Placeholder Image

Subtitles section Play video

  • At E3 2015, Square Enix dropped a trailer that rocked Final Fantasy fans around the

  • world.

  • After years of speculation, the company officially revealed that Final Fantasy 7 was getting

  • a remake.

  • The announcement trailer was less than two minutes long and didn't carry a release date,

  • and since then, there's been almost no news about the in-development RPG.

  • Years after that big E3 reveal, we still don't know when the game will hit consoles.

  • So, what's taking so long?

  • Here's why the FF7 remake hasn't been released yet.

  • More than a remake

  • We've seen Square Enix remake Final Fantasy games before.

  • The first six games in the series have been ported multiple times from their original

  • forms on Nintendo's systems to handhelds, phones, and newer consoles.

  • Sometimes the remakes have added brand new scripts, 3D graphics, story tweaks, and voice

  • acting.

  • Aside from these tweaks, the actual game mechanics didn't really change.

  • It's different for Final Fantasy 7.

  • As director Tetsuya Nomura old Famitsu,

  • "FF7 is special, and we cannot surpass it just by making it look pretty."

  • Instead, the company is rebuilding the game from the ground up.

  • Episodic epic

  • One of the few things we've heard about the remake is that it will be released episodically,

  • with the story broken down into multiple parts and doled out to players in pieces.

  • In a since-deleted blog post, producer Yoshinori Kitase explained,

  • "If we were to try to fit everything from the original into one remake installment,

  • we would have to cut various parts and create a condensed version of Final Fantasy VII."

  • But that quote doesn't tell the whole story.

  • Apparently, the remake isn't going to be a single game chopped up into pieces, like Telltale's

  • The Walking Dead or Square Enix's own Life is Strange.

  • Instead, it's going to be a series of complete stand-alone games that together retell Final

  • Fantasy 7's epic plot.

  • According to Kitase, each FF7 installment will be about the same size and length as

  • Final Fantasy 13.

  • Yes, the whole fifty-hour game.

  • That's huge.

  • Even if the remake only ends up being a couple of installments, that's still a couple of

  • full-sized Final Fantasy adventures.

  • No wonder it's taking so long.

  • Listen to my story

  • Final Fantasy 7 isn't a short game, but if it's going to be stretched out to multiple

  • full-length titles, they're going to have to add some new material.

  • That means expanding the plot.

  • The FF7 remake won't add any new characters to game's already extensive cast, but there

  • will be new story elements, in addition to a bunch of revamped and fully-voiced dialogue.

  • The transition between the old and new material should be fairly seamless.

  • According to Japanese game magazine Dengeki, the original game's co-writer Kazushige Nojima,

  • will be returning to help flesh out the plot.

  • A new way of fighting

  • The story isn't the only part of FF7 getting a major overhaul.

  • Its battle system will be different this time, too.

  • From the footage released so far, it's clear that the original's turn-based battle system

  • is gone, with something more action-oriented taking its place.

  • It's still not entirely clear how battles will play out, but Kitase told Game Informer

  • that the remake team is looking to the fighting game Dissidia Final Fantasy for inspiration.

  • That fast-paced fighting game lets characters move freely around a 3D world.

  • Depending on the environment, the player will have opportunities to perform situation-specific

  • actions like diving for cover, while enemy attacks can change the battlefield layout,

  • forcing players to switch up their tactics.

  • It's all very different from what came before, and Nomura admits that the changes may not

  • sit well with the original's dedicated fans.

  • It's another example of the way the company is re-creating the classic game from scratch

  • and how much work the company still has to do.

  • Help (still) wanted

  • You can't make a game without people, and it looks like a few jobs are still open at

  • Square Enix.

  • As recently as April 2018 nearly three years after the game was announced Square Enix was

  • still seeking to fill key positions on the remake's development team.

  • Some of the people they're still looking for include "battle planners" to help design the

  • game's new battle system, and "level planners" to devise new game locations.

  • Those are pretty fundamental tasks, and that the positions haven't been filled yet indicates

  • that there's still quite a lot of work to be done before the FF7 remake hits consoles.

  • Who's making this thing?

  • In 2015, Square Enix said that it was farming out some of the remake's development to third-party

  • contractors, including the studio behind the .hack series and various

  • Naruto titles.

  • But two years later, the company changed course, giving control of the game back to its in-house

  • developers.

  • On one hand, this shift shows that Square Enix is taking the remake seriously, but it

  • also raises questions about how much work got done by those outside contractors.

  • The company probably isn't starting everything over from scratch, but it sounds like there

  • were some problems with the outsiders' approach.

  • For fans, that's going to mean an even longer wait.

  • The director takes his time

  • Final Fantasy 7 isn't the only game that Tetsuya Nomura has in development.

  • He's also been hard at work on the very long-awaited Kingdom Hearts III, development on which started

  • in 2010.

  • Before that, Nomura was tied up for years with Final Fantasy Versus 13, which Square

  • Enix announced in 2006.

  • Though Nomura and his staff worked on the game for seven years, they never got the game

  • anywhere close to completion.

  • Final Fantasy Type-Zero director Hajime Tabata ultimately took over the project, and the

  • game was redesigned as Final Fantasy 15, finally making its way to fans after a ten-year development

  • cycle.

  • Could it be that the FF7 remake is the next game to be subject to this crushingly long

  • development?

  • It's starting to look like it.

  • All gamers really want is for the game to be good but if it doesn't take a decade to

  • create this time, that would be nice, too.

  • Thanks for watching!

  • Click the SVG icon to subscribe to our YouTube channel.

  • Plus check out all this cool stuff we know you'll love, too!

At E3 2015, Square Enix dropped a trailer that rocked Final Fantasy fans around the

Subtitles and vocabulary

Click the word to look it up Click the word to find further inforamtion about it