New Final Fantasy VII Remake gameplay featuring Tifa, Ifrit and a Boss fight.

[Saleal]

I honestly see ff12 world traversal as the best way to work it out. The sequel (and other rpgs in general) could greatly benefit from the next gen consoles and their ssds when it comes to creating vast fully realized worlds without zone or region dividers. I suspect why the producer hasn't really come out definitely said where the sequel story will end as they are still probably working on the logistics of the world map.

Which brings me to a proposal that came from revisiting the behind the scene videos of ubisoft's beyond good and evil 2.

They could start out with a full world (not as big as the gif mind you), then start individually creating locations old and new, places like gas stations, places of interests, dungeons, campsites, abandoned towns etc to break up the traversal and placing them in this new world. vehicles and chocobos should play a bigger part, which brings me to my next part when it comes to Cid's tiny broncho and airship.

I would have the tiny broncho act as our airship for the sequel (seeing as Cid's airship does not become available to us until way later in the third act of the game), but it will be heavily restricted to only at a certain speed and altitude so it can't go over mountains or high terrains (Using the regalia as an example).

For Cid's airship, it will obviously be faster than the broncho, with varying degree of speed (normal to jet-powered)

And by the third game, the whole world will be open to us.

 

[Prototype Viktor]

man they are really padding the fuck out of these fights to have this part 1 of 9 they are breaking the game up into wil last long

 

[PlanetSmasher]

That is pretty much the Overworld of the original FFVII in a nutshell. The original has Midgar, Kalm and the entrance to Mithril caves and wasn't much beyond that either.

FFXII zones were perfect, that can add so much more detail and can provide enough space for Chocobo's. You can have hidden chests only the different colour Chocobo's can access from here as well. Dead ends with chests, multiple layer terrain etc.

Frankly an Overworld would be less interesting that detailed zones.

Click to shrink...

I hated FFXII and a large part of that, beyond the terrible combat and mediocre characters, had to do with how boring the world was to get around.

I have never played a game with zone-based world design where I enjoyed the world. Not one.

 

[Quinton]

man they are really padding the fuck out of these fights to have this part 1 of 9 they are breaking the game up into wil last long

Click to shrink...

This isn't going to be nine games.

 

[Lucreto]

I hated FFXII and a large part of that, beyond the terrible combat and mediocre characters, had to do with how boring the world was to get around.

I have never played a game with zone-based world design where I enjoyed the world. Not one.

Click to shrink...

Then you must hate Overworlds as well as they do the same as zones with much less detail. The most detailed Overworld I came across was Ni No Kuni 2 and that was not great.

 

[PlanetSmasher]

Then you must hate Overworlds as well as they do the same as zones with much less detail. The most detailed Overworld I came across was Ni No Kuni 2 and that was not great.

Click to shrink...

Overworlds are always better than field maps in my book. Don't waste my time with sixty identical straight line maps.

 

[Lucreto]

Overworlds are always better than field maps in my book. Don't waste my time with sixty identical straight line maps.

Click to shrink...

But Overworld are exactly that as well. Just follow the path to the next town.

 

[Ploid 6.0]

As a Final Fantasy XI avatar I loved zones in FFXI and FFXII. So good, huge connected world. Lots of enemies to fight and chain, my kind of RPG situation.

I honestly see ff12 world traversal as the best way to work it out. The sequel (and other rpgs in general) could greatly benefit from the next gen consoles and their ssds when it comes to creating vast fully realized worlds without zone or region dividers. I suspect why the producer hasn't really come out definitely said where the sequel story will end as they are still probably working on the logistics of the world map.

Which brings me to a proposal that came from revisiting the behind the scene videos of ubisoft's beyond good and evil 2.

They could start out with a full world (not as big as the gif mind you), then start individually creating locations old and new, places like gas stations, places of interests, dungeons, campsites, abandoned towns etc to break up the traversal and placing them in this new world. vehicles and chocobos should play a bigger part, which brings me to my next part when it comes to Cid's tiny broncho and airship.

Click to shrink...

This gif reminds me of Driver San Francisco, and The Crew games. You can zoom out to a big map, especially in The Crew, and pick where you want to go based on way points, or event icons (cars in Driver San Francisco). I guess Ubi are using that tech for other games, and I love it.

 

[PlanetSmasher]

But Overworld are exactly that as well. Just follow the path to the next town.

Click to shrink...

At least an overworld provides a connecting experience that gives a sense of space and location within the game's world. And you can actually use vehicles in them.

