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dkma841

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #75 on: 2015-06-17 12:02:20 »
,
« Last Edit: 2021-10-28 16:20:28 by dkma841 »

DLPB_

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #76 on: 2015-06-17 12:09:32 »
Quote
“If you’re doing a full remake, it must be made with a different approach that matches the times

That's code for exactly what many here have said they'll do (actually, it isn't code.  It's plain.).  They have no intention of keeping the game mechanics similar.  He's already telling us that it's being changed to the same old we see in other games.  It's bye-bye ATB and tactics, hello cutscene and matrix and slash-slash.  I didn't want a remake to be the same game, but I did want the mechanics to be the same and all areas polished up and made better.

This statement above is the absolute wrong direction to go in.

He absolutely fails to understand what made the original game fun and the areas where it fell down.  It didn't lose points for the actual mechanics.  It lost points for its terrible English localization, dated engine (by today's standards), and poor IMPLEMENTATION of the design.  If they just stuck to the original game and updated it within those confines (for example, adding more games to Gold Saucer, making the game have proper difficulty and balance, updating graphics but keeping the prerendered setup), it would be hailed as a masterpiece.  But they aren't doing that. 

I look forward to D-Day (Disappointment Day).  Now, I'm going to take my negativity elsewhere and avoid all information on this "remake".  I have zero interest in that shit and when I'm done with my own mod it will be superior to the remake in every way except graphics.  ;D
« Last Edit: 2015-06-17 12:16:52 by DLPB »

Gatchaman

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #77 on: 2015-06-17 12:24:58 »
Woo! Channel that emotion!

hian

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #78 on: 2015-06-17 14:33:46 »
Honey Bee Scene is coming according to their interview with Eurogamer i think lol.

They know this Remake has a lot of hype and expectations to live up to and is their biggest game, from their interview seems like they will try their best not to fu*k this up for the Remake:http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-06-17-it-seems-like-final-fantasy-7s-remake-wont-lose-so-much-of-the-crazy
Edit: seems someone already posted this link lol :P

That person being me, the same person you're now replying to...

Also, I'm kinda skeptical about this now anyway, because since I haven't seen the original interview in Japanese, and knowing as much Japanese as I do, I recognize that while the sentence they credit him with ("Look forward to it") sounds like a confirmation in English, if the Japanese original sentence was something along the lines of 楽しにしてください(tanoshiminishite kudasai) it's much more ambiguous
and might mean nothing at all.

New info:

Source: http://gematsu.com/2015/06/final-fantasy-vii-remake-winter-update-includes-official-title-other-details-planning

So far I'm liking their approach to this Remake, not gonna just be some quick easy cash in like alot of people here think they will, they're taking it seriously

The problem though - is that there are many ways to take a remake seriously. Whether you're trying to cater to original fans and keeping it close to the source material, or re-imagining it - both approaches require work and dedication. However, either one
of those approaches can end up messing up the game regardless.

As I said before - keeping it very close to the original material runs the risk of making a game that cannot carry it's own weight because
the price-tag isn't going to be compatible with sales if it doesn't have mainstream appeal, whilst giving the game mainstream appeal
given the current gaming populace at large, means making a game that is probably so alien from the original that those who wished
for an actual FF7 remake, not a reboot or re-imagining, are going to feel like they've been left out in the cold, and probably resent SE for it.

People can make the argument that fans should feel like that, but there is pretty much a silent contract between a company and the fans that have bought their previous products and therefore enabled the company to keep on making products to begin with.
The FF franchise wouldn't exist today as it does in its current form without the original FF7 fan-base, and so to release a product that uses the brand-name but pretty much differs from the original in all ways that count is a pretty strawberries move by any standard.

To digress - there is an issue with the gaming industry as a whole at this moment.
The gaming industry has been too tightly tied to the computer hardware race, and then plummeted into a feed-back loop between
raising consumer expectations with their improved production values, and then having to further raise those production values
as a result of those expectations.
This has created a serious problem for the industry, because bigger titles now cost so much to make that the only way
to get loans from financial backers, and be able to pay them back, is to make products for huge demographics of people.
This is extremely problematic when you consider that the gaming market has historically always been niche (a nerd thing) and then
adding the fact that the gaming market is further divided by genres appealing to enthusiasts with very specific taste in games.

How do you resolve this as a game developer? You have to start branching beyond genres, and make a game that can attract as
many people as possible - and that my friend, is the bane of quality art and media, and always has been.
Why? Because individual taste differs to such a degree that to create something that appeals to "everyone" is to create something that
doesn't alienate "anyone", and that requires developers to avoid almost all the genre-specific game-play mechanics that made
most of the original gamers play games to begin with.
Put strategy elements in a game, and those who can't hack it or don't enjoy strategy elements won't play it, so you dumb down the strategy. Action elements that require skills? Same thing.
You keep on reducing to avoid polarizing elements until the game is a bland soup of simple-button presses, auto-play mechanics, and movie-like exposition - which is what pretty much every AAA game ever is nowadays.

