The reunion at hand may bring joy. It may bring fear. But let us embrace whatever it brings, for they are coming back.

[Tetsujin]

Also, why are there such low estimates for game time? This is two full blurays worth of content. Even for just the story, with that much space being used, 30 hours seems a bit low. I'd say 50 hours for the main story might be more realistic, with 70-80 to account for all the side quests and optional content. That matches up more closely with the original, which could easily be an 80-hour game if you set out to do everything that could possibly be done in the game.

File size is not an indicator of game length, it is just...file size.

 

[Jairus]

I know, but it does give a general idea of how much stuff is in the game. So one can make an estimate based on that. You don't really think it's 100GB worth of pictures and fetch quests, do you?

 

[Tetsujin]

It's not 100GB, it's around 74. And for comparison, Life Is Strange 2 is somehow 70GB, and that's a linear 10 - 15h game. Meanwhile MGSV is anywhere between 30 - 80h and is 29GB, File size can be bloated for many reasons such as duplicate assets, junk data that they didn't bother to remove, compression or rather lack thereof, amount video and audio files etc etc.
To use it to guess game length is a pointless endeavour essentially. It's all very arbitrary.

 

[Jairus]

Well considering the specific game this is and the care they've been taking with it, I think it's pretty safe to say they're not bloating it but making sure every bit of that space is meaningfully filled. And it's 74GB compressed. That's around 100GB uncompressed. If the original PS1 game can achieve a 50 hour story with less than a tenth of the amount of data and assets that the remake has, FFVIIR should easily be able to do the same with what it has available to it.

 

[Saven]

Most of that is coming from audio most likely. That eats up a ton of space. The biggest reason why RDR2 was on two discs was because of how many languages it had and that was a 35 hour long game. FFVIIR is also multi-language.

 

[Jairus]

Doubtless a lot of it is audio and video, yeah. I understand that. Doesn't mean the story still can't go into the 50 hour range. If a PS1 title can do it, surely a PS4 one can. I just don't see why the story times have to be so short, is all, when it seems like they used to be much longer.

 

[oty]

Honestly, I dont even know if it's good to have 50 hours of pure story in this Part...the chances of expansion turning into stretching, and new events irreversably changing the pace and the history are quite big. But that's not even the point. Comparisons of developments of PS1 games to developments of tripleA games of today shouldn't be made.

Developers nowadays struggle to make their big budget games have 30+ hours of good storytelling, that doesnt drop in quality of cinematics and atmosphere. Thats why games such as The Witcher 3 and Red Dead 2 are praised by having such standards in big campaigns (and it's not that perfect either, as both were criticised with downtimes of more boring content and whatever). And that's without counting the massive undertaking of a gigantic workload and insane amounts of crunching. Hell, even games with barely more than 20+ hours of story already have crunching.

That's the sort of sad reality of today. To make the big games of now, we rudely say you need 5 times the money and 10 times the time of what you needed in the past, and you still would only be half way done ?

Doesnt mean we cant have 50 hours of story...but you get the gist.

 

[Odysseus]

You guys are going to psych yourselves out if you keep overthinking things.

 

[Jairus]

I just don't know when it started being considered acceptable to reduce the amount of story hours in an RPG when it used to be so much longer and games were criticized for their stories being too short. And it used to be that 20-30 hours of story was considered short.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

When graphics got too good and production costs/times consequently shot up. =(

 

[Odysseus]

Games have gotten way too expensive to make, so every new story beat = another few million thrown into the fire. That's the issue.

Edit: Fuck, you beat to it Twilight Mexican!

 

[Jairus]

Ah, I guess that makes a sad kind of sense. Although I had hoped that FF7R would buck that trend for the sake of both being different and being more about quality than cost.

 

[Odysseus]

Well, in a lot of ways, quality IS cost. The whole reason this is a multi part affair now is because they didn't want to sacrifice the quality of the game just to smush the whole plot of the original in one release (and also so they can profit off this thing 3+ times.)

 

[Jairus]

Yeah, I get that. I was just talking about the quality of this first game. It's looking really good, I just don't want it to be a short story with a lot of side content. I'd rather have a longer, fuller story with a good amount of side content instead.

 

[Odysseus]

We'll just have to wait and see about that. Like I said, don't over think it, or you'll just stress yourself out (i'm speaking from experience here.)

 

[oty]

I dont think any game has that capability. The only way to reduce time and cost of a game is advancement of technology (and also better planning, specially executive). And only partially. Marketing usually represents 60% if not more of costs, and also have a schedule to follow.

And well, I'd hope we have a good story, with a good time of it. More hours can may well be the doom of it.

 

[Jairus]

At the same time, though, more hours don't have to mean doom if they're done well.

 

[ForceStealer]

Most FF game's stories are in the 30-35 hour range, frankly. And I prefer that about them, to be honest. The Personas of the world where it takes 100 hours just to get through the story I find too demanding and exhausting. I much prefer a tighter story.

 

[Jairus]

Well I wasn't expecting to be that high, Force. Just big, substantial, and good quality.

 

[youffie]

I think the thing about classic FFs is that they feel longer because by the end of the game you’ve seen so much, you’ve traveled so much, you’ve accomplished and grown so much with the characters that you really feel like you’re at the end of a long, satisfying journey – even though if you removed questing and grinding, you wouldn’t get such a massive hour count. And for a lot of things and characters, you’re left to fill in the blanks, and that can be satisfying too if it’s well-balanced.

I remember a relatively recent interview with Nomura who talked about how Sakaguchi used to say that a Final Fantasy was a game that had everything in it. It may sound simplistic, but I think that’s a good way to put it.

Frankly, if I were to compare the concept of Part 1 with an average FF, one possible problem I can see with it is that it might end up feeling slightly claustrophobic. How much variety can Midgar really offer? I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

 

[Kain424]

It has been said many times that there is a clear three act structure to Final Fantasy VII. And they are correct. Furthermore, as each of these main acts contain their own mini acts, there would be no problem making three games from them. Especially if they plan on continuing to expand each section considerably.

Act I: Midgar
-join Avalanche
-fight ShinRa
-the President dies, Sephiroth formally enters the story
Act II: The Hunt For Sephiroth
-meet the rest of the party members
-search for Black Materia
-Sephiroth takes Black Materia, Cloud leaves the party
Act III: Meteorfall
-find Cloud
-find Heavy Materia, fight Weapons
-defeat Sephiroth

Now, all kinds of stuff also happens. But those are sort of the major beats (minus certain famous spoilers) and work fine as their own games if implemented right. You could split Act II into two games, but that seems to me an unnecessary bit of padding.

 

[Odysseus]

I wouldn't really mind if Part 1 ends up shorter than 2 and 3 (assuming there's just 3) anyway. Outside of Midgar offers much more variety.

 

[Kain424]

That would be my wish as well. My favorite stuff pretty much all happens after Midgar.

 

[FFShinra]

I still think Part 2 ends on the cargo ship.

 

[Odysseus]

That pacing would make disc one take 3 or 4 parts on its own