What was your experience when the remake was first announced?

[Jairus]

I was just watching some reactions to the original 2015 trailer and initial announcement for the remake, and they still get me excited. Now more than ever, with the game just around the corner. After all these years, over a decade of rumors and denials and wondering and hoping, the dream is almost upon us. It feels almost unreal, at least to me. But this game, it's really happening. And it's not a slipshod cash grab, either. It looks absolutely epic, spectacular, and amazing. Everything we've hoped for. I was just wondering what your thoughts are about it all, from what it was like for you guys when you first heard it was really being made, when you saw that initial trailer for the first time. To how you feel now that this experience we've all been anticipating for so long is nearly here.

As for me, I'm excited to enter the world of Final Fantasy VII again and experience it in a totally new yet familiar new way, to actually play what for so long was nothing more than a wishful thought but which is now an unmistakable and undeniable reality. My best friend told me about the trailer before I watched it, so I knew what it was for, but it was still magical to see it nevertheless, to know that it really was finally happening. And nothing has been the same for us gamers ever since, I don't think. That day in 2015 was the day when a dream took its first steps into becoming a reality.

And it was also the day that SE made millions of grown men cry like giddy little schoolgirls.

 

[Random Nobody]

 

[Odysseus]

It was pretty late at night for me, I wasn't keeping up with E3 news since I usually don't care much for the kinds of games they announce, so I didn't see the initial reveal. I think I must've seen some reaction video or other pop up in my Youtube suggestions, and I was like "you fokin wot m8" and rushed to find the original trailer. It was so surreal, at first I thought it might be a sequel to advent children or something, but lo and behold it was the fabled remake! I freaked the fuck out and called my friend who also likes ff7, he hadn't heard yet either so we got to freak out about it together. It didn't feel real, and of course that initial reveal didn't give much to go on so speculation was abound. I was on "Cloud 9" so to speak.

 

[Mayo Master]

For one thing, re-reading the beginning of this thread gives you a good answer already.

But eh, like some of you, I wasn't in TLS when e3 2015 happened. In fact, I didn't watch it live.
Personally, I was at a crossroads with respect to the FFVII mods project of Team Avalanche, after 3 years spent working on it. During e3 2015, I was actually spending some vacations in Mexico. In the back of my head, I was thinking "I'll catch up with video gaming news when I'm back home". Then I simply got a one-line e-mail from a friend saying "So, Final Fantasy VII Remake, eh?". That's all. There was some mixture of surprise and disbelief. After all these years of SE trolling (in hindsight, the infamous announcement of FF7 port on the PS4 by Shinji Hashimoto is a trolling of epic proportion, because the remake was in the works at that point), could that be even a thing? Checking the internet on my PS Vita, wait apparently it is a thing and there's even a video of its existence. Let's watch this.
As the people disembarked from the Midgar subway in the trailer, I felt like I hopped on the hype train. And then, as the trailer went on, it's as though this hype train gained momentum steadily. Recognizing Midgar. The Playground slide in the sector 5 slums. The lilies. And then, the dive down in the slums, where Barret and Cloud appeared.
Simply put, I was happy. But it was very much internalized, there was no celebratory cry, no victory fanfare. It was a very contemplative kind of happiness.
And then, some hours later, as I said elsewhere, I realized that my whole reason for being involved in the FVII mods project was gone. And the predominant feeling was one of relief. Since this beginning, I had the strong conviction that the Remake was into the hands of the best people that could ever make it come true.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

I felt the same mixture of excitement and trepidation that I've felt ever since. Much of what we've seen of the Remake so far is absolutely wonderful, but some of it (e.g. Aerith's house, the holograms of Heidegger and Pres. Shinra) has been a huge disappointment to me. There isn't a single Remake face that I like or think looks right, except maybe Biggs and Barret, and unfortunately, the characters who matter most to me have been the biggest disappointment. Slob Reno is gone forever; black Rude is gone forever; Tseng barely even looks like a human being. I am hoping against hope that the reason we haven't seen a render of Tseng is because they're re-working his appearance. I have lost all excitement about Rufus. He'll just be another freakishly weird looking entity with an unnaturally feminine face.

 

[Rydeen]

When it was first announced, iirc, I was excited, but cynical, and that cynicism didn't really let me have high hopes for it, especially when I saw that Nomura was going to be the director. When the subsequent trailers and info dropped this year, I realized that this was something that they did intend to take seriously, and I jumped completely on the hype train. That said, I'm still nervous, because like others, I have headcanons, some I may not even be consciously aware of, and we need to be able to let go of our history with the original game to the best of our ability and allow them their vision. A lot of what FFVII is what is not said, which I love, but this will always result in a blurred line between our projections and assumptions vs what concretely is and what may be going on in the creators' minds.