Nomura's statement, and the production values of the trailer (if they are anything to go by, pretty much confirms this).
As much as I want to be hyped for this game, I still have this dreadful feeling that we'll end up with a game where you
pretty much only play as Cloud, with the rest of the party on A.I like in recent FF games, where you hold a button to watch him dart about all AC-style, and where materias have been reduced to a simple gimmick.
Maybe Cloud will free-run, because what games don't have that these days? Maybe it'll have a crafting system, because hey, why not?
Maybe it will play like a bastard child of The Last of Us and Monster Hunter, because these games thrive nowadays, so that's what the consumers want right?

I am open to the possibility that a re-imagining of the game would be a good thing - I just don't see it as being likely seeing as it's going to be a AAA title that by extension is going to need to appeal to the mindless drones who think CoD is the pinnacle of gaming, and who wouldn't recognize a quality RPG even if it hit them in squarely in the face with the Buster Sword.

I hope they prove me wrong, but a few vague statements from Nomura, and that trailer isn't enough.

@topic in general

I can't believe they aren't going to give us more info until winter. I mean, wth. Not a very smart move from a marketing perspective, and it does very little to inspire confidence - especially after the development cycles of games like KH3 and FF15.
« Last Edit: 2015-06-17 14:36:05 by hian »

nfitc1

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #79 on: 2015-06-17 17:38:47 »
I can't believe they aren't going to give us more info until winter. I mean, wth. Not a very smart move from a marketing perspective, and it does very little to inspire confidence - especially after the development cycles of games like KH3 and FF15.
Marketing? All they have to say is "Final Fantasy 7 Remake" and the marketing is complete. Even without ANY other information there will still be 2 million pre-orders. It will make "Greatest Hits" status in the first week no matter what is done to the game.
I'm with Daniel on this one. I know I'm going to hate this remake as much as I'm already hating the upcoming Star Wars sequel trilogy. I haven't seen a single trailer for it, but from the stills and Disney I know it's going to be a big mistake. On one hand, George "More CGI" Lucas is out of it, but Walt "Make ALL the Toy Lines" Disney will just be a different flavor of garbage.[/rant]

Things to "look forward to" in the remake:
-Aerith revival quest (plus she'll be named "Aerith")
-More flashy limit breaks that last longer
-Extended cut FMVs in 1080p! (Now with blood!)
-Arranged music = Better music
-Five digit damage limits;eight digit enemy HP.
-More active battles
-Smaller overworld;more dungeon crawly
-No random encounters outside of overworld
-Superboss(es?) that exceed damage limit
-Quests that have no real purpose other than to provide an achievement (Or previously existing quest with an achievement attached to it)
-Better(?) chocobo breeding experience (certainly one of the more grind-y things to do in the game)
-Alternate, or multiple, endings
-Nothing is missable
-New Game+ mode
-More Materia
-More dialogical interludes to break up the non-stop action

Yeah. Guess which FF title I've been binge playing lately.

Tirlititi

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #80 on: 2015-06-17 17:45:20 »
-Better(?) chocobo breeding experience (certainly one of the more grind-y things to do in the game)

Chocobos, eh ?
10 bucks it will be replaced by motorcycle.

quantumpencil

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #81 on: 2015-06-17 19:53:52 »
Chocobos, eh ?
10 bucks it will be replaced by motorcycle.

Agreed, and that is a horrifying, horrifying thought.

DLPB_

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #82 on: 2015-06-17 21:06:17 »
Hian, your summary of why things end up the way they do is spot on.  It won't change, of course, because there are always people to replace the purists or the people who want strategy and so on.  I think a lot of the original games had a soul because it was a time when the company HAD to create better titles to make something of itself, whereas now it's already got a name and mass market appeal - no matter what happens.  I also think there's more to it than just money getting in the way (that's certainly the biggest problem) - I think it's also laziness on the part of the team.  They've gotten so complacent and familiar with FF that they don't try  nearly as hard.

I do, however, have a morbid curiosity about how they're going to accomplish remaking FF7 with next gen graphics.  Everything is telling me that a LOT of content and the basic mechanics will need cutting for them to succeed - especially in the time scale they are stating.  The idea that they'd redo all of those scenes in full HD seems highly unrealistic.  In fact, Kitase and Nomura repeatedly stated one of the main reasons they hadn't considered a remake was precisely because of the work load needed to recreate FF7 (yeah, they're telling you a 1997 game had more in it than modern FFs right there).

