Hopes for Remake & Rebirth (story/content)

[Gary Caelum]

Didn’t the original teaser show that Kalm was 50 miles from Midgar? Possibly it’s 50km, but either way that’s a lot more than 10-12km, so I’m not even sure if it’d be possible to see Midgar from there (unlike in the OG obviously) unless the terrain is elevated substantially. All subject to change though obviously.

Damn, I never even noticed that. You're right. It says Kalm 51, Junon 133.

Ok so either they've changed that, or we're definitely not getting to-scale open world.

Half that distance or more could still be within Midgar.

That would violate ever image we've ever seen of Midgar. The radius of the city has always been about twice the height of the central tower. So unless Shinra HQ is 10 miles high, that can't be true.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

I kinda feel given how different the architecture is, the highway has to be on the plate edge, or it doesn't exist at all.

But which edge?

Right before that shot of the highway we see a train route board light up at "south edge." If we're on the south side of Midgar, we have the whole diameter of the city to subtract from those 51km.

 

[Kain424]

Doesn't Jesse literally tell us the dimensions? I can't remember.

 

[ChipNoir]

Only that the plate is 50 meters above ground IIRC.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

This highlights where reality and authorial intent don't always jibe. Midgar was conceived as being large enough that Tokyo's 23 special wards would fit within -- but at the same time, Jesse says the plate is only 50 meters from the surface. Which is absurd.

Even a quick glance would tell you the plate is more than 164 feet high.

Coming back around to Midgar's diameter, let's say that it is just twice the height of the Shin-Ra building and go with that for a second. In the real world, our tallest building is the Burj Khalifa at 2,717 feet. Check out pictures of that and you will believe it could be the height of the Shin-Ra building.

Doubling its height, though, would give us just 5,434 feet -- only a tad past one mile. Midgar is, I would argue, obviously meant to be more than one mile across. At less than eight-tenths of a square mile (going by the "area of a circle" formula), not only is that not anywhere close to encompassing the area of the 23 special wards, it's not even halfway sufficient to encompass the downtown area of Charlotte, North Carolina (it would still come up significantly short on this even with a diameter of a mile and a half).

Of course, assuming the Shin-Ra building is equal to half the diameter of Midgar, in order for the area of the city to be able to absorb Tokyo's 23 wards, the diameter of Midgar would need to be 17.5 miles, requiring the Shin-Ra building be 8.75 miles tall.

I do think we can safely rule that out, particularly for a building that's only supposed to have 69 floors, but the only thing that makes "sense" is that the Shin-Ra building is still meant to be ridiculously enormous -- like at-least-a-few-miles-tall enormous.

Which ... isn't altogether out of the question, I guess? The building does need to be big enough that the location of the Turks' secret headquarters went undiscovered for three years while President Shinra had Scarlet searching for it.

I don't know, these game designers weren't civil engineers.

 

[Gary Caelum]

Well whatever happens, if all of Midgar is explorable, it'll be massive. I expect it wont be though. I expect it will be a bit like Altissia in FFXV. Lots of nice background scenery but you can only explore like 1/5th of the whole city.

 

[lithiumkatana17]

Well whatever happens, if all of Midgar is explorable, it'll be massive. I expect it wont be though. I expect it will be a bit like Altissia in FFXV. Lots of nice background scenery but you can only explore like 1/5th of the whole city.

I want to say I believe Square won't make that mistake but at this point who knows. I HOPE the majority of Midgar is explorable.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

If they want Kalm to be 50 km from Midgar then of course it can be, but that would then make nonsense of Case of Shinra in OTWTAS, where Rufus makes his home base in Kalm and the Turks walk back and forth between Kalm and Midgar several times a day, and still have time to do a full day's work in between.

How long would it take them to create a game in which the whole of Midgar was explorable?

 

[Tetsujin]

I expect more of Midgar to be explorable but it wouldnt make sense to be fully explorable unless they unnecessarily pad out the story to justify that. As interesting as Midgar is, it is ultimately just the start of the journey, not the focus of it. That should not change. The remake should not be open world or anything of the sort either imo. Not everything needs to be open world and FFVII never was open to begin with. Give me traditional linear storytelling+open exploration for the endgame. I dont want them to distract me with a million chore-like sidequests like the majority of open world games out there.