Perhaps there will be certain things that are universally disliked, but there are definitely going to be some things that make some people happy and other people upset, and other things that make the opposite people happy and upset. They cannot please all of the people all of the time and it's unfair to expect that.

I felt the same mixture of excitement and trepidation that I've felt ever since. Much of what we've seen of the Remake so far is absolutely wonderful, but some of it (e.g. Aerith's house, the holograms of Heidegger and Pres. Shinra) has been a huge disappointment to me. There isn't a single Remake face that I like or think looks right, except maybe Biggs and Barret, and unfortunately, the characters who matter most to me have been the biggest disappointment. Slob Reno is gone forever; black Rude is gone forever; Tseng barely even looks like a human being. I am hoping against hope that the reason we haven't seen a render of Tseng is because they're re-working his appearance. I have lost all excitement about Rufus. He'll just be another freakishly weird looking entity with an unnaturally feminine face.

To be fair, Rude was never explicitly black. In the OG we didn't have much to go with (as with the rest of the Shinra characters), other than that he was an ethnically ambiguous tan bald man, not even that dark. I think this is another example of fans filling in between the lines and getting deeply attached to their assumptions. I've personally always seen him as South American-inspired, and ever since AC that's what they've gone for. Though it looks like they've decided to go more for his thinner BC look than his bulkier AC look. I don't think Tseng looks inhuman - but he looks way too childlike for someone pushing 30.

While I do wish that the clean shaven men of this game had some hint of pores or slight stubble like real men 9/10 of the time do, I wasn't expecting it. This is a cultural thing and usually what female fans in Japan want and are used to for bishonen. My fear with Rufus is that they'll make him excessively creepy looking/homunculus-esque, like how I feel Sephiroth looks in some shots 2005 and beyond, or botch the outfit, but I don't think they'll make him look inordinately childlike - in AC, he looked older than most of the other bishonen characters.

 

[youffie]

As I think I’ve said elsewhere, I never felt the need for a remake (still don’t). Plus, I always had a strong dislike for the Compilation and was absolutely 100% positive they would totally botch it. In fact, I was firmly in the “if they ever, ever touch FFVII again I will go to Japan and personally murder Nomura” camp.

When the remake was announced I was pretty out of the loop with Square Enix and videogame news. I’ve read on these forums that apparently there was a rumor going on about the remake being announced. I knew no such thing. I woke up that day, made myself coffee, then I went on Facebook only to find half of my FF friends completely freaking out about a video. So I watched it and was in complete shock for at least a week, which was very bad because I needed to study like crazy for my exams. I’m embarrassed to say that I know that first trailer by heart.

That said, I wasn’t completely convinced by it. The aesthetics gave me a strong Advent Children vibe and I had learnt not to trust Square Enix. I liked the second trailer much more and it got me hooked, though deep down I still feared they would totally botch it.

The first thing that really made me see the project in a new light was something that I think Kitase or Nomura said. I can’t remember the actual quote, but they felt the original was a perfectly fine masterpiece, so they weren’t interested in making a carbon copy of it in prettier graphics. They wanted to make a game that made a comparable impact, and perhaps even tried to surpass it, because that's what FFVII deserved. And in this era of soulless remakes and mediocre sequels that manage to completely miss the point of their source material even when they’re basically 1:1 copies, maybe exactly because they’re 1:1 copies, I find that actually pretty brave and worthy of respect, even if there’s an even higher risk that they totally botch it.

The first remake image that made me really, really happy was that shot of Aeris when she just looks straight at the camera. I loved everything about it – her expression, the vibrant colors that went mysteriously missing in the Compilation, but most of all, her eyes. They finally nailed the eyes that opened and close the game, after all these years.

I still don't know if they'll totally botch it or not. I made peace with the fact that there will be things that I dislike, possibly even hate – I already cringed a bit at the sheer Nomuraness of the new SOLDIER guy. But I have to say, it seems like they managed to accomplish the hardest thing of all: retaining the soul.