 

[Lucreto]

At least an overworld provides a connecting experience that gives a sense of space and location within the game's world. And you can actually use vehicles in them.

Click to shrink...

Like you can do in zones. You can enter one side of a town exit the other got through 2 or 3 connected zones with the terrain slowly changing and enter another town.

FFXII had this and to a lesser extent FFX.

 

[Ploid 6.0]

A chocobo is a vehicle of sorts.

FFXI (A mmo) had awesome vehicles, ones you didn't pilot though, and of course the mounts. Flying in a airship or riding on a boat gave an accurate representation of the world. The visuals beneath the airship was the topographical map of the world with landmarks. For sailing and stuff you saw the landmarks of distant shores. It felt very immersive in a zone based game.

Zones are usually there because of hardware limits, or whatever engine the games were built with. FFXIV has them too it just makes sense though, a loading screen. Dragon Age Origin, 2, and inquisition has areas divided by map point travel. Segmented areas with big missing gaps between.

 

[Inuhanyou]

Also XIII-2 had its own set of complaints, mostly around story, that meant by the third instalment interest was at an all time low for the XIII saga.

Click to shrink...

pretty much...and LR on top of that had its own story complaints as well, so that even further made people not care

 

[Prototype Viktor]

This isn't going to be nine games.

Click to shrink...

Fine they will bulb a great engineer and get it done in 6 parts in 11 years

 

[Deleted member 426]

Fine they will bulb a great engineer and get it done in 6 parts in 11 years

Click to shrink...

It won't be close to 6 parts but it will be close to 11 years to be perfectly honest.

 

[Lucreto]

Fine they will bulb a great engineer and get it done in 6 parts in 11 years

Click to shrink...

That is if they haven't even started the second part which it is most certainly has. It will be finished before 2025 which is good for 3 games.

 

[Xenosaga]

I think it's way too early to think about overworld stuff when we don't even know how the Midgar traversal will work.

 

[hank_tree]

That is if they haven't even started the second part which it is most certainly has. It will be finished before 2025 which is good for 3 games.

Click to shrink...

Fool me less than 7 times, shame on you.
Fool me 8 or more times, shame on me.

 

[APZonerunner]

I question this logic somewhat.

FF13 was always a complete game with a definitive end. To the point where they had to retcon the ending of the game just to make another one. The sequels largely dont even have anything to do with the original game in terms of lore or story when they start introducing the time travel nonsense and alternate timelines and end of the world stuff. They pretty much threw out the world building and lore of the previous games every time they started a new game.

I dont think the FF13 trilogy was a case of building on a series of plot devices you had planned from the start, but a restart every game where Toriyama's team would come up with some new scenario so they could justify crystal tools massive investment sink that didnt pay off anywhere else, due to no one else working on AAA games in SE JP at the time.

In addition, the sales and word of mouth dropped off sharply for the sequel because of the negative reaction to the original, they tried to fix some of the complaints but it was too late and most people didnt care by FF13-2 and especially LR. I dont think that would happen with a trilogy that had good response and word of mouth from the first installment

Click to shrink...

The two situations are obviously quite different, but the broad point is the same for all sequels: you have to be additive and exciting, because you can't necessarily just sell people "more of the same". That's true regardless of if you have a story trajectory planned out or if you busk it and make it up as you go along to make back exorbitant R&D costs on the first game (as was the case with FF13). Obviously the first entry is going to break records for SE/FF - hype is sky high, it looks absolutely incredible, etc etc.

But there's a lot of moving parts to anything like this; the question mark over this release is of course the story additions and padding, stretching 4 hours of story into 40+ hours of game. That'll be where the game really soars or doesn't, I guess - not just in how satisfied fans are with the story changes and additions, but also in stuff like quest design - side quests had better not just be a bunch of find, kill, turn in like FF15, for instance. I'm really hopeful about this the more that we see, but this is the stuff I'm getting at - your post suggests an overwhelmingly positive reception for this is a foregone conclusion, but there's so much we don't know that could color public perception and consensus even as the game sells well, and that would - like FF13 - have a knock-on effect on future entries.

But even if the game is perfect, I think there'll be a lot of work to do to to sell 'part 2', and then 'part 3' and stuff. This is where the FF series has made a rod for its own back; because people expect every entry to be sufficiently 'new', they'll probably have to work quite hard to grow the game's systems to make each game have a unique flavor. Being split into multiple games has interesting impacts here, too - like Ifrit and Shiva are key "awesome new ability for combat" moments, but in the original they both come after Midgar. They clearly didn't want to make a game without summons, which is fair enough. So, what do they build to replace those rewards at those moments in game 2? This is what I mean - there's a lot of questions to be answered when they approach a second part.

