Final Fantasy VII Remake

New Screenshots and “Inside” Featurette From Square!

by Lex March 16, 2020 0 comments

We’re counting down the days now… 24 to go! But to tide you over, there’s a bunch of new stuff that’s popped up today, so let’s take a look together:

A bunch of new screenshots have appeared on the official Square Enix blog. First up, a bunch of official renders – Tseng’s looking very dashing here!

We’ve got our Turk leader, a super-creep and our man from the Honey Bee Inn [ P E R F E C T I O N ]

Before now we didn’t officially know Andrea’s name – he’s listed as the owner of the Honeybee Inn. Welcome to FFVII canon, Andrea.

And some other NPC’s you might not be familiar with yet!

We haven’t seen a lot of these last three yet, though Chocobo Sam does make an appearance in the theme song trailer if you look closely in the background! These characters all appear to play a role in the Wall Market quest, as the Square Enix blog states that Andrea, Madam M and Chocobo Sam have influence over Corneo’s “auditions”. This implies we’ll have an even more interesting time in Wall Market than we did in the original…

The keen among you will have also noted that Leslie Kyle is actually a character from Kazushige Nojima’s FFVII Novel “Turks: The Kids Are Alright” (side note: if you didn’t know – this novel now has an official English translation alongside all the “On the Way to a Smile” novellas. Go buy them!)

Up next, we’ve got some gameplay related tidbits:

Yup, that’s the Enemy Skill materia! It remains to be seen how this will actually be implemented in game – it could be that it adds a menu slot to the command menu as it did in the original, or is potentially implemented another way.

The eagle-eyed among you might notice something at the top left of the screen: four party members are listed, with an icon next to Aerith’s name. This icon probably indicates that she’s not currently in the active party. You don’t have all four available until rescuing Aerith from the Shinra building in the original, so it’s possible this screenshot is taken at some point close to the end of Shinra HQ. This could indicate we pick it up at the point we do in the original story, though that would be late in the game to be learning enemy skills. It’s also possible this just happens to be where the menu was opened, and that E.Skill is available much earlier in the game. Or it’s potentially a New Game+ incentive!

There are also a bunch of new screenshots from Wall Market:

And a screenshot of what the Square blog post calls the “Corneo Colosseum”, which seems to be a battle-arena type minigame:

Wonder if it’ll have slots between rounds? 🙂

We’ve got some majestic photos of our trio in their Wall Market attire:

And, perhaps surprisingly: the BEGINNER’S HALL from Sector 7!

If you remember from the original, that’s the weapon shop guy Tifa tells you to go and see after the first bombing run in the original, when you first return to Seventh Heaven. They really seem to have gone all out in re-creating these NPC’s you might otherwise have forgotten about.

Biggs and Wedge also appear to be sitting in the “learners” area where you can pick up an “all” materia and a chest in the original. Here’s some OG reference pics for comparison:

Also mentioned in the blog is a Jukebox, and – according to the blog – you’ll be able to pick up “music discs” from shops or citizens that you’ll then be able to play in any other jukebox you come across. There’s one in Seventh Heaven!

PHEW! That’s a lot of new stuff.

As if that wasn’t enough, Square Enix also released a new YouTube video titled “Inside: Final Fantasy VII Remake”. Square Enix has been releasing a bunch of these videos for different titles recently, and they include interviews with key players from their respective games. They’re well worth a watch. In particular, this new FFVII Remake episode has some new footage! Here’s a couple of teasers for you:

Shinra Manager & Johnny, oh my!

Check out the full video here:

We hope you enjoyed this latest update as much as we did, there’s a lot to unpack. Please come chat with us on the board or hit us up on our discord! And don’t forget to check out our YouTube channel 🙂