 

[Saven]

When it was first announced, iirc, I was excited, but cynical, and that cynicism didn't really let me have high hopes for it, especially when I saw that Nomura was going to be the director. When the subsequent trailers and info dropped this year, I realized that this was something that they did intend to take seriously, and I jumped completely on the hype train. That said, I'm still nervous, because like others, I have headcanons, some I may not even be consciously aware of, and we need to be able to let go of our history with the original game to the best of our ability and allow them their vision. A lot of what FFVII is what is not said, which I love, but this will always result in a blurred line between our projections and assumptions vs what concretely is and what may be going on in the creators' minds.

Pretty much this for me. I remember my friend bringing up the subject the day prior to it being revealed out of the blue and I was like "Yeah....I don't know if I really want that knowing modern day Square Enix". Then I read about the The Last Guardian/Final Fantasy VII Remake/Shenmue III leaks the morning of along with a couple other leaks that were going to be shown prior to the Sony press conference which all turned out to be right. I was genuinely interested in this conference after that and the first thing that was revealed was TLG. That was when I knew....My heart was pounding through the whole trailer and I was immediately hooked with the art direction the minute I saw the shot of people boarding the train. I wasn't for sure if I was watching FFVII-2 or the Remake until the words Remake appeared at the end. I was so happy that I shouted and cried lol.

I guess deep down it was something I wanted all along. But as a game itself, I wasn't really all that impressed and was concerned that SE was going to mess it up until the E3 demonstration this year (PSX 2015, the leaked concept arts at the art house showing where we saw Aerith and her house for the first time, and the May State of Play 2019 left me intrigued, but nothing more). I've been aboard that hype train ever since and realize that this could be the first outstanding game that Square-Enix has released in years.

I still don't know if they'll totally botch it or not. I made peace with the fact that there will be things that I dislike, possibly even hate – I already cringed a bit at the sheer Nomuraness of the new SOLDIER guy. But I have to say, it seems like they managed to accomplish the hardest thing of all: retaining the soul.

And then there is this. One of the things I'm concerned about is forcing some of the cringe that has never landed in the Compilation of FFVII, FFX, FFXIII, or the KH games. Not a big fan of the new guy's design at all. I'm still holding out hope that anything new being added here will fit the soul of FFVII and that this will be nothing to worry about.

 

[Lex]

For one thing, re-reading the beginning of this thread gives you a good answer already.

Yeah please go read that thread from the beginning if you're not familiar with it or weren't around when the remake was announced. The thread was originally titled "more ffvii remake rumours" or something along those lines and it was created around the time Kotaku etc were saying there were sources, right before E3. I changed the thread title after the announcement.

I was streaming E3 as we always do, on the TLS Twitch channel. Other people probably remember my reaction better than I do. I know I was essentially hyperventilating and telling people to stop talking (because it was so completely unexpected, in spite of the rumours). The video got autodeleted during Twitch's random switchover where it defaulted everyone's settings to not save videos, so sadly the video reaction from us was lost. Something I'm still a little annoyed about lol.

 

[Kai Schulen]

I believe my initial reaction on twitter was something along the lines of "HOLY FUCKING SHIT NO FUCKING WAY NO FUCKING WAY NO MOTHERFUCKING WAY AHHHH HOLY MOTHERFUCKING SEJSUS IT'S HAPPENING IT'S HAPPENING IT'S HAPPENING!!!!!!!" (over a series of tweets.) My reaction was also spread across a bunch of social medias, so....ahahah.

I also recall making a joke about how it was said in interviews that a remake of VII would take 10 years, and in 2015, 10 years after that remark was made the trailer was dropped and....lololol

I've spent the last 15 minutes going through my twitter feed to find my reaction, but it's been long gone since twitter auto deletes your tweets after a certain point. Sad.

 

[Fangu]

I never wanted a remake and so naturally I was kinda 'meh' about the announcement. But I'm 200% excited for the people who are excited and also if I want a lift up I actually go watch the E3 announcement video because people blowing through the roof is just a great listen xD

I think I never was a fan of reboots/ remakes in the first place. Things weren't as bad four years ago as they are now, but nowadays it seems like everything is about regurgitating for a quick buck. In that sense I don't think the VII Remake is as bad as other remakes, as it's 1) dearly requested and 2) actually doesn't seem like shit (like a lot of other remakes), but it's still taking old property and reviving it, instead of creating something new. The new footage looks really good and I'm surprised they didn't fuck this up, lol. (Although I guess the jury is still out on that one.)