Obviously they'll be adding a few more characters with unique skills and stuff, which helps a great deal, but the challenge they'll have I guess is balancing the consistency to make the games feel like one cohesive whole work (with FF13 definitely did not do, like you said) with the need to be new and exciting enough to make people justify a purchase. I don't doubt most of us in this thread are in it for the long haul regardless, but the thing that made FF7 notable in the series was how it reached well outside that demographic to people who never usually played that kind of game - and if it draws them back, drawing them back two or three or four times is obviously something SE will be thinking really hard about. That's all I mean.

 

[Lucreto]

Fool me less than 7 times, shame on you.
Fool me 8 or more times, shame on me.

Click to shrink...

It's not the same company from last generation. Most single player games bar Kingdom Hearts and the remake have been released in a timely fashion.

 

[nelsonroyale]

I honestly see ff12 world traversal as the best way to work it out. The sequel (and other rpgs in general) could greatly benefit from the next gen consoles and their ssds when it comes to creating vast fully realized worlds without zone or region dividers. I suspect why the producer hasn't really come out definitely said where the sequel story will end as they are still probably working on the logistics of the world map.

Which brings me to a proposal that came from revisiting the behind the scene videos of ubisoft's beyond good and evil 2.

They could start out with a full world (not as big as the gif mind you), then start individually creating locations old and new, places like gas stations, places of interests, dungeons, campsites, abandoned towns etc to break up the traversal and placing them in this new world. vehicles and chocobos should play a bigger part, which brings me to my next part when it comes to Cid's tiny broncho and airship.

I would have the tiny broncho act as our airship for the sequel (seeing as Cid's airship does not become available to us until way later in the third act of the game), but it will be heavily restricted to only at a certain speed and altitude so it can't go over mountains or high terrains (Using the regalia as an example).

For Cid's airship, it will obviously be faster than the broncho, with varying degree of speed (normal to jet-powered)

And by the third game, the whole world will be open to us.

Click to shrink...

I fully support this!

 

[AzureFlame]

Am i the only one who liked almost all FF games except maybe 2, 13-2 and 15, those are like 3 out of 18 main games.

I noticed some of the fan base hate alot of the great ones, it's sad, i never seen a fanbase soo divided before.

 

[ZeroDS]

Am i the only one who liked almost all FF games except maybe 2, 13-2 and 15, those are like 3 out of 18 main games.

I noticed some of the fan base hate alot of the great ones, it's sad, i never seen a fanbase soo divided before.

Click to shrink...

The Xeno series is much worse for this but yea, FF also has a lot of needless infighting

 

[AzureFlame]

The Xeno series is much worse for this but yea, FF also has a lot of needless infighting

Click to shrink...

Ouch i didn't know that.

 

[hank_tree]

It's not the same company from last generation. Most single player games bar Kingdom Hearts and the remake have been released in a timely fashion.

Click to shrink...

Do you have some recent examples of AAA single player games that they've released in a timely fashion? From the japanese dev teams? I honestly can't think of any.

 

[Inuhanyou]

The two situations are obviously quite different, but the broad point is the same for all sequels: you have to be additive and exciting, because you can't necessarily just sell people "more of the same". That's true regardless of if you have a story trajectory planned out or if you busk it and make it up as you go along to make back exorbitant R&D costs on the first game (as was the case with FF13). Obviously the first entry is going to break records for SE/FF - hype is sky high, it looks absolutely incredible, etc etc.

But there's a lot of moving parts to anything like this; the question mark over this release is of course the story additions and padding, stretching 4 hours of story into 40+ hours of game. That'll be where the game really soars or doesn't, I guess - not just in how satisfied fans are with the story changes and additions, but also in stuff like quest design - side quests had better not just be a bunch of find, kill, turn in like FF15, for instance. I'm really hopeful about this the more that we see, but this is the stuff I'm getting at - your post suggests an overwhelmingly positive reception for this is a foregone conclusion, but there's so much we don't know that could color public perception and consensus even as the game sells well, and that would - like FF13 - have a knock-on effect on future entries.

