When it was announced last year that the highly anticipated “Final Fantasy VII” remake would be split up into installments, many fans groaned and rolled their eyes. Producer Yoshinori Kitase recently spoke with Game Informer about the controversial decision to make the game episodic, and he revealed some encouraging details. According to him each individual installment will be size of a full game.
“It will essentially be a full scale game for each part of the multi-part series […] if we’re just looking at each of these parts, one part should be on par with the scale of one Final Fantasy XIII game,” he said.
Keep in mind that each episode of the “Final Fantasy XIII” stories had at least 30 to 50 hours worth of story content. “Final Fantasy XIII” had three separate installments for the series, but Square Enix has yet to announce how many episodes they plan to release for the “Final Fantasy VII” remake. With that being said if the “Final Fantasy VII” remake is actually released in three different parts that are comparable in scope to “Final Fantasy XII,” fans could potentially be looking at somewhere between 90 to 150 hours of story.
He also went on to clarify that although the scale of the installments will be similar to that of “Final Fantasy XIII,” it will not follow the same structure as the trilogy that was released for that game.
“In XIII, each installment told the story from a different angle. It was kind of like approaching an unknown territory in a sense. Whereas with Final Fantasy VII Remake, we already have a preexisting story, so it wouldn’t really make sense if that isn’t encompassed in a multi-part series.” Kitase added.
Another announcement that has fans worried is the fact that Square Enix has openly announce that they will be making changes to the game. Kitase mentioned that not everything will change, but the team doesn’t feel like anything is untouchable.
“I, along with [Tetsuya] Nomura-san and [Kazushige] Nojima-san–who are involved with the remake–were also involved with the original Final Fantasy.” Kitase said. “We were the people who created it, so in that sense, we don’t think anything is untouchable. That isn’t to say we’re changing everything!”
As of this writing there is no official release date for the “Final Fantasy VII” remake. But it’s been speculated that the first installment will be released in 2017 to coincide with the game’s 20th anniversary.