That being said, ... the original VII will always be VII for me. I grew up with pixelated 8-bit games, so I don't really need fancy renders and voice actors for a character to be a fully fleshed out character. I'm not saying people who are excited for the remake do, I'm just saying that I was a kid and teenager when newer graphics simply didn't exist. And so the OMG! amazing graphics of games like FF7 and FF8 were just as good as any live action movie to me. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I don't want the remake to be what people think of as VII. I mean it's fine if they do, time does go forward after all, I just hope the original doesn't come second in line, just some original that isn't considered the 'real' VII.

I guess that was two things: I feel protective about games of the 80's, 90's and early to mid 2000's becauase my age. And the original is so damn fine I kind of don't want it to not be the go-to for VII. Play the original. It's really good. Y'know.

I think a lot of the character work is really good, but I'm with Lic on the Turks. They're still too much Advent Children to me. Rude was never a super model and Reno was always a rat. And Tseng was never pretty, I mean he's definitely pretty but not pretty-pretty. I'm fairly sure they've fucked up Elena too but I'm still crossing my fingers for a surprise of the good kind.

tl;dr I'm probably gonna play it, most likely watch my bf play it (because he seems more excited than me for it?) but initially I was kind of against it. But I'm not as much that anymore.

 

[youffie]

I guess that was two things: I feel protective about games of the 80's, 90's and early to mid 2000's becauase my age. And the original is so damn fine I kind of don't want it to not be the go-to for VII. Play the original. It's really good. Y'know.

That was definitely a concern of mine too, especially because I didn't like it when people looked at the Compilation instead of the original for certain characterizations and plot points.

Over time, however, I've come to view the remake-OG situation as a kind of movie-book adaptation. I imagine they will feel like two very distinct experiences, so much that I don't think one will necessarily override the other. Of course, many people have come to know LOTR through the movies, but the books will always be there to provide something that the movies, while good, will never be able to reproduce.

I think this example works especially well with FFVII and these older titles as they always kinda felt like books to me, where you could imagine voices, faces, and a lot was left to the player's interpretation and imagination. Maybe this remake will be the new face of Final Fantasy VII for many people, but it almost feels like it was done on an entirely different medium to really overshadow the OG. I hope

 

[Tetsujin]

I was streaming E3 as we always do, on the TLS Twitch channel. Other people probably remember my reaction better than I do. I know I was essentially hyperventilating and telling people to stop talking (because it was so completely unexpected, in spite of the rumours). The video got autodeleted during Twitch's random switchover where it defaulted everyone's settings to not save videos, so sadly the video reaction from us was lost. Something I'm still a little annoyed about lol.

SAME. I wish we had our reactions recorded =(

To think I had almost skipped E3 streams that year. So glad I didn't and decided to hang out. What a legendary night that was

 

[Prism]

Ever since the PS3 tech demo (and even before that), the tangible desire for an FFVII remake has been always a part of the communities I took part in. I remember people were treating it almost like a card Square-Enix was holding until just the right moment, when things became advanced enough technologically. (and if you look at the PS3 tech demo, damn - things really have advanced) Either that, or other people saw it as the card Square-Enix was holding onto until they were desperate enough financially...

I personally share the more optimistic view, but yeah. When they finally announced it in 2015, it was the closest moment to 2005's Twilight Princess E3 reveal I've felt in a long time. A truly electric moment.

Slight concerns were there, for sure. I hoped they would treat the designs well. Initially they had gotten some things not quite right, I thought; but Cloud's model has been getting more and more accurate to Nomura's illustrations as we get closer to release. He looked great in the latest TGS trailer. I do wish Tifa's hair was a bit poofier and more 90's, but she still looks amazing too. Barret, Sephiroph and Aeris all look good consistently.

Initially, I also hoped they would keep the ATB battle system, but I'm excited to try the new XV-esque combat style as well. Does anyone know if they have a Chrono-style selection where you can pick between the two?

 

[Jairus]

Yep, the battle system is a hybrid where you can switch between styles anytime. There's also a classic mode that emulates the original ATB system more or less. So you can play the game whichever way you want.

 

[LNK]

I never really cared if a remake would happen or not (9 is my favorite anyway). I remember reading an interview by Nomura or Kitase that said they wouldn't even make one until there was a villain that was more powerful/bad a$$ than Sephiroth was. Then along came Caius from 13-2. Eventually I figured they would do a remake.

One day I was on worldstarhiphop, and I saw the trailer. I'm not into videogames as much as most of you on here, so I was definitely surprised to see a trailer come out. I immediately bought a ps4 cause I knew I'd want to play this. I didn't even know what other games were out for ps4 lol.