 

[lithiumkatana17]

I expect more of Midgar to be explorable but it wouldnt make sense to be fully explorable unless they unnecessarily pad out the story to justify that. As interesting as Midgar is, it is ultimately just the start of the journey, not the focus of it. That should not change. The remake should not be open world or anything of the sort either imo. Not everything needs to be open world and FFVII never was open to begin with. Give me traditional linear storytelling+open exploration for the endgame. I dont want them to distract me with a million chore-like sidequests like the majority of open world games out there.

 

[Gary Caelum]

The remake should not be open world or anything of the sort either imo. Not everything needs to be open world and FFVII never was open to begin with. Give me traditional linear storytelling+open exploration for the endgame. I dont want them to distract me with a million chore-like sidequests like the majority of open world games out there.

There's a fair bit of variety in what people interpret as being "open world" though. I'm not thinking of a Skyrim type situation where you can just go anywhere from the beginning and just disregard the main story. But what about games like Xenoblade Chronicles or even FFXV. Those both have large open areas that are restricted based on your story progression. Xenoblade moreso than FFXV. But FFXV does block off new parts of the map like 4 different times throughout the story.

That's what I'm imagining for FF7. So when you leave Midgar, the entire area containing Kalm and the Chocobo Farm will be open. But you then need to further the main story before you can get to more parts of the map. So just like the original game but with a to-scale world map to explore with various sidequests to do.

 

[Tetsujin]

FFXV is a perfect example of what I dont want though

 

[Gary Caelum]

It's what we're likely to get given the current design trends in the industry. 15 wouldn't have sold 8.5 million if it wasn't open-world and action oriented, at least I don't think so.

 

[KiwiPizza]

I expect more of Midgar to be explorable but it wouldnt make sense to be fully explorable unless they unnecessarily pad out the story to justify that. As interesting as Midgar is, it is ultimately just the start of the journey, not the focus of it. That should not change. The remake should not be open world or anything of the sort either imo. Not everything needs to be open world and FFVII never was open to begin with. Give me traditional linear storytelling+open exploration for the endgame. I dont want them to distract me with a million chore-like sidequests like the majority of open world games out there.

That’s what’s worrying a lot of people I think.

Square have said they intend for this to be like they made the original with today’s technology/standards so they may attempt open-world.

But as the below states, they could do it based on story progression.

If you attempt to go to the mythril mines before Kalm. You could just be told “we must stop at Kalm before doing anything else” - that’s just one example.

I wouldn’t mind a hub sort of system similar to Tomb Raider but on a much larger scale and without the need to fast travel in order to backtrack. Huge grassy area, go north to get to Midgar or North east to get to Kalm, south to get to the Chocobo Farm. If they do that and need to do loading screens I’d be ok with that.

There's a fair bit of variety in what people interpret as being "open world" though. I'm not thinking of a Skyrim type situation where you can just go anywhere from the beginning and just disregard the main story. But what about games like Xenoblade Chronicles or even FFXV. Those both have large open areas that are restricted based on your story progression. Xenoblade moreso than FFXV. But FFXV does block off new parts of the map like 4 different times throughout the story.

That's what I'm imagining for FF7. So when you leave Midgar, the entire area containing Kalm and the Chocobo Farm will be open. But you then need to further the main story before you can get to more parts of the map. So just like the original game but with a to-scale world map to explore with various sidequests to do.

I wouldn’t mind loading screens, I may be in the minority here but if we need to exit Midgar to then walk across the open world to Kalm, I wouldn’t mind loading screens to enter/exit cities, if it makes the open world scenario work.

I would also imagine crossing over to the opposite side of the mountains by going through the mythril mine. The mine itself could also be used as a loading screen in disguise so they only have to render one half of the continent at a time.

Just my thoughts on the matter.

 

[Gary Caelum]

The only problem with that is they wouldn't be able to do the complete open-world thing later in the game when you get the airship.
We need the airship!

 

[ChipNoir]

Well whatever happens, if all of Midgar is explorable, it'll be massive. I expect it wont be though. I expect it will be a bit like Altissia in FFXV. Lots of nice background scenery but you can only explore like 1/5th of the whole city.

