The Inevitable Final Fantasy VII Remake Will Be Terrible

[Jumpin]

...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.

The major thing that separated it from the previous Square Enix games was the huge usage of rendered graphics and full motion video sequences. It was the fourth game by Square to use pre-rendered graphics, and the first to use them to such a high level of detail. It is also incredibly flawed in its execution, many areas where the player runs too long into the background, getting stuck on corners (like the pool table at the bottom floor of the inn within Costa Del Sol, which is particularly annoying to get around if you want to check out the door at the back of the room). A remake could fix these issues along with some others: the music is irritating at times and brilliant at others, it could use some re-work; the script is of substandard quality, Xenogears, FF8, 9, and 10 are a substantial improvement. Like previous remakes from Square Enix, I am sure the script will be vastly improved.

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.

Do you have any real evidence that even suggests that Square would make an even more poorly executed version of the game rather than an improved one; like all of their other remakes? When Square does remakes, they don't screw/attempt to improve, around with what works (with the exception of the magic system in Dawn of Souls), rather, they fix what was broken and tweek what works but could be tightened.

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'.

Really? That's sort of the same deal I heard about the original game. I also do not see any evidence to support your claim that Square has chosen to abandon their tried and true remake strategy in exchange for one that ruins the game instead.

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.

Advent Children was a movie, not a game. Again, Square already has a successful strategy down for remakes, it is unlikely that they are going to instead become idiots and make poor remakes just because you think so.

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.

Really? Square Enix's remakes have all been very successful to date; always improving on the previous versions of the games. Stop and consider that the evidence available shows that you are probably wrong.

 

The bottom line is, FF7 is a great game, but it is trapped in a very dated package. There are many many things that can be improved for the better. In the end it could easily end up as being one of the greatest games ever released.

 

I do think that FF7 isn't the game that Nomura was talking about. He was also a major player on the FF6 development team. FF6 also fits the bill as a highly requested game for a remake. It also makes sense considering that FF6 is currently the logical next chapter on Squares remake schedule. FF7 would be better for a later remake on new handheld hardware.