Final Fantasy VII Remake

New Remake artwork shown at 30th anniversary event

by Flintlock February 5, 2017 0 comments

Here at The Lifestream, we were all hoping for some significant news about the currently in-development Final Fantasy VII Remake at the series’ 30th anniversary event. That wasn’t forthcoming, but Square Enix did treat us to a gorgeous “key visual” depicting Cloud, Midgar and the spectre of Sephiroth in the background.

To prevent this page from loading too slowly for our visitors, we’ve included a resized and compressed version of the image in this article – you can see it below. If you’d like to get your hands on the original 1.6 MB image, you’ll find it here. Lifestream forum member Cloud_S also produced an upscaled version – perfect for your 4K monitor, if you’re lucky enough to have one – which weighs in at a hefty 11.7 MB and is available here.

This image also appeared in the most recent edition of Japanese video game magazine Famitsu, which contains an interview with the Remake’s producer, Yoshinori Kitase. We’ve obtained the following scans of the magazine (click to enlarge):

Siliconera have published an English translation of the interview. Amongst other things, Kitase talks about what aspects of the Remake the development team is currently working on and the possibility of live streams to track its progress – something similar to Final Fantasy XV’s Active Time Reports, in all likelihood. One particular quote jumps out: When asked about the Remake’s materia system, Kitase replied:

There’s still a lot that I can’t say but we won’t be removing any parts of the original Final Fantasy VII that was well-received.

While this bodes well, either something was lost in translation or Kitase is kidding himself, since virtually all parts of the original game were well-received by at least some fans, right down to the bugs, glitches and lines like “this guy are sick”. Even the CPR “minigame” was presumably enjoyed by some people (though we can’t fathom why).

What do you think of Kitase’s comments and the new artwork? Let us know on our forum or in the comments below.

Thanks to Lifestream forum member cold_spirit for making the alternate composition of the key visual and to Theozilla for sharing the Famitsu scans and the translated interview with us.