A trilogy or something for FF7 still doesn't make any sense.

[ItWasMeantToBe19]

So, to be clear, FF7 needs to be bigger and more expansive in many ways. In particular, there aren't enough NPCs wandering around and it makes Midgar in particular feel barely populated which hurts the impact of the reactors exploding. Some of the areas are too small as well instead of just not being populated enough. It needs to be a bigger RPG in the towns and dungeons, sure.

But when you're selling an RPG, people have expectations for content and if FF7R: Part 1 is only Midgar or something, then there's nowhere close to enough potential content there. Midgar in particular is 6 hours long in the original game. The original game itself is 30-40 hours long without sidequests. Each FF7R entry is supposed to be the length of FF13 and it's like... fucking how.

FF7 could have more story for Tifa and Aerith, but a lot of the other characters have their arcs finished up pretty well. Drawing 150 hours of content (pre side quests) from FF7 seems nearly impossible without covering a ton of dull story stuff that kills the pacing or putting in a ton of combat which again... would kill the story pacing. FF7 is a pretty fast paced game where each level is either advancing the main plot of Cloud-Sephiroth or doing a character arc... You can't do that for 150 hours.

This idea still makes no sense at all.

 

[Lant_War]

I thought the first part of FF7R was supposed to be the original game, with the other 2 parts being original.

 

[Griffith]

It's not being designed to make sense. It's being designed to make a profit.

 

[ItWasMeantToBe19]

I thought the first part of FF7R was supposed to be the original game, with the other 2 parts being original.

Click to shrink...

No, the plan was to split FF7 into a bunch of parts, each part as long as FF13.

And that makes no sense.

 

[funky]

They can worry about that in 10 years when part 1 ships

 

[Deleted member 224]

It won't make sense, and no one asked for it to be made this way. It'll be interesting to see how it turns out

 

[MegaSackman]

I don't think it'll be just Midgard and even if it is, you're just secluded to a small area of the city in the original so maybe they'll expand on that (and add a lot of pointless plot probably).

Anyway, it should be just one game but oh well... Square believed that episodic games were the future back in the day and this stupid decision was made back then, that's what I think at least.

 

[_ifigured]

I think if Square Enix manages to charge $60 per 6 hours of deliverable Final Fantasy VII gameplay time that's a win for them.

 

[Azoor]

Making one complete game of just too expensive, even for a game as popular as FF7

 

[ItWasMeantToBe19]

I think if Square Enix manages to charge $60 per 6 hours of deliverable Final Fantasy VII gameplay time that's a win for them.

Click to shrink...

Well that would be a win for them but also pretty badly received since most RPGs are 50-100 hours long.

And they said the plan was for each part to be the length of FF13.

 

[808s & Villainy]

It's not being designed to make sense. It's being designed to make a profit.

Click to shrink...

This

 

[asd202]

Yeah I have a hard time believing that after the whole Remake project will come to an end anyone will say "damn SE really nailed it".

 

[Karthane]

I really wouldn't put too much stock into the whole "episodic/trilogy" thing regarding the remake. That was said years ago when they clearly had no idea what the game was going to be or who was making it.

 

[Ralemont]

Kinda killed my excitement for it, to be honest. I wanted a VII Remake, but I'm not going to pay $180 (at least) for it. I'll wait for the collection bundle to go on sale.

 

[asd202]

I really wouldn't put too much stock into the whole "episodic/trilogy" thing regarding the remake. That was said years ago when they clearly had no idea what the game was going to be or who was making it.

Click to shrink...

Last year they reiterated that it will come in parts though.

 

[Deleted member 10737]

is this going to be something like hobbit when they take a short book and turn it into 3 long films and the result is disastrous?

 

[salromano]

I'm hoping that they've walked back on that decision considering it's been four years and the first part hasn't come out.

Last year they reiterated that it will come in parts though.

Click to shrink...

Did they? I don't remember, can you provide a link?

