14 DAY TRIAL // Square Enix has once again talked about the oft rumored Final Fantasy VII remake, saying that it would take a lot of time to bring that huge amount of content into a new graphics engine and recreate that same experience, time that the company doesn’t really have.
Square Enix has been releasing plenty of new Final Fantasy experiences lately, with the lackluster XIII and the problematic XIV, to the upcoming XIII-2, which promises to continue the story from its predecessor while fixing lots of issues and addressing complaints from players.
Speaking with the Official Xbox Magazine UK, Final Fantasy producer Yoshinori Kitase revealed that the graphics work alone would make a remake of Final Fantasy VII unfeasible, as the development team would need to painfully recreate the content from the old game with new tools.
"In the transition between XIII to XIII-2, it was quite easy because obviously we kept all the data and the engine - we had just finished using them so it was almost like they hadn't gone cold. The technology was already warm and ready to use, so it was quite good. Also within the team, we still had a feel for the game, it was still new to us, still lingering with us, so we were ready to move on to the sequel.
"But if we were to take one of the past Final Fantasy titles and make a sequel to it, I think that would be a lot more challenging because when they were on PlayStation and PlayStation 2 their actual game volume was a lot bigger, kind of.”
Current graphics tools allow for detailed environments but they need to be more simple and less numerous if the team could hope to finish the actual project on time. Such an endeavor for something like a Final Fantasy VII-2 would be very challenging, according to the Square Enix developer.
"Graphically they weren't as advanced as they are now, but there were lots of towns and worlds and cities and whatever. So if we were to recreate the same kind of game - sequel or not - with the same volume, but give it a much higher level of graphical quality, it would us take three times, four times, even ten times longer to make such a game. So making a sequel for an old game would be a lot more challenging."
Once again, nostalgic gamers will need to stop believing that Square Enix is actually working on a HD remake or a full pledged sequel for their beloved Final Fantasy VII.