justice and because it wouldn't be cost effective to do what they want to do with it and release it as one massive title, not because the whole thing wouldn't fit on a Blu-Ray disc.

Yes FFXIII is huge, but that's because every single cutscene is pre-rendered (as in, all the random conversations with characters that aren't total CG; they're all pre-rendered). The reason XIII-2 and Lightning Returns fit on one DVD for the XBox is because they didn't use pre-rendered cutscenes in the sequels (and there aren't nearly as many FMV's in those either).

 

[Wolf_]

I'd rather them take an extra year and sell it as a two disk bluray complete game. I know it's happening so I don't mind the wait. Seems like nothing more than money grabbing to me but being square, they haven't thought it through. Dispite me being pissed off about it, so is everyone else on here, but they're gonna alienate new players. Nobody on Facebook seems to be impressed about it and the three people who say ff is shit I had convinced to try the remake. Just got a text off one of them laughing about all of us 'nostalgia fans' are getting mugged off by square and I'm struggling to disagree.