 

[Petruccis Biceps]

Yup and are the other two parts still going to be the same characters? How will stats between the games work? Will they do a Mass effect thing where you transfer your save? Or will they just say "you get all of these abilities by default" at the start of part2/3? Would be weird if each part you're back down to Lv1.

 

[ItWasMeantToBe19]

Like, how do you even get 50 hours of content of FF7 up to, let's say, the Gold Saucer.

How is this even possible.

 

[Vault]

If you took FF7 and built it to the scale of XV it would be 100+ hours

plus lots of characters and towns are gonna get more fleshed out

 

[Hieroph]

The FF7 remake has the potential to the biggest disappointment in all of gaming. Modern Square Enix has dropped the ball too many times.

 

[Gold Arsene]

Why do so many people assume Part 1 is only gonna be Midgar?

 

[Neoleo2143]

Like, how do you even get 50 hours of content of FF7 up to, let's say, the Gold Saucer.

How is this even possible.

Click to shrink...

lotsa new filler content.

 

[Crayon]

Either someone has an epic vision for final fantasy 7, or square just wants to cha-ching on that name three times.

 

[Famassu]

So, to be clear, FF7 needs to be bigger and more expansive in many ways. In particular, there aren't enough NPCs wandering around and it makes Midgar in particular feel barely populated which hurts the impact of the reactors exploding. Some of the areas are too small as well instead of just not being populated enough. It needs to be a bigger RPG in the towns and dungeons, sure.

But when you're selling an RPG, people have expectations for content and if FF7R: Part 1 is only Midgar or something, then there's nowhere close to enough potential content there. Midgar in particular is 6 hours long in the original game. The original game itself is 30-40 hours long without sidequests. Each FF7R entry is supposed to be the length of FF13 and it's like... fucking how.

FF7 could have more story for Tifa and Aerith, but a lot of the other characters have their arcs finished up pretty well. Drawing 150 hours of content (pre side quests) from FF7 seems nearly impossible without covering a ton of dull story stuff that kills the pacing or putting in a ton of combat which again... would kill the story pacing. FF7 is a pretty fast paced game where each level is either advancing the main plot of Cloud-Sephiroth or doing a character arc... You can't do that for 150 hours.

This idea still makes no sense at all.

Click to shrink...

Each entry isn't supposed to be the length of FFXIII. Each part is supposed to feel like a full game of its own instead of like an episode of a Telltale game, but a "full game" doesn't necessarily mean 30-40 hours for core story and 70-100+ hours if you do all side content. Each FFVII Remake part could have 15-20 hours of content for the critical path/story and then an additional 10-15 hours of side content & grinding.

Midgar might only be 6 hours in the original, but with the expanded scope, some fleshed out character stories (for side characters too) & possibly some more open & connected areas, that 6 hours could easily turn into 10 hours as you spend a bit more time exploring the streets, slums, sewers and other locations of Midgar and have more cutscenes/dialogue with some characters, and then there could be 5-10 hours of content past that for the first part.

 

[Masagiwa]

Even though we've had some hints recently that it's being developed as a multiple project thing and Kitase's early words of using the XIII Trilogy as a blueprint, I hope they ditch the idea. I don't think they will. They might be looking at VII:R as something that's gonna make them money over a very long period of time in which this approach makes sense.

 

[pleaseinsertdisctwo]

If you took FF7 and built it to the scale of XV it would be 100+ hours

plus lots of characters and towns are gonna get more fleshed out

Click to shrink...

Reminder that 95% of FFXV took place in Backwater Lucis.

No thanks. Fuck open world for FF

 

[pants]

The entire Midgar arc is enough quality material to make a REALLY cool standalone game, and from there its easy to see how you could make two more games out of the rest of the story/world.

 

[ItWasMeantToBe19]

Each entry isn't supposed to be the length of FFXIII. Each part is supposed to feel like a full game of its own instead of like an episode of a Telltale game, but a "full game" doesn't necessarily mean 30-40 hours for core story and 70-100+ hours if you do all side content. Each FFVII Remake part could have 15-20 hours of content for the critical path/story and then an additional 10-15 hours of side content & grinding.

