Remake Interviews: Catch-all Thread

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Tashasaurous

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Sailor Moon, Mini Moon, Hotaru, Cardcaptor Sakura, Meilin, Xion, Kairi, Aqua, Tifa, Aerith, Yuffie, Elena, Misty, May, Dawn, Casey, Fiona, Ellie
Maybe it's not just about exploring Midgar or the ShinRa Building and such. Maybe the ghosts are more important to the first game's story-line than meets the eye. I mean, the Midgar part in the OG wasn't that long; bombing missions, meeting Aerith and saving her from Reno and the army, rescuing Tifa, rescuing Aerith, briefly fighting Rufus and then escaping Midgar in the end isn't that long depending, right?

Which by the way I'm convinced that the escaping ShinRa building Motorway gameplay is the first part of Episode 1's final battle before the ending. Not to mention perfectly obvious.
 
X-SOLDIER

X-SOLDIER

Harbinger O Great Justice
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X
https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1139455076039155712

Good day everyone, I'm Kitase, the producer of Final Fantasy VII Remake. There had been a raging wave of developments related to Final Fantasy VII Remake, from the sudden announcement in May, the release date reveal in an orchestra concert held in Los Angeles on June 9, and a playable demo at E3. But I'd be glad if all of our fans are delighted with the many surprises after waiting for so long.

In doing a remake, what we first emphasized was to depict Midgar, which symbolized the world setting of the original Final Fantasy VII the most, in a charming way. We newly redesigned the interior structure of Midgar, and added new episodes as well as depictions of the daily lives of citizens who live there. Ultimately, just by depicting the story until the original work's Escape From Midgar, we already reached a huge capacity with a pack of 2 Blu-ray discs, which should have enough density and volume for the world setting and storyline. To go along with that, we have optimized character growths and boss monster placements for this game, completely reconstructing it as a single standalone game, which we think will have become a title worth playing enough.

We plan to develop the Final Fantasy VII remake project into multiple titles in the future, but we hope you will look forward to the release of the first title, Final Fantasy VII Remake, on March 3, 2020.

June 14, 2019
Yoshinori Kitase, Producer of Final Fantasy VII Remake

Translation Via: https://www.rpgsite.net/news/8621-y...asy-vii-remake-to-go-until-escape-from-midgar




X:neo:
 
hleV

hleV

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just by depicting the story until the original work's Escape From Midgar, we already reached a huge capacity with a pack of 2 Blu-ray discs
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He makes it sound like they've already made the whole game content?
 
Makoeyes987

Makoeyes987

Listen closely, there is meaning in my words.
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Smooth Criminal
They haven't. Don't get your hopes up :mon:

It's going to be awhile.

Having been a fan of Kingdom Hearts, the Compilation of FFVII, and then looking on in shock and horror at Versus XIII... I've already accepted this is gonna be awhile.

I don't know about 5 years though. That'd be unreasonable and bizarre given they have the assets and groundwork.

But FFVII is the new Compilation.

In a masterstroke of marketing strategy, Square has managed to make the remake of the original single game, a long term, drawn out saga that will be episodic and cross platform.

Sounds familiar. :mon:
 
Castiel Strife

Castiel Strife

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Makoeyes987 said:
They haven't. Don't get your hopes up :mon:

It's going to be awhile.

Having been a fan of Kingdom Hearts, the Compilation of FFVII, and then looking on in shock and horror at Versus XIII... I've already accepted this is gonna be awhile.

I don't know about 5 years though. That'd be unreasonable and bizarre given they have the assets and groundwork.

But FFVII is the new Compilation.

In a masterstroke of marketing strategy, Square has managed to make the remake of the original single game, a long term, drawn out saga that will be episodic and cross platform.

