At long last, we have something brand new for Final Fantasy VII Remake. Announced today during Sony’s State of Play, we got a brand new trailer for the much anticipated title. While it only clocked in at just over a minute, it was a breath of fresh air, and something tangible which showed that the game was well underway. Square Enix has promised us that more information will be shared during their E3 2019 presentation next month, but at this point, I have a few good ideas of what we can expect to see on the final product of Final Fantasy VII Remake.
It will be drastically different from the original
This shouldn’t come as a surprise, but just from watching the gameplay we can see that the Remake will be a far different beast than the first incarnation from 1997. Don’t get us wrong, we love the old Active Time Battle turn-based RPG style that the old Square games of the 1990’s were known for. But everyone that plans to get this game needs to know this first and foremost, it will not play anything like that version in any way whatsoever.
With a camera to the back of Cloud and the command options to the bottom left, its apparent that the mechanics will be more in line with the style of Kingdom Hearts and the long forgotten PSP classic, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII. We’ve yet to see more gameplay, but just based on the short trailer we got today, it will be a very different game.
It won’t have episodic releases
This seems to have been forgotten over the past few years, but Square Enix’s original plans for the game were to have multiple “episodic” releases similar to the Telltale games. On top of that, they were shopping it around for a third party to develop the title, only for those plans to fall through. Eventually, the company took the reigns themselves and developed it in house. Since then talks about the game being split into separate parts have stopped almost completely, and for good reason.
Square more than likely decided to just release it as a full title, which is absolutely fine with us. While releasing games as episodes may have worked for other titles, such as the The Walking Dead, most gamers today prefer to have a more full and fulfilling narrative in their products. Square probably recognized this, and when they make their announcement next month, don’t expect them to say the term “Episode 1” with it.
It will launch this year, AND next year
You didn’t misread that. I’m anticipating that Final Fantasy VII will launch this year, probably during the holidays, and next year in 2020. How does this work you ask? Well the answer is simple; two platforms. The game will come out on the PlayStation 4 in 2019, and for the upcoming PlayStation 5 in 2020. Their isn’t any concrete information that this will come to pass, but the signs are all there. Just today, not long after the State of Play presentation, Tetsuya Nomura hinted that the game’s launch plan is almost set. The company undoubtedly has big plans for the title, and launching it for both systems is not out of the question.
Everything has been building up to this point. The long delay so they can finish Kingdom Hearts III, and the new trailer that was shown were all part of Square Enix’s long term plan for the game. E3 2019 is less than a month away and the anticipation is at a fever pitch. We won’t have to wait long though, as Square Enix will take center stage just next month on Monday, June 10th at 6:00 pm PST.