Midgar might only be 6 hours in the original, but with the expanded scope, some fleshed out character stories (for side characters too) & possibly some more open & connected areas, that 6 hours could easily turn into 10 hours as you spend a bit more time exploring the streets, slums, sewers and other locations of Midgar and have more cutscenes/dialogue with some characters, and then there could be 5-10 hours of content past that for the first part.

Click to shrink...

"With regards to the current HD capacity and volume, the idea is that we wouldn't be able to encompass it all in just one installment. So, 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. "

https://www.gameinformer.com/b/feat...ntasy-vii-remake-interview-game-informer.aspx

 

[foxuzamaki]

I feel like most at woukd be the perfect part 1, besides the city taking alot of resources itself there will be more things to expand upon aswell as fleshing out the city to a huge degree, they could even expand out pdt midgar to the meet up town where they end on cloud's flashback which could get people hyped for part 2 which could throw alot of elements from the psp game in there

 

[banter]

The original was technically a trilogy. Before Crisis: FF7, Crisis Core: FF7, and FF7... :-p

 

[icyflamez96]

I really dislike that it ruins one of my favorite moments from FFVII, which is finally getting out of midgar and seeing that you have this whole world to explore ahead of you. I have no doubt they could expand on Midgar stuff and make that a whole game if they wanted to, so if it ended at the end of Midgar that would be disappointing.

 

[dmgdbug]

ffvii remake is a mistake. they should have toned it down and focused on keeping the gameplay the same instead of trying to make an entirely new game

 

[Lumaria]

Nomura is trying to do with FFVIIR what he couldn't do with his FFXV.

 

[ItWasMeantToBe19]

The entire Midgar arc is enough quality material to make a REALLY cool standalone game, and from there its easy to see how you could make two more games out of the rest of the story/world.

Click to shrink...

The thing is... it really struggles conceptually when it becomes a full game once you put the rest of the context of FF7 into the game.

Because the entire point and plot of FF7 is that Cloud is so full of self loathing and trauma that he's pretending to be someone else and Aerith and Tifa know that he's mentally very unwell.

Cloud's brain starts coming apart very fast in FF7 and if there's an entire game where Tifa and Aerith (who are very well aware something terrible is going on) don't have some form of intervention, that would be pretty weird.

 

[The Last One]

Expanding Midgar is not only a good idea but necessary. I'm no sure how they will do it, I'm thinking it will be on par of a city of an open world game like Watch Dogs or GTA, if the part 1 is just Midgar of course. If they cover more than it then it will probably not big as a city from a modern open world game.

 

[ZeoVGM]

I still believe that when this is eventually re-revealed, it will be a single game.

 

[Vault]

Spending More time with Avalanche is what i always wanted in the original

 

[Daniel Souza]

I think it actually makes sense.

Every big RPG right now only uses a small part of the game world, a region or a state, and even then, after 'applying' the current methods for populating content (side-quests, realistic proportions and distances for towns and places, a big number of voice-acted dialogues, etc), we get something like 50-80 hours of game length. So, unless they want to make a FF7 remake with 'old gen' proportions (but they don't, we could see in the trailer that they want an up-to-date realistic action RPG design for this), I think it's impossible for them to make an entire world with only one game. So I would expect one of three possibilities: or they make at least three games, or they will make a big part of the game feels bland and extremely linear, or they'll just chibi the overworld

 

[Kuro]

I'm expecting 2 parts maximum if they don't scrap the idea altogether. There's a decent point in the game where they can end part 1 on a cliffhanger and then get more milk money for part 2. I would expect some original content and areas if they decide to do 2 parts though.

 

[DiipuSurotu]

"With regards to the current HD capacity and volume, the idea is that we wouldn't be able to encompass it all in just one installment. So, 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. "

https://www.gameinformer.com/b/feat...ntasy-vii-remake-interview-game-informer.aspx

Click to shrink...

So? FFXIII-2 is barely 24 hours.

 

[Strangelove_77]

It's going to be 10-15 hours for the main quest. Watch.

