The Official "How many parts?" Thread

[Eerie]

But why would they skip Kalm? Every area in remake part 1 is massively expanded, they didn't skip anything (unless you really wanted to see the inside of Johnny's house.)

Be careful, it's not "something that I want" but something that I could see the devs doing. As I said, either we have the flashback to work as a tutorial placeholder, ala bomb mission in chapter 1-2, either they'll want to streamline this and we'll have the flashback more spread out throughout the game, which could help with Tifa's reaction. Kalm in itself is not a location where "something happens" so it's an easy location to forget about. Normally we have the flashback and the vendors at this time in the OG, however we'll have no money at this point and starting with a breather is a bit odd.

And moreover, 2 sentences from the devs in different interviews have made me think that: "how did we arrive in Kalm?" and "there are big changes already" (or something alike), the latter being in a recent interview. In that interview, it was also mentioned that everything is expanded on, like in Midgar, which is why I'm considering Junon/arrival in Costa del Sol as the end of part 2, especially since there is a Jenova fight on the ship.

However, by the time we arrive in Junon, I do expect the flashback to have been told in full - there is this instance of true!Cloud asking SOLDIER!Cloud in his dream "where was Tifa?" which is a big hint and that I expect to see in a form or another - but it could be left somewhere else.

The Mythril Mines are definitely going to bee their own dungeon expanded in one chapter. Imagine the thrill of arriving there, and having that massive beast killed by Sephiroth... and you're following, wondering if he's still there (only to find the Turks).

 

[Wol]

Be careful, it's not "something that I want" but something that I could see the devs doing. As I said, either we have the flashback to work as a tutorial placeholder, ala bomb mission in chapter 1-2, either they'll want to streamline this and we'll have the flashback more spread out throughout the game, which could help with Tifa's reaction. Kalm in itself is not a location where "something happens" so it's an easy location to forget about. Normally we have the flashback and the vendors at this time in the OG, however we'll have no money at this point and starting with a breather is a bit odd.

And moreover, 2 sentences from the devs in different interviews have made me think that: "how did we arrive in Kalm?" and "there are big changes already" (or something alike), the latter being in a recent interview. In that interview, it was also mentioned that everything is expanded on, like in Midgar, which is why I'm considering Junon/arrival in Costa del Sol as the end of part 2, especially since there is a Jenova fight on the ship.

However, by the time we arrive in Junon, I do expect the flashback to have been told in full - there is this instance of true!Cloud asking SOLDIER!Cloud in his dream "where was Tifa?" which is a big hint and that I expect to see in a form or another - but it could be left somewhere else.

The Mythril Mines are definitely going to bee their own dungeon expanded in one chapter. Imagine the thrill of arriving there, and having that massive beast killed by Sephiroth... and you're following, wondering if he's still there (only to find the Turks).

Yeah but they'll expand the Chocobo Farm section with a new dungeon and lore, and the Mythril Mines will be an epic 3 zone underworld dungeon with a baby Midgarzolom chasing the party + some new cutscenes of another timeline with Zack.

Epic.

 

[Odysseus]

Sometimes I'm very grateful you all aren't game designers lol

 

[Wol]

Sometimes I'm very grateful you all aren't game designers lol

Well, when it comes to padding the current team already is enough lol

 

[Odysseus]

Yeah, I guess I just don't see how them padding the fuck out of midgar equates to "they're going to cut out all nonessential areas" in part 2. They'lladd a bunch of weird new stuff, not remove it. "Ahead on our way" is all the reason Kalm needs to be there.

 

[Shademp]

Yeah, I guess I just don't see how them padding the fuck out of midgar equates to "they're going to cut out all nonessential areas" in part 2.

I think it's more the impression that from announcement to release, it took the developers five years (give or take time spent on pre-production plus-minus internal development hardships) to ship out the amount of content that they did with FFVIIR Part 1. Massively impressed though I am by what Square achieved in that time, the scale of Midgar (in my intuition) dwarves the amount of work required to realize the rest of FF7 under the same level of fidelity.

That's why I get the nagging feeling that the level of embellishments seen in Part 1, that level of AAA-game quality, is not reasonable for the rest of the product if we are to see it completed before the next decade. That's why I'm bracing myself for corners being cut and non-essentials left out. I don't have faith in Square Enix producing enough content fast enough.

Then again maybe they are perfectly fine with the project being drawn out well into the next decade and I have no reason to worry about Square making compromises and sacrifices. The challenge then becomes in keeping the project rolling for all that time, maintaining interest and monetary gain.