Sounds familiar. :mon:
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Believe me, personally that wouldn’t be getting my hopes up at all lol. I was afraid that they basically found a way to “wrap up the story” in Midgar. That’s not what I want at all. After Midgar there is a bit of a cliffhanger. It wraps up well, but you’re wondering “what’s next?” What he said about “planning” to continue the Remake after the first game just scares me. It feels to me like it’s basically confirmation that they’ll pull the plug if it doesn’t reach the sales they want or some other unforeseen event takes place causing them to cancel the rest. That’s always been my only fear about the game being split up. I understand that can happen to any game, just look at Scalebound, but it’s definitely not something that needs to happen to THIS game. This is too big, too important.
 
The Twilight Mexican

The Twilight Mexican

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TresDias
Castiel Strife said:
Believe me, personally that wouldn’t be getting my hopes up at all lol. I was afraid that they basically found a way to “wrap up the story” in Midgar.
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Calling it now: Just in case they don't get to continue, they'll have Seph skewer Aerith at the end of the highway out of Midgar just to be sure the scene that made the original FFVII immortal makes it into the remake. Then, if Part 2 comes along, her death will be revealed as a hallucination Sephiroth forced Cloud to endure -- foreshadowing her genuine death later.

:monster:
 
Makoeyes987

Makoeyes987

Listen closely, there is meaning in my words.
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Smooth Criminal
Oh man... That would be terrible...

Surely the developers have to have more confidence and narrative sense than that.

It'd literally give up the game if they hint at Aerith's fate, even a whisper. They have to play up her role as a fixture and indispensable member of the team. Even if all VII fans know what happens, they gotta play it straight and capture the pathos of the loss. Sephiroth only removes Aerith from the picture when she becomes a direct threat of hindering his plan.

With Zack in Crisis Core, Tabata nailed it. He played the inevitable fate of Zack perfectly and cut him down even after he seemingly managed the incredible feat of beating a monster-sized Genesis, and took down an army. In the end it changed nothing and Zack was still left facing 3 MPs on a cliff over Midgar.

I want them to do the same with Aerith and keep the fate of her character close to the chest as possible. Why ruin it? LOL
 
Aranea

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"FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE is a reimagining of the iconic original game that goes much deeper into the world and characters of FINAL FANTASY VII than ever before.

“Our goal with this project is to rebuild FINAL FANTASY VII for a new era. We’re not making a straight 1:1 copy or a simple remaster of the original game.

“It’s a huge volume of work and data to re-imagine this world. Each game in the project will have a volume of content comparable to a standalone FINAL FANTASY. The disc version of the first game is actually a 2 Blu-Ray Disc set. This approach allows us to remake the original without having to scale back on everything players loved.

Yoshinori-Kitase-3.jpg


Yoshinori Kitase, Producer of FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE

“While the development team finish the first game in the project, we are continuing to plan and outline the overall volume of content for the second.

“Due to the work already done on the first game we anticipate development of the second game to be more efficient. We have our own internal schedule and plan, but for now we’d like to focus our information on the first game in the project.

“The key creative values of the core FINAL FANTASY series are innovation, pushing boundaries and surprising players, this project shares these same values and the development team view it as the next mainline FINAL FANTASY release.

“For the original core members of the development team, simply recreating the original game with improved graphics wasn’t enough to get us invested and excited about remaking VII. To return, we want to go beyond the original, telling a deeper story and providing a modern gaming experience. We really want to go above and beyond what is expected of a remake.

“As well as some of the core members of the original development team, we also have a dedicated in-house team of international gaming talent. Many of our new team members were young fans who played the original VII when it was first released. It’s very exciting and exhilarating to work with this talented team on such an ambitious project.

FINAL_FANTASY_VII_REMAKE-E3_2019-screenshot_1_1560213818.jpg


“The first game in the project takes place in the eclectic city of Midgar, we chose to focus on Midgar as it best represents the world of VII as a location more than any other. Midgar is full of imagination with myriad influences and surprises around every corner.

