It came as a surprise to hear that the Final Fantasy VII Remake was going to be split into multiple games. However, that decision was not made in the late stages of production. The developer knew they would make a multi-game Remake early in development.
According to an interview with GameInformer, Tetsuya Nomura, the original and remake’s character designer and visual director, envisioned a modern retelling as early as the 2000s. Unfortunately, the progress was slow. Meanwhile, fan and media pressure mounted, prompting series producer Yoshinori Kitase to acknowledge the demand during a 2009 interview.
Recognizing the growing potential and internal momentum for remakes within Square Enix, Nomura and Kitase assembled a team to tackle Final Fantasy VII. This core group included veterans like Kazushige Nojima and Motomu Toriyama, who co-wrote the original, alongside newcomers like Naoki Hamaguchi and Teruki Endo, fans-turned-developers eager to contribute their passion.
The team faced the delicate task of honoring the cherished source material while modernizing the experience. It’s not easy to balance nostalgia while also modernizing it, especially for something as dated as Final Fantasy VII. Endo, responsible for the battle system, opted for a blend of action and the original’s Active Time Battle mechanics, which he hoped would appeal to both veterans and newcomers.
“To recreate the world of Final Fantasy VII as it was in the original today in its full volume, the only way for us to realize this was to divide the titles or else it simply was not possible. We had to divide it, or we can’t do it right.”
Tetsuya Nomura
The most impactful decision came early on: splitting the story into multiple games. Nomura said he was convinced a single game couldn’t capture the story’s depth and scope with modern fidelity and championed this approach. The first game, focusing on Midgar, was originally a section that took only 6 hours to complete. The team expanded it into a 30 to 40 hour experience, delving deeper into characters like Biggs, Wedge, and Jessie while enriching the core cast.
While I know a lot of people were not happy with the decision to separate the game into multiple, thirty to forty hours on any game is a long time. I remember playing the older version of the game and thinking that I wish I could know more about the now-dead characters. The remake really did them justice, and it makes sense why they’d decide early on to have multiple games.
Comments