Ironically, technology ended up being the worst thing to happen to gaming.  Up to the PS2 the media was too small for a company to do as it pleased without caring about good design.  Now they can bloat a hard drive or blu-ray disc. With powerful  networking, DLC content reared its ugly head - another excuse not to care so much since things can be "corrected later", or added later (for a nice fee, of course!). And, as you mentioned, we now have mindless graphic-power wars between the consoles to prove who is the daddy.  Well, none of them are the daddy because we're going backwards and graphics do not make a game.  These days, they only break it.
« Last Edit: 2015-06-17 21:25:16 by DLPB »

Covarr

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #83 on: 2015-06-17 21:32:35 »
Everything is telling me that a LOT of content and the basic mechanics will need cutting for them to succeed - especially in the time scale they are stating.  The idea that they'd redo all of those scenes in full HD seems highly unrealistic.  In fact, Kitase and Nomura repeatedly stated one of the main reasons they hadn't considered a remake was precisely because of the work load needed to recreate FF7 (yeah, they're telling you a 1997 game had more in it than modern FFs right there).
I think this partly depends on how long they've been working on this. At the very least, we know it's been in the works since December 2014, based on what Nomura said in the Eurogamer article (it was already in-progress when they announced the PC-PS4 port). However, not much more than that is clear. For all we know, they could've been working on it for several years now, and simply lied about it when they said before that it wasn't happening.

I'm annoyed by what was said in the Gematsu interview, because it does seem like they'll be changing more than I'd hoped, but I'm not going to make assumptions about the length of the game's development cycle when they haven't made any meaningful statements on it.

EQ2Alyza

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #84 on: 2015-06-17 22:04:36 »
I do, however, have a morbid curiosity about how they're going to accomplish remaking FF7 with next gen graphics.  Everything is telling me that a LOT of content and the basic mechanics will need cutting for them to succeed - especially in the time scale they are stating.  The idea that they'd redo all of those scenes in full HD seems highly unrealistic.

This is exactly why I'm curious and can't quite write it off. I know what I would love from this remake, but in my heart I only have but a faint glimmer of hope that we'll get it.

I don't want to see every scene with character interactions and plot development cutting away to a loading screen movie. That's FFXIII series storytelling all over again. What they need is a good balance, which I believe is simply remaking the cutscenes from the original and no more. Extend the original FMVs a bit so that it allows us to reimagine those moments from the past through today's technology. I think the original pacing between each of them was perfect and allows the excitement to roller coaster itself up and down. They also don't need to reinvent the style of this universe with any of the spin-off designs or super inhuman blur fights.

I also think of things like the Gold Saucer dates, Tifa torture chamber, Wall Market gym squats, Corel runaway train, Junon parade, etc....All scenes that had you engaged in minigames and personal interactions with your surroundings. I have a feeling some of these might be transformed into the flashy Quick Time Events that we see in recent games like the Resident Evil franchise. The emphasis on those always felt more about flashy graphics rather than character and story development.

DLPB_

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #85 on: 2015-06-17 22:34:31 »
Hmm, imagine if FF7 remake is wonderful, the Star Wars sequels are brilliantly made, and FF15 is an amazing RPG....

I'd have to disappear for a few years.  :P  I'm pretty confident I won't have to, but you never know!  I'd be happy to be wrong, though!

Covarr

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #86 on: 2015-06-17 22:42:31 »
Hmm, imagine if FF7 remake is wonderful, the Star Wars sequels are brilliantly made, and FF15 is an amazing RPG....

I'd have to disappear for a few years.  :P  I'm pretty confident I won't have to, but you never know!  I'd be happy to be wrong, though!
Heh. I'm predicting something more along the lines of:

  • FF7 Remake is considerably better than Advent Children or FF13, but not nearly as good (or faithful to the original gameplay and story) as it could and should be. I'm guessing no story points are outright missing, but a lot of unnecessary stuff is added and some things are changed.
  • Star Wars sequels are decent movies, and much better than the prequels, but not as good as the original trilogy.
  • FF15 is a good action RPG along the lines of what Kingdom Hearts could've been if it was less buttonmashy, but still doesn't feel like a proper FF.

Based on currently available evidence, this is what I think is the most likely future. Not ideal, but things could certainly be worse.

DLPB_

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #87 on: 2015-06-17 22:55:15 »
I'm going with sucks hard - sucks hard - reasonable but still sucks for me.  Haha!

nfitc1

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #88 on: 2015-06-17 23:42:40 »
I'm going with sucks hard - sucks hard - reasonable but still sucks for me.  Haha!
Spot on with my predictions.

I will say in XIII's defense, it was  worth the $14 I paid for the PC version (but only barely). I would have sorely hated if I had paid full price for it on a console. I actually like the story better than the battle mechanics. It's nothing like any of the other FFs which could be a big turn off. I still think IX struck the perfect balance of good story and appealing gameplay.

Scrat

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #89 on: 2015-06-18 01:08:52 »
Well, I am going to be very excited about this. Put everything on hold and pray that it is a good thing. How much money would you pay to play your favourite game for the first time again?