“While many people may think that Midgar is very dark at first glance, we have a design aesthetic where the city has strong elements of colour and variety. The lighting and colouring we are using throughout Midgar accentuate what is unique about FINAL FANTASY VII’s world. We decided not to use a photo-realistic approach with the design, but instead something more stylised, honouring the artistic designs and choices of the original.

“A lot has changed since the release of the original FINAL FANTASY VII. Back then we didn’t have access to things like voice acting, performance and motion capture, or close-up cameras outside of cut-scenes. For FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE there’s a greater emphasis on character storytelling through the use of these techniques as well as some other new tech. This allows us to make these characters more expressive than ever, enhancing the levels of immersion and enjoyment through performance.

“In REMAKE we are giving voice to the original FINAL FANTASY VII for the first time. By bringing in a new generation of actors, we hope to provide the best experience for original fans and new players.

FINAL_FANTASY_VII_REMAKE-E3_2019-screenshot_4_1560213827.jpg


“For the gameplay, we are aiming to create a new take on classic concepts with an accessible evolution of the ATB system giving you greater action with tactical control.

“The system we’ve created retains the strategic decisions of controlling multiple party members, allowing you to select from a wide range of abilities and spells. You can control your favourite character while issuing orders to others, or leave them to AI. And choose when to switch to a different party member to make best use of their unique abilities in battle. This allows all players to choose and enjoy your favourite way of playing.

“Finally, yes we still have Materia. You can use it to tailor your play style and abilities.

“We’ll go into greater detail on lots more gameplay elements as we get closer to the release next year. For now, I hope you are all excited by what we revealed at E3 and we look forward to sharing more news and updates with you across the year ahead.”

https://square-enix-games.com/en_US/news/yoshinori-kitase-final-fantasy-vii-remake-overview
 
X-SOLDIER

X-SOLDIER

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X
This is one of those things where "planning" means very different things to regular people and software developers, on the same level of how "theory" means very different things to regular people than it does to scientists. I wanted to just detail a little bit about that for the folks here:


Planning involves the entire process of Directors, Product Owners, and Program Managers setting up a roadmap of what milestones that a software team needs to focus on and in what order, on a team-by-team basis, that also involve figuring out which group can transition to doing what when, and coming up with the stages for that based on the state of current projects. That's something that the very bare basics of which is gonna be in place (that Kitase mentions in that interview), because everything currently is focused on the ongoing Sprints to wrap up everything on the current game.

Planning ALSO involves figuring out the specifics of what's feasibly accomplishable will require time in discovery with engineers and designers based on what the current game does, and what they want the next game to do, which is usually gonna require time from engineers who're at the core of the current title's development. All the open world capabilities and other things are gonna take time to see what the full scope is that they can accomplish, and how much they can rely on various things that will ultimately shape everything that the follow-up titles are going to be capable of being based on the technology that's available, and the timescale under which they're wanting to accomplish it. (Note: How much of THAT work's been done isn't clear – but that's also because they're not gonna talk about it at all. (Everything that they're doing now is building up the hype around what the CURRENT game is doing by giving a gradual release of what there is to offer. You don't hamstring your hype by talking about everything that you're building for what this game isn't doing. We'll likely on hear about that after Remake releases, and after we pass the phase where most general issues get patched and the game is in a stable state).

THEN, once the frameworks of those basics are in place, the Development process is really having engineers help with t-shirt sizing & estimating the time and scope of all the work you need to do is, how many resources it'll take to accomplish that, how to get that done efficiently with said resources, as well as whose team needs what when and coordination between teams, so that assets one group needs are ready by the time the team who uses them needs them. That all happens through scrum, & sprint-planning based on everything that's been definitively committed to on the roadmap once all of the discovery on the tech side has been completed, and the teams are fully transitioned over to that project. This usually means that the Designers and Concept artists have been working on things for what's next for a significant period of time. Given that we know what's changed and what hasn't since 2015 – I'd bet that a VAST majority of the Remake project has been done in concept art, and possibly even design layouts, because they already have a lot to work off of from the original.

