I was surprised by how exciting it felt learning that he was one of the people who was in the original Sephiroth choir, and he gets to do more music for the Remake. That made me smile way more than I'd anticipated.
Also!
The thing that stood out to me the most in that video was everything that they mentioned when talking about the massive effort involved with the MASTS audio engine, and about how the sound effects are being generated in real time by the physics interactions, and that they're actually originating at different spacial locations within the game.
Timestamped:
The reason that this was so interesting is that it connects super closely to Mark Cerny's GDC presentation about the PS5 and all the work that they did around making 3D audio something that's an incredibly core part of the PS5's technology. With SE spending this much time to create an engine all around this technology, I'd be willing to bet that they worked really hard to ensure that the Remake could make use of the PS5's 3D Audio capabilities when the PS5 is released.
This is one of those things that clearly took a lot of time, is technologically expensive, but also is something that will pay off if they're able to maintain and use a lot of the same technology for each part of the development of the next game – which is gonna land during the PS5 generation. I suspect that this is one of those things that would have contributed to the delays with the game that are impossible to talk about, which might've been one of the pieces of the puzzle about why things on the Remake suddenly went dark for so long a couple years back. The MASTS engine is clearly part of the fundamental groundwork for the game and its sequels, intended to be a smooth transition into the PS5 era.
I'm betting that EVERYTHING about the Remake is actually designed to be compatible with the optimizations and technology of the PS5 at launch, so that they can give players a reason to come back to the game, but also give a little taste of what to expect from the next Remake title on PS5.
That actually makes me wonder if the Remake is going to be able to utilize any of the DS5 Controller's new features, like the trigger & thumbstick changes based on the textures you're going through (since Remake has places like the Sewers and whatnot where this would be able to be used pretty easily). I'm curious how much of the technology they might be able to have just in the base game, or that they might have as a compatibility upgrade patch to the game.
Remake development is obviously gonna try to spend as much time using the same tools, engine, and assets as possible, so that the console generation shift doesn't impede their progress, so this one little thing makes me pretty certain that we can bet on seeing something related to this announced for Remake around the time that the PS5 official reveal and launch information happens.
X 