Afterwards, I'll either be straight back on helping with the mods of the original. Or I will STFU, have faith in square forever and die happy

hian

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #90 on: 2015-06-18 01:19:25 »
Marketing? All they have to say is "Final Fantasy 7 Remake" and the marketing is complete. Even without ANY other information there will still be 2 million pre-orders. It will make "Greatest Hits" status in the first week no matter what is done to the game.
I'm with Daniel on this one. I know I'm going to hate this remake as much as I'm already hating the upcoming Star Wars sequel trilogy. I haven't seen a single trailer for it, but from the stills and Disney I know it's going to be a big mistake. On one hand, George "More CGI" Lucas is out of it, but Walt "Make ALL the Toy Lines" Disney will just be a different flavor of garbage.[/rant]

Not really.
Marketing in the context of SE and FF7 is about more than putting out the news to engage the general consumer base - it's about the corporate structure in its entirety.
SE saw a huge increase in share value after the announcement - but the longer time passes without significant news, the more of the momentum will be lost. The shares will stabilize and then drop back to the base-line, and the lack of press coverage runs the risk of the less dedicated general public will lose interest in favor of more pressing concerns such as the new Fallout etc.

When this happens, the dev-team will face new difficulties as the above inherently leads to increase in publisher and share-holder pressure, which usually leads to an increase in production pace, and the shortening of dead-lines which ultimately harms the production-value overall.

That's why this is bad marketing - it's bad marketing because they prioritized shock value (probably due to some back-deal with Sony in order to improve the E3 presentation), rather than thinking long-term about the value of the company and the production process.


Things to "look forward to" in the remake:
-Aerith revival quest (plus she'll be named "Aerith")
-More flashy limit breaks that last longer
-Extended cut FMVs in 1080p! (Now with blood!)
-Arranged music = Better music
-Five digit damage limits;eight digit enemy HP.
-More active battles
-Smaller overworld;more dungeon crawly
-No random encounters outside of overworld
-Superboss(es?) that exceed damage limit
-Quests that have no real purpose other than to provide an achievement (Or previously existing quest with an achievement attached to it)
-Better(?) chocobo breeding experience (certainly one of the more grind-y things to do in the game)
-Alternate, or multiple, endings
-Nothing is missable
-New Game+ mode
-More Materia
-More dialogical interludes to break up the non-stop action

Yeah. Guess which FF title I've been binge playing lately.

Some of these aren't bad though.

- Blood in cut-scenes make sense. I always found it jarring how Shinra building was covered in blood after the Jenova break-out, but then the rest of the game was all PG-13, even as Aerith got stabbed to death by Sephiroth.

- Active battles can be a good thing if done right. I am not confident in this teams ability to do so, but it is possible.
Personally, I thought type-0 had a really good set-up for action battles (although a lackluster on the magic side, and terribly balanced...), and I've always greatly enjoyed the Star Ocean games (at least the first 3).

- more dialogue can be done in a great way to provide personality to a game. One of my favorite games of the newer console generations, was Sakaguchi's The Last Story for Wii. It really did everything right from a narrative and character development stand-point that later FF games have failed miserably at.
The thing that really made the characters of TLS come alive was the banter they shared throughout the game - however,
the banter very seldom interfered with the game-play. The characters would be casually conversing whether they were walking around exploring dungeons, or fighting.
FF7 could gain from such an approach, especially if they plan on scaling it up. If they remove the world-map and add a large open world instead, there is much more room for dialogue between characters being expressed as they travel, instead of the characters standing in place and the game-play coming to a halt for prolonged periods of time.

As for limit breaks lasting longer - later FFs have, as far as I know, consistently added options to skip lengthy animations, so I don't really see overly long animations as being something worth worrying about.

Hian, your summary of why things end up the way they do is spot on.  It won't change, off course, because there are always people to replace the purists or the people who want strategy and so on.  I think a lot of the original games had a soul because it was a time when the company HAD to create better titles to make something of itself, whereas now it's already got a name and mass market appeal - no matter what happens.  I also think there's more to it than just money getting in the way (that's certainly the biggest problem) - I think it's also laziness on the part of the team.  They've gotten so complacent and familiar with FF that they don't try  nearly as hard.

I has a lot to do with graphics as well. Back in the NES-SNES-PS1 eras and up until the later years of PS2, games wouldn't have had mass-appeal no matter what developers did, because the average person just couldn't see the appeal of manipulating a few pixels around on a screen in either case.
Companies back then had to appeal to purists, because apart from kids, purists were literally the only people geeky enough to engage with the strawberriesty pre-00's hardware to begin with.