 

[Odysseus]

This is why I said we can't really make a good assessment of how they're going to handle the rest until the second installment comes around. From the recent interview though, they seem pretty excited to give the play that sense of scale for the rest of the world as they did with Midgar. That doesn't sound like they're planning on making cuts to me.

 

[Tetsujin]

Skipping parts just seems unlikely to me when you consider that not wanting to give us a digest version of FFVII was the reason they went with multiple parts in the first place.

 

[Shademp]

This is why I said we can't really make a good assessment of how they're going to handle the rest until the second installment comes around.

And that is perhaps the wisest statement in all of these "FFVIIR Part 2" threads.

Speculating is fun but we are too much in the dark as to the driving logic by the developers behind the curtain. The possible design choices are too many, as evidenced by the dozens of ways people have proposed the coming chapter structures and how much people have speculated on how the overworld will be treated. The time we are currently in is probably the most "unknown" that the future of FFVIIR will ever be, both in regards to game design structure and how the plot will unravel.

 

[ForceStealer]

Skipping parts just seems unlikely to me when you consider that not wanting to give us a digest version of FFVII was the reason they went with multiple parts in the first place.

This, completely. To cut stuff now would be to totally defeat the entire purpose of the approach they chose.

I suppose there's a question of where the line is drawn for a certain thing being "cut" or just happening differently because TIME GHOSTED

 

[Odysseus]

At the very least, I am nigh certain that all the locations will be visited. Whether the same things happen in those places is a different concern though.

 

[LNK]

Wasn't there articles stating that the devs made made part one only Midgar, because it's such an iconic city? If that really is the case, I don't see them expanding a whole lot on every other little town/city (even Junon). At least not like they did with Midgar

 

[ForceStealer]

Yeah, and as people have noted, even though Midgar in the OG doesn't take all that long, it still comprises a disproportionate share of the plot/script (roughly a third). So blowing it up the way they did wasn't really unreasonable.

I'm curious if Wutai will get blown out significantly, and if so, would there be a large gameplay shift so you're not stuck with the base system only there's no materia for hours and hours? Alternatively, the materia-stealing quest could only take part in a shorter portion of Wutai while there's more to it beyond that.
Or it might just not be much bigger, lol. It does keep coming back to "it's hard to say until we see part 2," lol.

 

[Sephiroth Crescent]

Yeah, and as people have noted, even though Midgar in the OG doesn't take all that long, it still comprises a disproportionate share of the plot/script (roughly a third). So blowing it up the way they did wasn't really unreasonable.

And let's not forget we are still bound to return there in the future, with Cid, Cait Sith, and Yuffie being the lone survivors after the parachute scene.

 

[Roundhouse]

Either they streamline things or the remake ends after 2030.

The idea of cutting Kalm is interesting. It's true that they could just have the same flashback story told while on the road, sitting by a camp fire or something. You can also cut the first visit to Gold Saucer, because it's not essential to the plot -- just have Dyne meet Barret in Corel, which actually makes more sense, and have Cait Sith join them somewhere else. Fort Condor can also be moved to when it actually becomes important.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

At the very least, I am nigh certain that all the locations will be visited. Whether the same things happen in those places is a different concern though.

I believe all the locations will be visited, but that still leaves a lot of room for streamlining what happens there, when it happens in the overall plot, and how much freedom the player will have to explore those locations at points in the story where, strictly speaking, it isn't necessary for the overall plot.

So, for some other examples to go along with the more on-rails Metal Gear Cloud in Junon:

- They could do the defense of Fort Condor in this next installment because Scarlet is already looking for Huge Materia; or they could save it for where it would normally appear and not give us the freedom to actually go inside yet

- They could likewise move the Huge Materia thing with Corel up to right after Costa del Sol and find a way to connect that segment with Barret and Dyne's interlude; let's face it: they're almost going to have to change up something about this portion of the game anyway, starting with the geographical and logistical interplay between North Corel, the Gold Saucer, and the desert prison

Also, Rocket Town is going to be handled differently. It just is. Rufus isn't going to be there to confiscate the Tiny Bronco. I don't know what will replace that plot beat, but something absolutely will.

EDIT: Ninja'd on some of this by @Roundhouse

 

[Obsidian Fire]

It being four parts is very likely just going on how the OG script is divided up. As is five parts to be honest.

What is odd with the OG is how the length of the script does not match to how/when locations are revealed. All the new locations in the OG are very much "front loaded" compared to the game script. By the time Meteor is summoned, the script is... two-thirds through, but Cloud and Co. have been everywhere by then. So what happens after that point is a lot of reusing of assets.

