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[neoism]

it's going to be so different you're really getting 0/3 of a game youve bought 4 times

talk about bad value

it being sooo different isnt a plus for me... i know its a remake and not a remaster but changing shit just to change shit...isnt a plus for me at all...but really the episodic thing for me just sucks... ill wait the extra time until its all released and get them at a discount...
but owell its takin them 10 fucking years for 15 i dont see this coming until 2018-19 at the earliest...

why the fuck cant square just work on shit in secret and announce it 6 months before release...

 

[Trace]

Why is it fantasy land for a game to just be remade as one whole?

You guys are buying into a flawed premise. If we had years and years of broken up RPGs because whole ambitious games arent possible financially any more, fine. But we've had plenty of ambitious games in the last 20 years, hell look at Witcher 3 this year.

Witcher 3 is a fraction of the size that this game will be when all its parts are released. You're severely underestimating the size of the project.

 

[BocoDragon]

I think this is the most likely outcome. 60$ with 15 to (at most) 25 hours. People who think they're going to get a 40+ hour game from square with just a few years of development, set in a single city, are nuts.

It's quite easy to pad out the length of a game with side-quests, battles, exploration, etc.

I do think it will be 40+ hours. Keeping in mind that games like Ground Zeroes milked ~10 hours from a tiny map, this seems easy.

 

[muteki]

Disc size really isn't the issue. More like asset and content creation.

Part 2 can just include whatever they want to allow you to backtrack to from part 1, etc.

Yeah, and when Part 2 comes out, they will have already created all the assets for backtracking to part 1.

 

[Samurai G0SU]

I like that word play:

Final Fantasy 7 Remake: all parts will have the size of a full game

They say the size of A full game. Not THE full game [FF7]

What constitues as A full game?

Oh well. I'm not looking for an answer, just throwing it out there.

I look forward to see more revealing information soon enough.

 

[Fitts]

So glad you're not making this game then

Everyone who plays open world games.

I'm personally not a fan of having my time wasted and hate that it's a trend in modern gaming. Championing the idea of taking 10 minutes to get from place to place instead of 10 seconds because "immersion/realism/whatever" isn't anything I'd ask for because 90% of open world games are a boring slog. I'm fine with open world as long as there's always something fun to do. I'm playing Fallout 4 right now and there's an interesting destination/encounter/etc. at every turn. Breaking from the landmarks-on-a map standard, Dark Souls/Bloodborne allow you to choose your own path through the game world and manage to maintain a high level of engagement throughout. So yes, while open world can be good I don't see how a game that progresses as linearly as FFVII (save for a few optional bits) would benefit from it.

 

[Crimson_1ce]

I dont understand. With this news, there's nothing to worry about.

The only real downside to the episodic thing was the worry that it would play out like 7+ small $12 demos

This way, world map is surely in, extra content etc. This is the best possible scenario for a remake.

I expected people here to understand this easier, but it just seems the gaming community as an entirety is just pretty pathetic nowadays

EDIT: Also, as a very important side point. Does anyone actually remember the game? Lol you dont ever really have as much freedom as everyone seems to imply. After you leave midgar, theres only a few small places. After the boat you cant backtrack. After the golden saucer you cant backtrack. That stuff only really begins after you get the ship lol. Otherwise they're pretty small areas to roam in

 

[Innolis]

I'm guessing it will be 20-30 hours each? Also, like someone said, the 3rd disk is pretty much the final dungeon.

I'm just hoping the game still feel cohesive and they don't remove the overworld.

 

[meanspartan]

Witcher 3 is a fraction of the size that this game will be when all its parts are released. You're severely underestimating the size of the project.

I hope you're right. Ff7 took me about 60 hours or so to beat, maybe 70. Less for just main story. Witcher was probably longer for me. Making 7 all prettier and modern doesnt necessarily mean it will be longer, does it?

 

[u_neek]

I see this as a good thing to be honest. We'll get the first part sooner and in a way it not that different from the Mass Effect trilogy - except this time we already know the ending. Can't see them splitting the story in to more than three parts, but you never know, I guess.

 

[213372bu]

I like that word play:



They say the size of A full game. Not THE full game [FF7]

What constitues as A full game?

Oh well. I'm not looking for an answer, just throwing it out there.

I look forward to see more revealing information soon enough.

They said in the interview thread that they are working to include the entire game into the Remake conversion.