Now, everyone and their grandmother can sit down with a Playstation - problem is, they aren't there for love of the medium in terms of what the medium can uniquely offer - they are there for the same reason they go to cinemas, or read the Twilight novels -
Light entertainment and quick emotional gratification.
Not judging though - good for them, and good for the devs who want to make stuff appealing to these people - however it is happening at the expense of the kind of products that established the market to begin with, all while abusing fan-nostalgia and fan-loyalty, and personally I find that to be abhorrent to be honest.

I do, however, have a morbid curiosity about how they're going to accomplish remaking FF7 with next gen graphics.  Everything is telling me that a LOT of content and the basic mechanics will need cutting for them to succeed - especially in the time scale they are stating.  The idea that they'd redo all of those scenes in full HD seems highly unrealistic.  In fact, Kitase and Nomura repeatedly stated one of the main reasons they hadn't considered a remake was precisely because of the work load needed to recreate FF7 (yeah, they're telling you a 1997 game had more in it than modern FFs right there).

I can tell you with pretty high level of certainty some of what's going to get cut -

- Enemy model count - FF7 had tons of enemy types, not counting recolors, for a 3D game. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if it had more than any other numbered title after it (although 8 and 9 might have come close), and I am fairly certain it has more than any current gen FF.
They're unlikely to pull of all those models in HD next-gen graphics especially considering the amount of unique animations they'd have to make, and it's even more unlikely if they're going for action-style game-play.

- The map will be scaled down, because having a regular world-map won't work thematically with the new visual style, and making an entire in-scale open-world version of FF7's Gaia simply isn't feasible. If the map get's scaled down, the next question becomes what happens to traveling, and what happens to locations that, in the original, were linked to exploration of the over-world? Probably cut, or changed entirely.

- Story will be cut. FF7 just has too much exposition for a modern voice-acted game. It won't make sense to leave it in as is, and so they'll change it, and whatever doesn't fit with the changes will be cut. I can imagine the flash-back scene in Calm being shortened significantly by simply having Cloud narrate over a few choice moments shown in FMVs with a tarnished sepia filter or something to that effect.

In fact, at worst, I can imagine the entire game being rewritten to allow for a more "stream-lined, fluid, and modern narrative structure" where everything that happens from the moment you leave Midgard is changed to a linear FF10 kind of set-up were you skip relatively quickly ahead to the most significant locations, and get rushed into the last battle with Sephiroth under the excuse that the devs want to avoid player "dead-time" running from location to location on a large over-world, and removing places "irrelevant to the plot" to "save time and resources better spent on more important things"(see - graphics and fight scenes).

Ironically, technology ended up being the worst thing to happen to gaming.  Up to the PS2 the media was too small for a company to do as it pleased without caring about good design.  Now they can bloat a hard drive or blu-ray disc. With powerful  networking, DLC content reared its ugly head - another excuse not to care so much since things can be "corrected later", or added later (for a nice fee, off course!). And, as you mentioned, we now have mindless graphic-power wars between the consoles to prove who is the daddy.  Well, none of them are the daddy because we're going backwards and graphics do not make a game.  These days, they only break it.

This entire paragraph can be summed up with an appeal to a single game franchise - Assassin's Creed.
GG Ubisoft - please go quietly off somewhere and die.

I think this partly depends on how long they've been working on this. At the very least, we know it's been in the works since December 2014, based on what Nomura said in the Eurogamer article (it was already in-progress when they announced the PC-PS4 port). However, not much more than that is clear. For all we know, they could've been working on it for several years now, and simply lied about it when they said before that it wasn't happening.

Since Nomura was taken off FF15(former Versus13) in September 2014, I think this is the earlier date that we can possibly attribute to the beginning of the remake, but that really matters very little when you consider comment like Wada saying it would take SE ten times longer to remake the entirety of FF7 than their work on FF13.
People call this hyperbola, but I can tell you as an indie-developer who's familiar with setting up projects from scratch, that even if it wouldn't take as long as Wada said, it would certainly take longer than 3-4 years granted the source material in relation to the standard they seem intent on keeping when producing the game (unless they off course, cut a lot of content).

I think it's silly to assume it's been in development longer than this for several reasons - even if it had, that would be pointless due to hardware advances over the times (just think about FF15).
Let's say they started the production of FF7 remake somewhere around FF13, or FF Versus 13, this would mean that they were working on an engine that is now outdated, working with animations and texture etc. that would all have to replaced in either case. They'd still have their work cut out for them, adapting and transporting it over to a new engine for the new consoles.
In short, this game has definitely not been in the works from before the FF15 announce, and Nomura's transfer.

And given the re-allocation of resources to FF15, the people who did work on this cannot possibly have been given priority over FF15, which means that they probably aren't even working as efficiently. As far as I am concerned, in light of all this, it's possible that all that exists of this remake right now, despite what Nomura is insinuating, is the trailer and the resources and the environment necessary to make that trailer.  Nothing else.

