Remake, not the full game or ATB, makes me sad

[frodrick]

So i just tried the demo, graphichs are fantastic! But then i noticed the old style ATB was gone and its more a hack´n´slash game.
Also that its not the complete game (not sure if this is true) and Red wont be playable

Ive been waiting for this Remake for over 15 years and now i find all this out it breaks my gamer heart in many pieces, i dont even look forward to the release that i cried of happiness when finding out.

so im guessing ill have to wait another 20 years for a real remake?!

 

[Dionysos]

Welcome to the forum!


Yeah, you're right. The FFVII Remake is going to be split into parts. Part 1 is the Midgar section (but expanded a great deal to create a full game). We don't yet know the full scope of the remaining parts but I believe that the current word is that there may be three altogether - but anything can change at this point.

The original FFVII's issue is that the game is extremely long compared to the games which are typically released today. Even in games which can allow for a hundred hours or so of gameplay, a lot of that turns out to be world traversal and sidequests, etc, rather than solid plot. They figured that this Remake could either be a condensed form of the original and have it on restrictive rails only, or it could be explorative and allow for an even deeper examination of the game's environments and storylines. They've decided on the latter.

It does mean that we have to wait longer for the full experience, but in reward for our patience we're getting an extremely detailed Midgar (so we have been promised) in the first part of the game. Other AVALANCHE members such as Jessie, Biggs and Wedge are now getting the spotlight that they deserve and their story arcs shall certainly be benefiting from this approach.

You are right about Red XIII not being playable. This is a sad loss, but understandable considering that he'll only be introduced towards the end of this game. He'll be a guest character only this time, but it'll mean that in part 2 he'll be fully playable right at the time when his arc becomes particularly interesting. Narratively it makes sense to hold off on Red XIII until the second part.

The ATB is gone but they have introduced a 'Classic' mode for those who prefer the turn-based style. It isn't the same, but it is an attempt to please those who want that.

It isn't likely to be a 20 year wait though. They have apparently already started on part 2. They know where they are going with the project and what is working, so continuing it could be easier from now on. The main obstacle would be the emergence of the next generation of consoles. That could throw a spanner in the works, but that would always have been a problem somewhere down the line.


I guess there is another way of thinking about this. We are used to waiting for additional seasons of a TV series we enjoy and sometimes there would be gaps of several years between them. We still enjoy them when the new season finally arrives. Maybe if we think like that and apply it to gaming then it'll make it easier to move beyond feeling sad that part 1 has ended with a cliffhanger.

 

[redcloud9]

I really get points for and against...
I like everything we have seen so far of the remake but I feel sad that Square isnt able to create an original and captivating story anymore...
In some ways I think FF7 Remake might help them in getting their footing back. Also, with the argument that a large game of that size is
impossible...look at Witcher 3...but thats what makes it special, a lot of companies are just not able to achieve that large a game and level
of quality to boot. Anyway, whatever happens these are exciting times - FF7 was my first FF experience that I absolutely loved and grew up with.

 

[Mercurial]

Ive been waiting for this Remake for over 15 years and now i find all this out it breaks my gamer heart in many pieces, i dont even look forward to the release that i cried of happiness when finding out.

so im guessing ill have to wait another 20 years for a real remake?!

From someone who has never played Final Fantasy VII, I was very sceptical of approaching the game for the first time if it was divided into multiple parts (I've never been a fan of episodic / split releases), but it isn't necessarily a bad thing. The games looks visually stunning, so if the same detail goes into the gameplay across all releases, multiple parts could majorly benefit the game. That said, I do not want it to become standard practice.

I wouldn't expect another Final Fantasy VII remake though, this will be it now. I think it's probably inevitable that when the last part is released, there will be an 'ultimate edition' that will comprise of all the releases - I concur with Dionysos that it it will likely be three parts - but the likelihood there will be another Final Fantasy VII remake as one single release is virtually nil.

 

[frodrick]

Welcome to the forum!

Thank you.

I think its mostly the playstyle im mostly dissapoined in, but i really hope they wont screw with the story aswell. making it more detailed is fine but i HOPE they will release a addon or option to play original game with new graphics only, that would be so great.

But using the "FFVII its to big to make in 1 game" reason to split it, thats just lame

And using Remake means make it again or record again, this is a retake, or interpretation or what the correct word is.

Still the news of a Remake made me soooooo happy but this still takes away a big part of that feeling.

 

[Ilyena]

From Wikipedia: "A remake tells the same story as the original but is often updated with a contemporary theme or for a more contemporary audience."