 

[Savantcore]

So assuming our levels and items etc. carry over between parts, we're essentially looking at the Mass Effect trilogy of this generation. Sounds good to me.

 

[DXLelouch153]

I'm personally not a fan of having my time wasted and hate that it's a trend in modern gaming. Championing the idea of taking 10 minutes to get from place to place instead of 10 seconds because "immersion/realism/whatever" isn't anything I'd ask for because 90% of open world games are a boring slog. I'm fine with open world as long as there's always something fun to do. I'm playing Fallout 4 right now and there's an interesting destination/encounter/etc. at every turn. Breaking from the landmarks on a map standard, Dark Souls/Bloodborne allow you to choose your own path through the game world and manage to maintain a high level of engagement throughout. So yes, while open world can be good I don't see how a game that progresses as linearly as FFVII (save for a few optional bits) would benefit from it.

i enjoy looking at beautiful open areas like in Xenoblade
your just a philistine i guess who doesnt like art

 

[mdzapeer]

What really bothers me though is that their calling each game a unique experience. Is it not just one game broken up or is it separate games joined by a single story. The way it's worded a single part could be a shooter or the way FFX-2 and FF13-2 and 3 are completely different games.

 

[Trace]

I hope you're right. Ff7 took me about 60 hours or so to beat, maybe 70. Less for just main story. Witcher was probably longer for me. Making 7 all prettier and modern doesnt necessarily mean it will be longer, does it?

It's not about time to beat. You can make a tiny game take 20 hours to beat, or a massive game that takes 10. The shear amount of asset creation that is required to make FF7 in full AAA 3d today is probably 5-10x the amount of work it took to make the original FF7. Witcher 3 is a big game, but there's a whole lot of nothing going on in a lot of it.

 

[Fitts]

i enjoy looking at beautiful open areas like in Xenoblade
your just a philistine i guess who doesnt like art

Yet I mentioned FROM games -- the games that are persistently lauded for their art direction.

...k.

Witcher 3 is a big game, but there's a whole lot of nothing going on in a lot of it.

This is accurate.

 

[GreenMakoEyes]

Well early on the geography inhibited that, and when it didn't and you went back to an area, it was mostly filled with NPCs with little no story sequences. Sidequest discussions at most. Some portions simply aren't back-trackable, like sectors in Midgar, the Junon-Costa Del Sol ship, Rocket Town stuff in disc 2, Temple of Ancients, etc.

I don't see why we can't have all the scenario data on the disc, but extraneous towns be downloadable data. By that point all those assets would be made, they would just have to be repackaged. Or, if you have disc 1 it installs all that content to the drive which gets pulled when you play disc 2, and if you only buy disc 2 it downloads the necessary disc 1 content on install.

thanks, I was afraid backtracking is not possible with a system like this. I think visiting older locations is one important feature to "feel" the world in a RPG.

 

[Leeness]

The over reaction to this is amazing. There is absolutely no context to what "episodic" means in this case. People need to calm down and wait. Then if it turns out as horrible as the people overreacting seem to think when there is actually more information ("40, hour long episodes at $400 a piece!!!!!!") then you can weep into your FF7 merchandise.

I assume compilation stuff will make it into this new series in some way, and if they built a giant Midgar, that would be neat :O

I for one look forward to our new FF7 multigameathon overlords.

Also, this is probably why they never wanted to do this in the first place lol.

"I will sacrifice my first born to play this game as soon as possible!!"
"We are making it episodic to get it to you quicker. "
"YOU ASSHOLES RUIN EVERYTHING FUCK YOU"

 

[BocoDragon]

I hope you're right. Ff7 took me about 60 hours or so to beat, maybe 70. Less for just main story. Witcher was probably longer for me. Making 7 all prettier and modern doesnt necessarily mean it will be longer, does it?

Yes it does.

Towns the size of a shoebox won't register as towns on a realistic scale. Cutscenes with a couple of text boxes of thin dialogue won't register as a modern cinematic. Battles that cut to the same 1 generic background won't feel like modern battles in a realistic 3D space.

Honestly remaking VII will make it a much larger game, even if you aren't adding in new scenes and events.

 

[Xion_Stellar]

My god....

I've become a monster!

There's something to be said about the industry's practices when I have become so cynical to the point that the prospect of a Final Fantasy VII Remake no longer excites me and the first thing that comes to mind now is how badly they can fuck this up.