Now, consider the development time of FF15 - now consider the dumps they've made in that game just to make a demo for us to play (the removal of party-play, and the different mechanics associated with the party-play such as 3rd person shooting etc.), and the relatively stream-lined and simplistic game-play of that demo -

A full and true remake of FF7 would require the creation of so many new 3D resources and animations that it would amount to a work-load so huge that even games like The Witcher 3 look like a joke in comparison. Combine that with all the scenes they would have to script from scratch in this new 3D environment, the countless hours of voice-acting and sound-production, the ridiculous amount of bug-testing necessarily to clear a game of that size, and you're easily looking at a development cycle just as long as that of FF15, even without the need for the creation of a new engine (I presume they'll be using the FF15 engine, which will speed up the process quite a lot though.)

At the end of the day - I feel fairly certain that the only way we're ever going to see this remake in time for the anniversary, is if it's a completely revamped game with not even half of the content of the original one. But let's wait and see.


I'm annoyed by what was said in the Gematsu interview, because it does seem like they'll be changing more than I'd hoped, but I'm not going to make assumptions about the length of the game's development cycle when they haven't made any meaningful statements on it.

There is a problem though when no meaningful statements are made - it more often than not implies the fact that there is nothing to say.
Considering the boost in SE stock value after the announce etc. the logical thing to do, to inspire both consumer and shareholder trust would be make a strong and confident stand, sharing what you have with the public.

The reluctance to do this, seems to be an admittance of the fact that there is nothing there of substance to share.

Consider if they had added a game-play video at the end of the trailer - and that game-play video had featured some half-assed FF15-ish combat, and bit of running around in a linear environment - it would crush the entire impact the trailer had to begin with.
The devs and publisher knows this - they'd rather not say anything, than say something that is potentially damaging at this point - and that seems to indicate that something about the project being potentially damaging to the impressions of the consumers being a distinct possibility.

If they had the goods at this point - there literally is no point in not showing it - non what so ever.
« Last Edit: 2015-06-18 01:25:21 by hian »

knightsoftheround

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #91 on: 2015-06-18 09:14:04 »
My gut has been in a very unpleasant knot ever since the announcement. Before E3, I figured it was just another rumor... but it turned out to be true this time. strawberries.

I'm hoping we get something of the overall quality of the VI remake(s, although the only one I've had more experience than screenshots with is the GBA one) just with pretty graphics and a proper translation. I enjoy the action in AC so as long as I have my turn-based battles and they limit it to cut-scenes, I'll actually be quite pleased with that... although I'll be just as fine without it. ...and honestly there ARE ways to make real time fights work and fit in with VII. It could avoid being a deal-breaker depending on how they implemented it.

Final Fantasy's two biggest competitors (in Japan) are Dragon Quest and Tales Of. Never been really into Dragon Quest, but Tales Of has huge plotlines with gorgeous worlds and a strawberries ton of voice acting (skits. Just... the skits alone). I love Tales Of. If you want traditional JRPGs in gorgeous 3D, the series is worth getting into. If they make a Final Fantasy VII that can stand up to the Tales Of franchise (which I'm a HUGE fan of its my favorite JRPG series - Tales of the Abyss is actually second/sometimes tied with VII as my favorite game EVER)...

Anyways, I'm not expecting anything but "its pretty" out of it. I have what I hope it is... but I also have what I expect it will be. If it ends up being what I hope for though... I'll buy a PS4. I will buy a PS4 for just this. In fact, I will fricking write a letter to Square-Enix of America thanking them (I'd write it to S-E of Japan but my Japanese isn't good enough for that). I will buy three copies of the damn game. I'm not kidding in the least. If this is the remake I'm hoping for I will literally buy a PS4, write a gushing letter to Square-Enix, and I will buy three copies of the game. I have the savings to do this and I will do this if I get the remake I've always wanted. I don't think my bank account's in any danger, though... But I will totally take photos and share here if it happens.

If it's what I'm expecting to be, I won't even buy one (and I'll know without buying it cause I have a friend that is going to buy it who understands my tastes, expectations, and can be trusted to report the game to me properly).

ALL THAT SAID... All my love and support for those of you that end up enjoying it. No matter how I end up feeling about it, someone is going to love it as the best thing ever, and I'm very glad for those that do. No fandom is mindless regardless of their tastes as far as I'm concerned - including the oft-harassed CoD fanbase. You like what you like. And everyone could do with more happy, regardless of the source (...unless the source is killing people, causing severe harm to oneself, or anything along that vein. Then maybe you should get help. :P )

Every digit crossed, I guess... Still stressed though.
« Last Edit: 2015-06-18 09:22:25 by mugenginga »

petzit

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #92 on: 2015-06-18 11:23:49 »
Hey all, used to frequently lurk the forum years ago but lost my email for this .)