 

[The Last One]

The thing is... it really struggles conceptually when it becomes a full game once you put the rest of the context of FF7 into the game.

Because the entire point and plot of FF7 is that Cloud is so full of self loathing and trauma that he's pretending to be someone else and Aerith and Tifa know that he's mentally very unwell.

Cloud's brain starts coming apart very fast in FF7 and if there's an entire game where Tifa and Aerith (who are very well aware something terrible is going on) don't have some form of intervention, that would be pretty weird.

Click to shrink...

I'm not sure if any of you said about struggling conceptually if they transform Midgar section in a full game. Like, what?

 

[APZonerunner]

So, to be clear, FF7 needs to be bigger and more expansive in many ways. In particular, there aren't enough NPCs wandering around and it makes Midgar in particular feel barely populated which hurts the impact of the reactors exploding. Some of the areas are too small as well instead of just not being populated enough. It needs to be a bigger RPG in the towns and dungeons, sure.

But when you're selling an RPG, people have expectations for content and if FF7R: Part 1 is only Midgar or something, then there's nowhere close to enough potential content there. Midgar in particular is 6 hours long in the original game. The original game itself is 30-40 hours long without sidequests. Each FF7R entry is supposed to be the length of FF13 and it's like... fucking how.

FF7 could have more story for Tifa and Aerith, but a lot of the other characters have their arcs finished up pretty well. Drawing 150 hours of content (pre side quests) from FF7 seems nearly impossible without covering a ton of dull story stuff that kills the pacing or putting in a ton of combat which again... would kill the story pacing. FF7 is a pretty fast paced game where each level is either advancing the main plot of Cloud-Sephiroth or doing a character arc... You can't do that for 150 hours.

This idea still makes no sense at all.

Click to shrink...

A few points to this:
One, and most important, is this: this is going to be more a re-imaginining than a remake in a sense. This idea that it's going to be the same game, IE to suggest the same pacing or (gosh) the same number of NPCs in areas is to be completely off the path, I think. Second, in development resource terms, just Midgar probably is comparable to a game like FF13 in terms of the number of unique environments, enemies and so on.

More than that, though, you could easily greatly expand the Midgar segment of FF7 to make it into a deeper, more exploration-driven place. In particular, in FF7 you go from one reactor mission to the next with next to no downtime, but if you were to apply something like a FF15 model to the structure (for better and worse), you could have that downtime last days, allowing proper, fuller exploration of a teeming neighborhood of Sector 7 before AVALANCHE head on another mission. Side quests, hunts, whatever. You could easily build 10 hours of content here or more, especially if you're happy to deviate from the source, which Nomura and Kitase have made absolutely clear they are.

I've said before that if you were actually splitting FF7, I think the thing that makes most sense is:

1. Opening through to the end of Midgar
2. Post-Midgar to Cloud handing over the Black Materia (cold open on the Sephiroth Nibelheim flashback as a tutorial segment)
3. Search for Cloud (with Tifa as lead, which is a great marketing hook tbh) to the ending.

If you're cramming in shit like full exploration of areas like Midgar and flashbacks to events previously depicted in BC/CC, you can easily make up the time... but that said, these games don't necessarily need to be 50 hours each either.

The thing is... it really struggles conceptually when it becomes a full game once you put the rest of the context of FF7 into the game.

Because the entire point and plot of FF7 is that Cloud is so full of self loathing and trauma that he's pretending to be someone else and Aerith and Tifa know that he's mentally very unwell.

Cloud's brain starts coming apart very fast in FF7 and if there's an entire game where Tifa and Aerith (who are very well aware something terrible is going on) don't have some form of intervention, that would be pretty weird.

Click to shrink...