You did this to me Game Industry!

 

[ty_hot]

Lets be honest:

They will take ONE game and divide in parts. If we are lucky, 3 parts (won't be 2 for sure).

If they say 'all parts will have the size of a full game', it means more about the price than about the size of the game.

So, for now, FF7 will come in at least 3 parts that will cost 60 euros/dollars each.

Plus, ofc, a 'complete' editions that will come for at least 80 dollars after all parts are released.

 

[Samurai G0SU]

They said in the interview thread that they are working to include the entire game into the Remake conversion.

More word play. I used to do this at my old job. it's all good man. business is business.

 

[Pai Pai Master]

Yes it does.

Towns the size of a shoebox won't register as towns on a realistic scale. Cutscenes with a couple of text boxes of thin dialogue won't register as a modern cinematic. Battles that cut to the same 1 generic background won't feel like modern battles in a realistic 3D space.

Honestly remaking VII will make it a much larger game, even if you aren't adding in new scenes and events.

Exactly. Not sure why this is so difficult for people to comprehend.

One of the smaller arcs/towns in VII that maybe took 30min-1hr to get through in the original will probably be like 3-4 hours when translated to modern game design principles and when the towns and areas are actually built to scale, instead of just having a few different screens that you can run across and a couple of doors you can go into.

 

[ZombiePlatypus]

Can we stop the whining then?

Have found some way to decode vague language or something? Or are you just ignoring the fact that the wording they used in their statement can mean anything?

What if they are worth such a price tag? Games that are planned as a trilogy and the story continues with each entry being $60 worth of content, this situation would be comparable.

That'd be amazing. Hype train would go full steam again and I'd be brimming with excitement.

But, all they've done here is give us an extremely disappointing revelation, then leave fans hanging with secrecy and no legitimate clarification.

So, what do we have left to draw upon to make sense of this mess? The way they handled Fabula Nova Crystalis? Or the AC Compilation? Lovely.

 

[GavinGT]

I just don't see them going from "HD towns are hard" to building Witcher 3-esque towns. I think that's way too much to ask of them.

I see them adding a few extra houses just to make the perspective change make sense, and call it a day. After all, taking largely isometric towns and translating them into full 3D without adding anything would have weird results.

 

[RocBase]

Problem with scale is that everyone just assume it has to be full 3D, 3rd person view with movable cameras, cut-scenes, voice acting and face animations while the actual game was nothing like that.

Zones had a fixed camera angle, it's seen from above so there is no facial expressions that can be seen in detail from up close and no voice acting. Keep those things and suddenly I can't imagine remaking all the models/zones in higher resolution is not such a huge undertaking after all.

If we instead change our expectations and think more like Shadowrun Returns in terms of graphics (what's closer to the original) then I can't imagine it would be very hard to fit all those zones on a blue-ray risk. They probably even have space over to polish up the combat system after they are done as well.

But does anyone genuinely just want what sounds like an enhanced version of it? Myself personally the whole idea of a Remake is to precisely make use of all what technology allows for us to include now and what wasn't possible 20 years ago.

 

[Trace]

Exactly. Not sure why this is so difficult for people to comprehend.

One of the smaller arcs/towns in VII that maybe took 30min-1hr to get through in the original will probably be like 3-4 hours when translated to modern game design principles and when the towns and areas are actually built to scale, instead of just having a few different screens that you can run across and a couple of doors you can go into.

I've been playing FFVII on my Vita recently, and frankly while it's amazing what they got done at the time, I'm amazed that they decided to remaster it at all. It's like the difference between one pre-rendered background and hundreds of fully 3d assets per scene.

 

[BocoDragon]

I just don't see them going from "HD towns are hard" to building Witcher 3-esque towns. I think that's way too much to ask of them.

"HD towns are hard" is a 6 year old reference. Even XIII-2 had some large town environments, and that was 4 years ago.

I don't think VIIR really calls for Witcher style towns anyway though. Just town environments of a larger scale, and obviously larger than OG VII's tiny rooms.

 

[meanspartan]

I just don't see them going from "HD towns are hard" to building Witcher 3-esque towns.

Ya...

I guess my worry is that people in here are talking best case scenario, with a ff7 "trilogy" and each $60 part is 30-40 hours.

Id be cool with that, excited even.