I think people are getting too hung up on the wording. It was clear that if SE was ever going to remake VII, it wasn't going to be exactly the same as the original. SE started moving away from the traditional ATB system years ago and VII has become an entire compilation. It would be silly to ignore the expanded FFVII universe.

I'm not crazy about their decision to release it in parts but it is what it is, I guess.

 

[Dionysos]

But using the "FFVII its to big to make in 1 game" reason to split it, thats just lame

What I meant by this was that they are putting an insane amount of detail into Midgar. We'll be able to see for definite what they have done with it in the final game, but they are expanding it and making Midgar feel like a real, lived in world.

To do the same thing for the entire planet and fit it all into one game might not be possible. It'll be too ambitious. Making the game look this good takes up space. And if they split the game up into different discs and gave us the entire thing in one massive game then we'd have to wait a lot longer than we are now to get any of it at all. At least by getting Part 1 in a little over a month means that we can all begin to enjoy this new interpretation of FFVII instead of being left hanging for another five or more years.

 

[Paddy McGee]

So i just tried the demo, graphichs are fantastic! But then i noticed the old style ATB was gone and its more a hack´n´slash game.
Also that its not the complete game (not sure if this is true) and Red wont be playable

Ive been waiting for this Remake for over 15 years and now i find all this out it breaks my gamer heart in many pieces, i dont even look forward to the release that i cried of happiness when finding out.

so im guessing ill have to wait another 20 years for a real remake?!

Firstly - welcome!

Square Enix has made it incredibly clear - through the numerous demos, playthrough sections and media pieces that this was never going to be the same game; it's the narrative and core beats of the game distilled through the lens of modern game development - the concept of the ATB gauge, side by side turn-based battles have been left to the wayside by modern graphical enhancements and standards. It was never going to be the same, in the same way that the "Karate Kid" remake in 2011 was never going to be same film, why the remake of "Footloose" was not the same, the remake of "Ghostbusters" was not the same. I can go on with this - it's never going to exactly replicate what you loved from before; that's what a remaster is for.

As for the Red XIII conundrum, the game is split in such a way that implementing functionality to utilise him is near pointless and isn't worth the development time if they want to hit the release date; it's a compromise that is to be taken as part of an episodic retelling. I'm not a fan of it either - but that's how the dice have been rolled, sadly! I'm hoping they don't need to do this with other characters.

The episodic retelling, in upon itself, is something done to truly encapsulate the scale of what each region is; Midgar is supposed to be a metropolis; the original game didn't do all that much of a great job displaying that (in my opinion, of course) so this increased size means it might be able to! Also - model assets are huge nowadays. They're trying to include everything - even those weird minigames - to such a degree that it necessitates multiple games. FF VII Remake part 1 is going to be a relatively large game as it is - https://www.tweaktown.com/news/6964...e-install-size-takes-up-73-7gb-ps4/index.html ; this is literally just MIDGAR. This is the scale we're talking about here.

Next; people have grown up since 1997 and a new generation has been born since then. The audience they need to appeal to now are very, very different compared who they need to appeal to back then! You cannot maintain a franchise based on the dedicated fans if you're a corporation - unless you want to go down the Kickstarter route ala Shenmue, which is something I would hate to happen to the FF franchise. As such, gameplay mechanics and the introduction to the story has to be altered in some way to appeal to those people - that means Hack 'n' Slash gameplay, it may mean easier sections; it may mean character model changes!

But it's not even like they've totally forgotten turn-based: there's a classic mode you'll be able to enable and utilise - which may give you a closer experience to what you want from this game ( as Dionysos mentioned).

To address that last question : you're not going to get a "real" remake (or rather, the remake you want to see; I'm quite eager to play the game with this system) unless you choose to build it yourself... in some sort of spiritual sequel format, of course. This is what Square Enix are committed to with VII - the likelihood there will be any releases outside of "remastered" versions for future systems is very, very low.

I don't want to be that guy who says "just go play the original game then" but... it's not like the original release is going anywhere. This is why the original game is available on near-every platform you can think of; nobody is going to take that away. The PC modding community has been doing much work to improve the experience, like: https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/final-fantasy-7-remako-hd-mod-is-an-impressive-upgrade-and-out-now/

 

[frodrick]

Well its not a remaster of old engine by upscaling, i was hoping for a new enginge and voiceovers, like Demo shows but old game style and storie =)
But enough of that. ill try it out and see if ill change my mind.