I think for remaking games there are (not limited to) three ways to go about it roughly:

  • Update - You update the games engine: Resolution, Crispness of Image and Sound, newly rendered Videos. This is what we get with the ports
  • Remake - The distinction lies on the creation of assets: If we actually create new assets that have not existed before, I would classify it as a remake, not an update. Here we see newly drawn textures, sprites, sounds and videos. Also dialogue may be updated. The game mechanics are kept. So this is what we get with ports like the Monkey Island Series Remake
  • Reboot - You take the style of the game, the characters, stories and feelings and take it as base for developing from scratch. This means you not only add content in the sense that you faithfully update aspects, but you actually reimagine content. So with this, you really have a lot more creative freedom and you may even choose to diverge from the original in key aspects

So we already have an updated version, or something that square thinks is updated at least ( ;=) ).
To them, a remake as by my definition would just appeal to the same consumers as were already targeted by the update release. Instead they go the reboot route and create something with creative freedom to sell it as a new game to a new generation, yet will feel familiar to some.

Obviously, the more freedom you take with the approach, the higher the probability to disappoint fans of the original. I personally would have preferred for them to take approach 1 AND 2 for their first port of the game, just as was done for other FF titles for PS Vita, or e.g. the Monkey Island Series. What they did provide us, was a cash grab, that would not even stand up to what we as a community have produced here. Though off course this way, you could not really criticize them for changing the original now, could you?

So we can assume that they will go the creative reboot route for this one, do 3D scenes of our beloved 2D world, change layouts of places. Add places and characters. Remove characters. Do combat directly in the 3D world, without transition etcpp.

I think we should judge how well the keep the game in line, despite choosing approach 3, not clinge to the hope, that they will implement approach 2 after all.

@hian
"A full and true remake of FF7 would require the creation of so many new 3D resources and animations that it would amount to a work-load so huge [...]"
I think they already took FF15 into a style direction which in parts (!) is close to FF7. Realizing this, they formulated that they could just as well reuse and modify assets from FF15 for FF7. Utilizing this synergy, is the only way to get this project where it needs to go by 2017 and makes a lot of sense from a business perspective.
« Last Edit: 2015-06-18 11:37:27 by petzit »

obesebear

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #93 on: 2015-06-18 11:57:49 »
I think of it like the metroid games. Everything is 2D for years. Then a new studio decides to make some changes to a beloved franchise by switching to 3D and everyone raises hell about how it will ruin everything. The game is released, and though it's not like the 2d metroids before it, you still feel like you're playing a metroid game... And it's really really good.

I think that's what we need to expect with this remake. It's not going to be the original, there's too much nostalgia tied to it. But that doesn't mean it won't feel like ff7 and can't still be a great game

Roden

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #94 on: 2015-06-18 14:18:52 »
If the world map is removed then I'm pretty sure I'll never play it. Stepping onto the world map after Midgar was my best game moment ever. I can only hope they're working on improving the world map by populating it with living things and constructions and so on (I guess similar to FFXV).

ChaosControl

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #95 on: 2015-06-18 18:59:56 »
Lol, I laugh at how pessimistic some of you can be. It;s not like the original is running away. And if you only wanted better graphics go install some mods. I hope they change shitloads except for the core story.

DLPB_

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #96 on: 2015-06-18 19:02:31 »
When a remake shits over the original imho it sullies it. It downgrades it.  But what hurts is that a massive potential has been lost - and I think it will be lost.  At the end of all this, if we don't get something that is as good as a 1997 game, what more is there to think but "fuck you Square"?

obesebear

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #97 on: 2015-06-18 20:02:24 »
But it will no doubt be released on PC, and slowly programs will be made to mod it.  Then all the people who see a remake as blasphemy can edit to their hearts content until it is exactly like the original.  I simply don't see how this is a bad thing, or how it could garner such animosity over a trailer that showed next to nothing.

Covarr

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #98 on: 2015-06-18 22:17:32 »
I won't have people showing up and insulting other members. I have worked hard to eliminate the toxicity that once plagued this forum and replace it with peace, and I intend to keep it that way. Having a strong opinion about the game is one thing, but name-calling and insult-flinging directed at other members is absolutely not welcome here. ~Covarr

hian

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Re: Final Fantasy VII Remake is HAPPENING!!!
« Reply #99 on: 2015-06-19 00:01:23 »
@hian
"A full and true remake of FF7 would require the creation of so many new 3D resources and animations that it would amount to a work-load so huge [...]"
I think they already took FF15 into a style direction which in parts (!) is close to FF7. Realizing this, they formulated that they could just as well reuse and modify assets from FF15 for FF7. Utilizing this synergy, is the only way to get this project where it needs to go by 2017 and makes a lot of sense from a business perspective.

