With no promise of ever actually performing such a feat, I'd like your thoughts concerning the possibility of an FF7 mod in the form of a prequel (title to be decided, based on story).
With the tools already available, some manual work in various areas, and perhaps even the creation of a tool here and there for specific purposes, we can now pretty much change whatever we like in FF7. The primary limits are creativity, time, and effort.
I realize there are already prequels in the FF7 universe, but:
1. There are plenty of places and time periods that haven't been expanded upon, and
2. I consider the existing prequel work to be far inferior to the original, and I would perhaps go so far as to completely disregard all prequel story content, rewriting it if you will.
If a prequel were created, it would most likely be of the same (game-play) length as the first disc of FF7, and if well-received, would be followed by other prequels, and possibly a sequel to the original as well. I'm not sure at this point if the story would be open to suggestions as it's written, or open to general suggestions from the outset, but kept private until release. The former could yield a more well-rounded story with a lower probability of mistakes ("Wait, Zack's last birthday was two days before that!"), but the latter would be a lot more attractive to hard-core fans and avid FF7 players, such as the members of Qhimm.com's forums (finally playing the finished version of a game you spent countless hours proofreading, helped write, and knew the storyline of months ago just isn't as fun as playing something entirely new to you). Of course, a compromise between the two would likely be optimal - bringing in a couple of people to ensure the finished product is polished to a high sheen
A final note: this mod will start as a PSX mod. It could be ported later to the PC version, but I've never even played the PC version, so someone else would have to complete that portion of the project.
Let me know what you think.