Im just not sure thats what is actuslly gonna happen...we'll see I guess.

 

[vpance]

Lets talk about this.

Take Witcher 3's world, Make 11 different playable characters with their own unique play styles (Swords, guns, fists, spears, fangs, etc), throw in dozens of spells instead of a handful, throw in dozens of summons (look up Ramuh FFXV if you want to know what a summon is) dozens more support materia. Instead of 1 mini game there are a dozen or so, now imagine every town/city is completely different from everything else in the game.

Imagine telling CDprojectred to make a city like Midgar in the Witcher 3, they cant reuse any assets from the rest of the game because its completely different, now do it again for Junon, and against for Cosmo Canyon, and again for the Crater, etc etc. There is a huge variety in locations for this game.

This project is an absolutely massive undertaking, thats why they never did it 10 years ago when people were begging them for it.

There is no company on the planet that would sell this game for 60 dollars, they sell dramatically smaller games for 60 dollars and those games reuse mechanics/assets from previous games and are subsidized by paid DLC and microtransactions.

So true. And lol at people trying to make that comparison.

 

[Ultimadrago]

Yeah, Square Enix is incapable of pulling this off properly.

 

[Mariolee]

How do you even measure what a "full game" is?

 

[michaeltraps]

This all sounds really good to me. I guess I'm in the minority?

I don't understand why people are upset about their supposed first/favorite JRPG being expanded and told in multiple parts. I've spent more money on less.

 

[ZombiePlatypus]

How do you even measure what a "full game" is?

It's whatever is financially and time and resources wise is comfortable for them. (i.e. We are not gonna get multiple, proper, epic, behemoth JRPG games that richly beef up the lore, story, and gameplay of VII on a scale that feels grander than what OG VII felt like at the time.)

Unless they explicitly state and show that, that's genuinely what they're doing, there's no reason to just assume they're gonna deliver the goods here like that, the way we're hoping them to.

Sorry if this is cynical or pessimistic, but they've burned fans too many times.

 

[Niosai]

This works out for Square-Enix really well. Splitting this into multiple parts means they have more opportunities to sell FF7R, which is great from a business standpoint, but also means they can put more time into each edition and do the original justice.

 

[Go_Ly_Dow]

Yes it does.

Towns the size of a shoebox won't register as towns on a realistic scale. Cutscenes with a couple of text boxes of thin dialogue won't register as a modern cinematic. Battles that cut to the same 1 generic background won't feel like modern battles in a realistic 3D space.

Honestly remaking VII will make it a much larger game, even if you aren't adding in new scenes and events.

Exactly. Not sure why this is so difficult for people to comprehend.

One of the smaller arcs/towns in VII that maybe took 30min-1hr to get through in the original will probably be like 3-4 hours when translated to modern game design principles and when the towns and areas are actually built to scale, instead of just having a few different screens that you can run across and a couple of doors you can go into.

This logic deserves its own thread to be honest. I suppose people are blind to what a true remake ecompasses.

For example, imagine meeting RedXIII for the first time.....a few lines of text and a 10 polygon model is going to be replaced by a CGI level cinematic cutscene with probably more exposition.

 

[E-Cat]

Are the games even going to be, umm, interoperable? Are you going to be able to carry over your old save data?

What if they'll be strictly standalone experiences that simply share story elements, but not one coherent world? That would be the worst.

 

[Ploid 3.0]

Just realized, they may have to put level caps, gil cap, and maybe even non respawning enemies in the game. Imagine people farming exp and gold until the next episode.

That or they will start you at level 1 or a determined level for the new episode with a fresh start on gear and stats.

 

[MilkBeard]

I hope you're right. Ff7 took me about 60 hours or so to beat, maybe 70. Less for just main story. Witcher was probably longer for me. Making 7 all prettier and modern doesnt necessarily mean it will be longer, does it?

I would say on average, the FF VII main story is about 40 hours for a first time play through. That is the usual for a Final Fantasy game, at least at that time, in my opinion.

The thing about the game design back then is that you could traverse maps much quicker, and everything was a representation of what the world was like, instead of a 1-to-1 scale of the actual world. You would get to access a handful of areas of say, Midgar, just to get a feel of what the entire city was like.

The way I see it, they want to expand and make a lot more areas accessible and available to explore. This also means fleshing out more characters, quests, and parts of the backstory. That is why each episode is going to be a more focused, detailed look at the story and areas of the game.

