About two months ago, it was reported that the Final Fantasy VII Remake would be episodic. Thanks to an interview with series director Yoshinori Kitase, we have a better idea of how Final Fantasy VII’s huge story will be broken up.
From an interview with Gameinformer, Kitase explains “When the project was first announced, people were confused by its multi-part nature, but the goal is to structure it more like Final Fantasy XIII than an episodic series.” Considering that each Final Fantasy XIII game was about 50 hours long, the whole story is over 150 hours of gameplay. Considering how big Final Fantasy VII’s story was, it could be split up to three or even four parts. We can expect a new Final Fantasy VII Remake Episode every year or so.
Kitase also said in the interview “Whereas with the Final Fantasy VII Remake, we already have a preexisting story, so it wouldn’t really make sense if that isn’t encompassed in a multipart series…So if we’re just looking at each of these parts, one part should be on par with the scale of one Final Fantasy XIII game.”
Even though this Final Fantasy VII is a remake, Square Enix is making the game from the ground-up with a new combat system and a more modernized story.” When asked about changes to the game’s story, Kitase replied “I, along with [Tetsuya] Nomura-san and [Kazushige] Nojima-san…were also involved with the original Final Fantasy…We were the people who created it, so in that sense, we don’t think anything is untouchable. That isn’t to say we’re changing everything.”
Although we have only seen a tiny glimpse of the Remake’s gameplay, it looks similar to the combat in the Kingdom Hearts Series. As part of modernizing Final Fantasy VII, the gameplay is something that is more “real-time” than the PS1 game’s turn based combat. This is a Final Fantasy VII Remake, and not a remaster, so fans are getting an almost completely new game from the PS1 classic.
Kitase stated that “This reimagined epic will be the next core Final Fantasy Installment–or rather installments.” It looks like we will be seeing a lot of Final Fantasy VII Remake after Final Fantasy XV comes out this September. Although there is no release date yet, Final Fantasy VII Remake will be coming to the PS4 in the near future.