I think a very interesting question is if modern Square/Nomura has it in them to portray this story with the same level of nuance now regardless of how the project is broken up, tbh. The tone of FF7 is potentially really challenging for a modern Square Enix game imo, and I'll be interested to see if they can stick that particular landing. I even wrote very specifically about it: https://www.vg247.com/2019/03/26/final-fantasy-7-remake-tone/

 

[BreakAtmo]

So, to be clear, FF7 needs to be bigger and more expansive in many ways. In particular, there aren't enough NPCs wandering around and it makes Midgar in particular feel barely populated which hurts the impact of the reactors exploding. Some of the areas are too small as well instead of just not being populated enough. It needs to be a bigger RPG in the towns and dungeons, sure.

But when you're selling an RPG, people have expectations for content and if FF7R: Part 1 is only Midgar or something, then there's nowhere close to enough potential content there. Midgar in particular is 6 hours long in the original game. The original game itself is 30-40 hours long without sidequests. Each FF7R entry is supposed to be the length of FF13 and it's like... fucking how.

FF7 could have more story for Tifa and Aerith, but a lot of the other characters have their arcs finished up pretty well. Drawing 150 hours of content (pre side quests) from FF7 seems nearly impossible without covering a ton of dull story stuff that kills the pacing or putting in a ton of combat which again... would kill the story pacing. FF7 is a pretty fast paced game where each level is either advancing the main plot of Cloud-Sephiroth or doing a character arc... You can't do that for 150 hours.

This idea still makes no sense at all.

Click to shrink...

There's no way part 1 is going to only be Midgar. I'm being it'll be the whole first continent, ending with them literally sailing into the sunset following the Jenova-BIRTH fight. And everything before that will significantly expanded - Midgar will be much bigger and more explorable, the story will likely be more detailed with more focus on supporting characters, and the first continent will probably also be a large open world. I don't know if they'll be able to nail it but that first continent can absolutely be made into its own game.

 

[ItWasMeantToBe19]

I'm not sure if any of you said about struggling conceptually if they transform Midgar section in a full game. Like, what?

Click to shrink...

My point is that making a full game of Midgar is very strange since the entire plot of FF7 is Cloud's mental illness and a full game of Midgar can't have much of that. Tifa and Aerith would have to act super strangely or not interact with Cloud much in part 1 for the story to make much if any sense.

Cloud is a non functioning human being in most of FF7 who can barely interact with people without them immediately thinking something is wrong (because there is something wrong). Dragging out an entire game before you even get to Cloud's false memories seems... very strange.

 

[Aokiji]

they are gonna re-reveal this game and it's not gonna be split in parts anymore. that's just my two cents. they are probably realizing now that original idea was foolish

 

[Famassu]

Either someone has an epic vision for final fantasy 7, or square just wants to cha-ching on that name three times.

Click to shrink...

Mostly the former when it comes to the creative people who are making the game. They've said that they didn't want to just do a prettied up version of the original game but are aiming for something far more ambitious. Of course the big-wigs at SQEX are also banking on the latter, otherwise, such a remake wouldn't have been greenlit. But seriously, it's not rocket science. Imagine FFVII, except in more realistic scale, with modern design sensibilities (so you can't have a loading screen every 5 steps, the world map can't be just a ball with simple geographical forms made of a few polygons where green represents grass, blue oceans and brown/grey mountains), with PS4 quality graphics and everything done with far more cinematic quality than rude 3d models miming and repeating simple animations.

FFVII on PS1 is already one of the most expensive game productions of all time. What do you think happens when you do that in PS4 quality and with the somewhat expanded scope that comes with the style of remake they have decided to do? It's just not feasible in one go.

 

[The Last One]

My point is that making a full game of Midgar is very strange since the entire plot of FF7 is Cloud's mental illness and a full game of Midgar can't have much of that without Tifa and Aerith acting super strangely or not interacting with Cloud much.

Click to shrink...

Well you're already wrong since even the trailer from PSX 2015 showed Cloud displaying his mental illness.

 

[asd202]

I'm hoping that they've walked back on that decision considering it's been four years and the first part hasn't come out.



Did they? I don't remember, can you provide a link?

Click to shrink...

I could have sworn I saw something like this but I couldn't find it. Maybe it was not last year or did not happen at all lol. Anyway disregard what I said and sorry about the confusion.