So I would probably expect each chapter to be able to take around 20-40 hours, going by their meaning of 'full game.' I expect also there to be extra things to do as well to make the game time longer. The range is large because I have no idea how they are going to develop it. They might make the main story shorter, but give a lot of freedom which will add a lot of extra playtime to most players. They could also make the main story as long as a normal Final Fantasy game (30-40 hours) for each chapter. It's hard to say until we get more information and see more of the game.

But it's easy to see that there is potential for a lot of detail in each chapter release. the world of FF VII is big enough that they could expand it exponentially.

 

[KZXcellent]

I couldn't be more excited for this.

 

[Trigonometrize.]

Hell no, that would be a disaster and they know it.

It's gonna be annual releases, probably each Holiday of 2017/18/19.

Why would it be a disaster? There's no chance they're releasing full JRPG games annually. Two years at least

 

[Mobius and pet octopus]

Just realized, they may have to put level caps, gil cap, and maybe even non respawning enemies in the game. Imagine people farming exp and gold until the next episode.

That or they will start you at level 1 or a determined level for the new episode with a fresh start on gear and stats.

They don't have to do any of that. Who cares if someone grinds out max level in a single player RPG. People have done it in non-episodic final fantasy games, so what if they do it again.

 

[Scrooged]

"It's impossible to completely recreate FFVII"

"Each part of FFVII Remake will be the size of a full game"


Something doesn't add up here.

 

[Freshmaker]

They're adding more content to Midgar than was in the original game, as they said in the interviews. They're making the towns more indepth.

HD towns? We are truly in the future.

 

[tuxfool]

Why is it fantasy land for a game to just be remade as one whole?

You guys are buying into a flawed premise. If we had years and years of broken up RPGs because whole ambitious games arent possible financially any more, fine. But we've had plenty of ambitious games in the last 20 years, hell look at Witcher 3 this year.

Just stop it. It is getting so tiresome that people keep bringing up the Witcher 3. It is an amazing game and expansive AF. It is, however, set in two countries, it has two major cities and a lot of tiny villages. There are a lot of assets and features replicated all over the game, this isn't something they can do with FF7, unless they cut things, upon which point people would moan at them for cutting location x,y and z.

I'm just going to keep saying this: SE has since the early PS3 days, stated that it was financially infeasible to remake ff7 with modern sensibilities. They have now committed to making it, but the only way they are willing to risk it is by splitting up the risk over time, getting a return on their investment whilst building the game.

 

[DeSolos]

Exactly. Not sure why this is so difficult for people to comprehend.

One of the smaller arcs/towns in VII that maybe took 30min-1hr to get through in the original will probably be like 3-4 hours when translated to modern game design principles and when the towns and areas are actually built to scale, instead of just having a few different screens that you can run across and a couple of doors you can go into.

That definitely seems to be what they're going for, if only to get more bang for their buck out of the assets they've produced.

My main concern with this direction is pacing. It reminds me a bit of how MGSV had about "50 main missions", but only 14 were proper story missions and an additional 150+ side ops.

I don't think FFVII would ever be that extreme,especially considering how KojiPro had the rug pulled out from under them by Konami, but still. Going this direction will necessitate filler content of some degree. I hope it doesn't ruin the pacing in the process.

 

[TatteredHat]

Good luck waiting until 2020.

If there's one thing I hate it's cliffhangers, after the wait for FFVII's remake to even be announced I'll be more than happy to wait a bit longer for the complete version.

 

[Epix]

They don't have to do any of that. Who cares if someone grinds out max level in a single player RPG. People have done it in non-episodic final fantasy games, so what if they do it again.

I guess just having some sort of scaling boss fights/enemies would be needed then, to avoid players grinding in E1 to 1-shot bosses in E2...etc.

 

[ReaperXL7]

I remember comments before the Remake was a reality that remaking this game could potentially sink SE as a company due to the cost. Recreating all of that content to the level we saw in the newest trailer seems to me on the outside as an impossible task, if anything I am glad they are considering an option that means we might see this become reality before the apocalypse.

SE has been making a lot of decisions that im a big fan of recently and XV,KH3,project Setsuna, Dragon Quest XI and builders all look awesome so I'm choosing to give them the benefit of the doubt

 

[Kadey]

OG FFVII, Advent Children, Dirge?