When they say "All" my mind tends to go to how Persona 5 handles Tokyo: You can walk through a very convincing simulacra of a city, and observe things, but only gameplay specific areas actually have any real substance.

So more like...50% explorable? They might impress me, but that's my best expectation.

 

[KiwiPizza]

The only problem with that is they wouldn't be able to do the complete open-world thing later in the game when you get the airship.
We need the airship!

To be fair I wasn’t thinking about later down the line when you get the highwind in the story

It really just depends on the how each Part is handled. In the original you got to the end of the story, already had access to the highwind and could fly across the entire planet and do whatever. But this was using an overworkd where Cloud Towered over buildings.

Let’s say they do make it open-world. You have to wonder what sort of compromises they may make for the final part of the game, where it is the end of the story and the party has access to the submarine and the highwind. As I can’t see the complete planet being traversable if they go the complete open-world route. Genuine question here - has any non procedurally generated open world game this gen had a completely traversable planet where you fly across something that big?

Off the top of my head for the games I can think of, it’s just a single country or a continent, In the case of FFXV which is multiple continents for example, you can only fly across one of the continents and have to say “I want to go to...” to get to the others, so you can’t fly from Insomnia, through Leide, Cleigne, and Duscae then across the water to Altissia then over to Nibleheim.

The last part of the Remake, which is probably very likely to exclusively be next-gen, could just be a fraction of the planet unless the technology is sufficient enough to render an entire planet in open-world or maybe the discs hold more space. Possibly digital only?

Unless they do a situation where each Part latches onto each other and makes it bigger in order to have enough data and big enough file size to display the whole thing... kind of like an expansion sort of thing. Maybe even a Red Dead Redemption 2 situation with an install disc. The problem here though is if someone jumps in at Part 2 and onwards they could be missing the Part 1 data.

If they can make it work and have reasonable distances to make it feel like the entire planet, I’ll be extremely happy to fly the highwind from Wutai to Midgar and back.

I kinda really really want to know now how this will be handled...

 

[ChipNoir]

The smarter thing would be to just have the highwind operate on a completely different simulacrum (Yes, it's a new word for me, I'm enjoying it) of the world map that's only reserved for the Highwind. They can apply all the tricks they've learned from FFX through FFXIII to give the illusion of things in the distance, with a "No Fly Zone" that you can't pass to keep from breaking the illusion. There'd have to be designated landing points and a transition to the nearest fieldmap, but that seems more reasonable than trying to 1:1 in flight mode.

 

[Gary Caelum]

Genuine question here - has any non procedurally generated open world game this gen had a completely traversable planet where you fly across something that big?

Xenoblade Chronicles X did a pretty good job of it.

I'm guessing they probably couldn't do a complete open-world with this approach though because there's just too many different towns that require specific assets loaded. Xenoblade X and FFXV manage it because they only have a few big towns where specific assets are needed (so the game has plenty of warning when you're getting near to Lestallum or Altissia, so it knows when to stream the assets)
Whereas FF7 has like 15 completely different towns. Much tougher problem. Especially when you have whole cities like Midgar to load. I'm guessing loading screens when entering towns would be necessary. Which would be fine with me!

simulacrum (Yes, it's a new word for me, I'm enjoying it)

If you say it 10 times in a day, you automatically get a degree in french philosophy.

 

[Nandemoyasan]

Worst Case Scenario:

Everyone hates everything about this, because SE try to please everyone so hard that they end up pleasing no one.

What happens then?

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

Worst Case Scenario:

Everyone hates everything about this, because SE try to please everyone so hard that they end up pleasing no one.

What happens then?

Eh, I'll just sigh, shake my head and move on. I've not had much confidence in this remake anyway (except the art design), so I can only be pleasantly surprised rather than disappointed.

Off the top of my head for the games I can think of, it’s just a single country or a continent, In the case of FFXV which is multiple continents for example, you can only fly across one of the continents and have to say “I want to go to...” to get to the others, so you can’t fly from Insomnia, through Leide, Cleigne, and Duscae then across the water to Altissia then over to Nibleheim.

Well, you can fly between Lucis and Altissia via the Armiger Glitch (or could until it was patched), and the results definitely don't lend themselves to the notion that the speedy travel of the Highwind would be plopped into the primary open world interface. It would have to be, as @ChipNoir described it, a convincing simulacrum of the open world.

