The Inevitable Final Fantasy VII Remake Will Be Terrible

[blaydcor]

...almost without a doubt.

What makes the original such a great, more-or-less timeless game are a number of things that are often overlooked by the game's more juvenile fans. The atmosphere. The characters (and I don't mean their appearance). The story. The groundbreaking level of immersion it offered at the time. Final Fantasy VII sucked gamers into its world; it was transporting in a way that very few games are these days. It had a unique, compelling identity, one that was in large part due to the all of the ambitious creativity poured into the game. 

I can already tell you what the remake will focus on.

Flashily redesigned characters. Incredibly complex and overwrought limits and summons. An elaborate, complicated, and only sort-of fun new battle system. Long, drawn out, overly epic cut scenes. Heavy metal-edged remixes of all the harder music, too ambitiously orchestrated versions of everything else. Dialogue filled with cliches and stupid b-movie quality one-liners.

It will be a technical marvel, and the juvenile "Cloud is so badass! Sephiroth is the man!" fans will of course be delighted by the no-doubt absurdly over-the-top fight scenes will get...but the magic will be gone, because this won't be a game driven by creativity and vision. It will be driven by a market-propelled need to be flashy, cool, and 'bad ass'. 

I'm not just saying this out of blind pessimism; this is, quite the simply, the type of remake that will sell the most in today's market. Just look at Advent Children: it literally retained nothing of what made the original game great; the characters were hollow shells of their game counterparts. 

Square Enix has demonstrated repeatedly in recent games that it has lost sight of what so endeared gamers to their games in the first place. With a game as high profile and guaranteed-blockbuster as a Final Fantasy VII remake, this is going to be reflected more than ever.