I think this means that the first two-thirds of the Remake series will take a lot longer to make and come out than the last third of it. Also that the last third of Remake will be very "plot heavy", since the locations will have largely been finished by then and instead of mostly making assets, they'll be putting together diolouge and cut-scenes.

And that's just with the OG in mind. If you're on the side of major changes happening to the plot, then we still might be seeing new areas very late.

I've just been watching a CC playthrough, and... Junon is huge. There's like... at least 8 sub-levels of Lower Junon. It's also been built up much more in the Compilation as being Rufus' center of power. So, I could see Nojima and Co. coming up with entire plot-arcs the revolve around AVALANCHE trying to figure out what Rufus' goals are and Junon would be the perfect place to do that. The trouble with saving Junon for later is that by the time we go back, Sapphire Weapon has attacked, so the city would be dealing more with the fallout of that than then anything else. But that would hit a lot harder if we had spent time in Junon before then and have some idea of who lives there... rather than it just being random people getting attacked like it is in the OG.

Junon also gets *some* development in TKAA, especially Lower Junon post-Meteorfall. Instead of going back to the fishing industry, Lower Junon gets into the world-wide shipping business. In part because Shinra can't do it anymore thanks to their transportation network relying on mako energy. Mainly because Junon has the boats and harbor already. Lower Junon is portrayed as doing *very* well for itself after Meteorfall thanks to all the goods going through it. To the point it's compared to Costa Del Sol as a vacation destination (it's got some really nice beachfront housing now). It's definetly not the dinky little town tucked under Upper Junon that it was in the OG.

And that tells me *someone* (probably Nojima) has been thinking about what should be done with Junon. Maybe not in detail, but in terms of it's arc over the course of the entire Compilation...

 

[Odysseus]

Either they streamline things or the remake ends after 2030.

The idea of cutting Kalm is interesting. It's true that they could just have the same flashback story told while on the road, sitting by a camp fire or something. You can also cut the first visit to Gold Saucer, because it's not essential to the plot -- just have Dyne meet Barret in Corel, which actually makes more sense, and have Cait Sith join them somewhere else. Fort Condor can also be moved to when it actually becomes important.

If they really want to streamline things, they could have Sephiroth show up randomly in the middle of a grassy plain and have everyone reenact all of FF7's plot like they're a bunch of teenagers larping in a walmart parking lot.

This was something I noticed in the lead-up to the remake too, people would propose all kinds of weird stuff because Square "could" do it. I remember someone's proposal for remake part one was to have a totally open world Midgar, and you would start the game as Cloud just being a for-hire merc just kind of around, and you could go anywhere and take jobs, but Tifa would be chasing you around as an NPC, and when she caught you you'd be forced into doing the actual Midgar story. Even back in 2016 or whenever that was posted, I remember think that sounded just terrible lol.

I think people tend to get so caught up in the possibilities that they start to forget what the point of this game even is. Sure they could shave off a lot of the game if they wanted, but why would they? They're making this for fans, they already said to expect familiar locations and moments. Why are we suddenly thinking they'd tell the story as resource efficiently as possible? Just write up a plot summery on a napkin at that point.

 

[Roundhouse]

But did any of those theories include

Spoiler

Dementors showing up and Zack being alive....

 

[Odysseus]

No, but I'm not talking about the plot, I'm talking about the structure.

 

[Shademp]

They're making this for fans, they already said to expect familiar locations and moments. Why are we suddenly thinking they'd tell the story as resource efficiently as possible?

Because we're waiting for the ball to drop when Square Enix realizes their hubris and that they reached for more than they could grasp.

Hopefully there will be no need for that moment.

 

[Odysseus]

I feel like that already happened with Versus XIII

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

I think people tend to get so caught up in the possibilities that they start to forget what the point of this game even is. Sure they could shave off a lot of the game if they wanted, but why would they? They're making this for fans, they already said to expect familiar locations and moments. Why are we suddenly thinking they'd tell the story as resource efficiently as possible? Just write up a plot summery on a napkin at that point.

Not as resource efficiently as possible; just economical with their time.

I could easily be wrong, but I doubt Nomura, Kitase, Hamaguchi or Toriyama are resigned to this project being the swan song of their careers. Yes, they care about doing it well, but that doesn't necessarily mean devoting costly development time to letting the player walk around in extensive locations that won't matter for another eight years.

Also, what Shad said.

 

[Roundhouse]

The structure of P1 was bloating a small part of a story into one full game, Hobbit style...a decision which I still find dubious.

 

[Shademp]

Thankfully they pulled off the bloated direction way better in Remake than Hobbit did.