Heck, things in the distance look kind of rough even when flying around in the Regalia Type-F. With the speed at which you can travel with the Armiger Glitch, though, the game can't even come close to keeping up.

(Side note: There's no possibility for flying between Niflheim and the other continents, as the game literally will not load them simultaneously under any circumstances.)

 

[Makoeyes987]

The balance between a massive, explorable environment coupled by the limitations of rendering such a massive planet in real time is clearly a challenge they will have to balance.

I imagine the best thing they could do is do something similar to FF Type 0, where there is a world map you travel in 3D, like say, in the Highwind or buggy, and then when you get to set locations to visit (like towns, or key geographical areas), then it's rendered into the full scale explorable map. There has to be a world map or some sort of explorable area that covers the map, otherwise how else will you chase down Ultima Weapon?

This will of course cause load times but, eh. It can't be helped. As long as they don't take *forever* it should be fine.

 

[Gary Caelum]

I don't know if anyone posted this previously?

Apparently it's taking longer than they planned because incorporating action-based combat seamlessly into the complex environments is tough:
https://wccftech.com/final-fantasy-vii-remake-dev-challenges/amp/

Given how many people would've preferred traditional turn-based, they should've just gone with that.
I guess they need to try and appeal to the mainstream dudebro audience though. Not an unreasonable thing to do given that some similar-ish RPGs can sell way bigger numbers. Witcher 3 has hit about 20 million last I checked.

 

[ChipNoir]

That "Article" reeks of spin. It's more the author's personal opinion on a process and translation he doesn't seem to really understand.

 

[KiwiPizza]

The smarter thing would be to just have the highwind operate on a completely different simulacrum (Yes, it's a new word for me, I'm enjoying it) of the world map that's only reserved for the Highwind. They can apply all the tricks they've learned from FFX through FFXIII to give the illusion of things in the distance, with a "No Fly Zone" that you can't pass to keep from breaking the illusion. There'd have to be designated landing points and a transition to the nearest fieldmap, but that seems more reasonable than trying to 1:1 in flight mode.

I was going on the notion of a purely 1:1 scale open world map. I wasn’t going to mention an overworld style map, though it was in mind as I was focusing on wondering how they’d do it if aiming for pure 1:1 scale.

I’d be fine with this though

Xenoblade Chronicles X did a pretty good job of it.

I'm guessing they probably couldn't do a complete open-world with this approach though because there's just too many different towns that require specific assets loaded. Xenoblade X and FFXV manage it because they only have a few big towns where specific assets are needed (so the game has plenty of warning when you're getting near to Lestallum or Altissia, so it knows when to stream the assets)
Whereas FF7 has like 15 completely different towns. Much tougher problem. Especially when you have whole cities like Midgar to load. I'm guessing loading screens when entering towns would be necessary. Which would be fine with me!

That’s exactly my point. XV with one continent that you can fly across that is most of the same architecture and design whereas the other continents you are required to load into and are restricted to running speed as the quickest way around, vs. a whole planet that once at the end you could go straight back to any location you wanted without needing to go into a menu and select it.

Also how did Xenoblade handle it? Was it all to scale or did it do like Chip suggested for the remake and do a smaller scale version of the planet?

Worst Case Scenario:

Everyone hates everything about this, because SE try to please everyone so hard that they end up pleasing no one.

What happens then?

We all sigh and think “that was disappointing” but still go back to playing the original as many of us like to do every once in a while.

@The Twilight Mexican

Well of course with glitches but without tricking the game and playing as intended you couldn’t, which is what I was getting at. As clearly stated by yourself (I’ve never tried or really looked at the glitches in movement only in screenshots to show what was found) it’s just not possible but could that be down to XV being SEs first foray into open-world?



In theory though would they be able to have a traversable planet in a 1:1 scale open world game? Not everything is rendered at once anyway, it’s just called into screen when needed, the only issue would be size of the game (in terms of storage and file size) but I wonder how the PS4 hardware would handle all that... probably not great.

I suppose in theory it’d work but you’d need top of the range hardware and/or take a hit in graphics which we know SE aren’t very likely to do...