I already said as much in one of my earlier posts, but it's still not going to reduce the work-load all that much - because unless they're going to build the entire FF7 world using FF15 resources, and replace all the enemies in FF7 with FF15 enemies,
you have to remember that they need to, if they plan on making it true to the original, remake every single city in 3D, design and animate creatures, NPCs, and vehicles, and then off course, they need to script and program all the story segments throughout the world.
These things take a lot of time. Granted, FF15 took as long as it did due to the fact that they made an entire new engine for it before they could even start development, and had tons of staff and resource issues, FF7R will probably suffer similar issues due to the fact that KH3 and FF15 is still in development and probably trumps this project in terms of priority.

The only way I see this game being finished to 2017, is if they do major content cuts - for instance, cutting down on the over-world, removing mini-games, and cutting down on the amount of enemies.

I think of it like the metroid games. Everything is 2D for years. Then a new studio decides to make some changes to a beloved franchise by switching to 3D and everyone raises hell about how it will ruin everything. The game is released, and though it's not like the 2d metroids before it, you still feel like you're playing a metroid game... And it's really really good.

That's a bad analogy. Final Fantasy 7 is a 3D game, following the 2D game Final Fantasy 6. The same can be said for this transition. Which was done pretty well. It does to show that whether a transition is successful has to do with how well the producers understand the previous iterations of the series they're expanding upon, and the hearts of the fans. Granted SE's track-record at the moment, we're warranted in being skeptical of their ability to do either.

Also, a major difference here is that they're not just making "the next game in the series", they're literally remaking a game that already exists.

Furthermore, whether the game is going to "feel like" the original game, is dependent on how similar it is -
For instance, saying that FF7R will feel like FF7 even if they remove the world-map without replacing it with a proper expansive over-world, replacing the battle system with an action based system that may or may not even allow for the control of all party-members, change major story and aesthetic elements from the original doesn't even make sense.

Not saying that this will necessarily happen - but I am not going to run ahead and board the hype-train and assume this isn't going to happen considering what most FF games look like lately.

I think that's what we need to expect with this remake. It's not going to be the original, there's too much nostalgia tied to it. But that doesn't mean it won't feel like ff7 and can't still be a great game.

People need to stop making the nostalgia appeal - they're using the term wrong (you're not though, so good on you - but I still think this needs to be said, so I'll say it anyway)

The fact of the matter is that many of the original fans still play this game today (I am one of those people who pretty much replay
it every other year or so, and have done that since it's release in 97', racking up a playtime exceeding at least 400 hours by now).
Firstly, nostalgia is the emotional response of wanting to return to a past state or former time in one's life - it does not mean having a clouded judgement of that past - and secondly, if you're replaying the game, the game clearly isn't just a part of your past, but of your present as well.

I appreciate FF7 as a game even in light of modern advances in gaming, and still prefer it to most modern RPGs - and I am saying that even as I am playing it next to The Witcher 3 and Persona 4 Golden.

I agree that FF7R can be a good game in its own rights even with lots of changes - I simply think that making lots of changes is 1.) a slap in the face to all the original fans who by all rights were the ones who made the FF franchise into what it is today to begin with, and to be fair, the majority of the people who were asking for the remake to begin with, and 2.) risks making it into a bad game when you consider the direction SE has been going since the end of the PS2 era in relation to the FF franchise.

Making FF7R into a new game actually seems completely pointless -
Why make a remake for a new generation who didn't play the original, and probably don't care about it to begin with? If you're going to cater to a new generation of people who're either ignorant, or not invested in FF7, You might as well make an entirely new FF game and not take advantage of the FF7 name.
The only reason to remake FF7, literally, is for the sake of the people who asked for it - and based on the average response I've seen on forums and polls since the announcement, the vast majority of fans with a voice on the internet who were among the people who've waited for almost 2 decades for this, want the world-map and the battle-system to be largely intact.

The people who're going "I want FF15 in an Advent-Children coating", are literally a drop in the sea in comparison at this point.

Hopefully, SE will do a lot of focus-groups and testing with FF7R, so they don't once again shoot themselves in the foot and make something nobody asked for ever.

Finally, am I the only person who notice the irony in SE trying to appease fans by appealing to the fact that they have some of the same people working on the remake as on the original?
Is that somehow going to erase the fact that non of these people have made a quality FF since the end of the PS2? Is it somehow going to erase the fact that the mind behind quality FFs(Sakaguchi, who's still making quality RPGs mind you) is not involved in this project, or that Uematsu isn't going to be involved either because SE manage to botch their relationship with arguably the two most important factors in making FF games what they are?

I would actually be less worried if they'd passed this project off to entirely different people. Maybe if they'd handed it off to the people responsible for the Bravely series, or given creative control to Mistwalker studios, or even god damn Hideo Kojima (who would probably have transformed the game into something completely different, but at least it would probably be good in its own right).

Nomura though? Present day Nomura?
No thank you, SE. That was a bad move if I ever saw one.
« Last Edit: 2015-06-19 00:03:29 by hian »