Even with a game as monumentally anticipated as Remake, you don't want to put the cart before the horse, so the preorder opening stage is when you know you're going to put out a finished product, and you can start to try and estimate the basic boundaries of what you're getting from the RoI on development, which is going to inform you how heavily you can commit to putting the resources into the sequel, and moving them off of the current title. Game studios who don't do that eventually go under, no matter how big they are, so it's good that they're still taking a logical and safe approach to a project like this, despite the hype and anticipation – because they know they still need to be able to earn the ability to tell the story, since AAA titles don't just get conjured out of overwhelming desire, but they don't always get killed by rough development either.

I'd anticipate that we see the second part in a relatively reasonable time period. They have a LOT done with the first game, but they're also facing some of the biggest decisions and technological asks when it comes to doing FFVII's open world. Once we get that done – any additional releases will have a VASTLY easier time getting spun up. The Midgar section is the biggest part of initial heavy lifting to get the entirety of the game to be what they want. The Open World section is the most technologically demanding and in need of consideration for the method of implementation. Everything past those will likely be working from those two well-established patterns to deliver everything else.




X :neo:
 
Lex

Lex

Administrator
Aranea said:
We decided not to use a photo-realistic approach with the design, but instead something more stylised, honouring the artistic designs and choices of the original.
Click to expand...

This is maybe the most important thing he said, because it's a walk-back of the original press release (which specifically said "a photo-realistic [experience] utilising Unreal Engine 4") and honestly, I couldn't be happier they've decided to take this approach. From what we've seen I legitimately feel like they've looked at the 2D backgrounds while making all the familiar scenes because I can really feel where it is from my knowledge of the original.
 
Kain424

Kain424

Old Man in the Room
Back about yen years ago now, when I first began seriously contemplating what I would want from a Remake, I strongly considered what art style I would desire. I eventually came away with something that I would cite as "bridging the gap" between Final Fantasy VII's polygonal, but detailed pre-rendered backgrounds and Advent Children's attempt at photo realism. This fits that to a T. In fact, it's better than I would have hoped for.

Indeed, the fact we can get a sense of familiar locations is a huge plus for longtime fans of the original. It cannot be overstated how happy this makes me personally. I am sick with anticipation.
 
Suzaku

Suzaku

Pro Adventurer
I was eagerly anticipating the dripfeed of new info through Japanese magazine articles. And these days they all get sold digitally so we won't have to deal with scans!

Edit: Not an interview, but Famitsu posted their demo impressions article. Not a ton of new info, but some JP version changes:

Circle and Cross are switched, as is typical.
Cloud's Punisher Mode and Operator Mode are called Assault Mode and Brave Mode.
Barret's Charge and Overcharge are called Energy Reload and Discharge.
Tactical Mode is called Wait Mode.
Focus Gauge is called Burst Gauge.
 
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Odysseus

Odysseus

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Ody
Oh boy. Glad to hear the cross-dressing is still confirmed for the remake, and apparently the Honey-Bee Inn too? I've gotta wonder what exactly "modernized" could mean here though. Maybe they'll address how scummy the whole situation in wall-market is and make Corneo more of a proper antagonist rather than just playing the whole thing for comedy. Whatever, as long as I get my Cloud in a dress scene.
 
Eerie

Eerie

Fire and Blood
The comments on that gematsu article LOL. I gotta say I love that they had Tifa wear a sports bra and have abs. It's like they thought about it more than 2 seconds and "hey a girl with such breasts ought to have a sports bras!". So glad. It's a little detail, but it does count.

Also relieved by the discussion options still being here - I wondered, but I didn't really worried. And it sounds like those new guardians of destiny or whatever they are appear about everywhere? I wonder what they are, not trying to theorise though, they're making new stuff for us people who have already played the OG, might as well get surprised :)
 
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