But even if the game is perfect, I think there'll be a lot of work to do to to sell 'part 2', and then 'part 3' and stuff. This is where the FF series has made a rod for its own back; because people expect every entry to be sufficiently 'new', they'll probably have to work quite hard to grow the game's systems to make each game have a unique flavor. Being split into multiple games has interesting impacts here, too - like Ifrit and Shiva are key "awesome new ability for combat" moments, but in the original they both come after Midgar. They clearly didn't want to make a game without summons, which is fair enough. So, what do they build to replace those rewards at those moments in game 2? This is what I mean - there's a lot of questions to be answered when they approach a second part.

Obviously they'll be adding a few more characters with unique skills and stuff, which helps a great deal, but the challenge they'll have I guess is balancing the consistency to make the games feel like one cohesive whole work (with FF13 definitely did not do, like you said) with the need to be new and exciting enough to make people justify a purchase. I don't doubt most of us in this thread are in it for the long haul regardless, but the thing that made FF7 notable in the series was how it reached well outside that demographic to people who never usually played that kind of game - and if it draws them back, drawing them back two or three or four times is obviously something SE will be thinking really hard about. That's all I mean.

Click to shrink...

A well reasoned and detailed response, thank you for that. I 100% see your point.

Its my bias obviously that i think that this game will turn out to be a success. But a big part of that is that as you stated, its potential pitfalls are much different. As long as they can avoid the biggest minefields and put out good products, i think they are in a decent position barring any issues that may give them a negative perception and dock extra hype points from installment to installment.

After all FF7R isnt over with just this game, this is only one segment of the game people have wanted for years, so that desire to see those moments recreated doesnt go away just after the first installment FF7 has a great base of quality to dwell from that keeps people invested even 20 years after the fact, which is not somehting you can say about a majority of ongoing properties

 

[plow]

I would be fine with a world like 12. But i don't think it's needed since next Generation inlcuding SSD will make loading times a non issue. Xenobalde Chronicles is the last Monolith game i played and that was a fuckin amazing Open World and that was 10 years ago.

 

[Mars People]

I hated FFXV because I thought it was a meandering, unfinished mess of a story, with unfun combat.
However I am very excited for FFVII remake.

I do wonder if I am setting myself up for disappointment.
Hope springs eternal though.

Is the plan for this still be split into parts? If so why isn't the game called part 1?

Click to shrink...

This is actually a really good point.
They need to make it absolutely clear in the title that this isn't a full remake of FFVII.
Otherwise there is going to be huge backlash from people not in the know.
They'll reach the end and go 'what the fuck? Where's the rest?'

 

[Crossing Eden]

They need to make it absolutely clear in the title that this isn't a full remake of FFVII.
Otherwise there is going to be huge backlash from people not in the know.

Click to shrink...

At this point I feel like most people who're interested in the title already are fully aware that it's only covering Midgar.

 

[Mars People]

At this point I feel like most people who're interested in the title already are fully aware that it's only covering Midgar.

Click to shrink...

I don't know. I feel like there are going to be a ton of casual players who will pick this up because they remember the original. It's the sort of game that will sell on name alone. We have to remember that most people don't follow games press or read reviews.

 

[Crossing Eden]

I don't know. I feel like there are going to be a ton of casual players who will pick this up because they remember the original. It's the sort of game that will sell on name alone. We have to remember that most people don't follow games press or read reviews.

Click to shrink...

If it specifies on the box that the game only covers Midgar then the fault is on the consumer for not being aware by release.

 

[Dreamboum]

I'm 99.999% they aren't going to do a FF7/NNK style overworld, it just completely contradicts the scale, production values, tech, and the direction the franchise has been going in for nearly 2 decades now.

With that being said, i also don't think they're going to do a huge FFXV style open world either, my guess is something closer to FFXII, but obviously with much larger/less flat zones with less loading.

Click to shrink...

The issue is that XV's open world is much easier to replicate than XII. XII took five years of dev and most of its budget to offer a world like that. That's impossible to replicate today if you want to release your game fast enough

It will be like XV for sure

 

[Xenosaga]

The old Versus XIII world...

 

[Suede]

Am i the only one who liked almost all FF games except maybe 2, 13-2 and 15, those are like 3 out of 18 main games.

I noticed some of the fan base hate alot of the great ones, it's sad, i never seen a fanbase soo divided before.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, I quite like most of the ones I've played, a lot of great memories playing them. I feel like the XIII series is the weak point for me besides my love for Lightning.

Anyway, I don't see this remake going past 3 games, I will be very shocked if they go beyond that, would be ridiculous.

 

[Xenosaga]

Am i the only one who liked almost all FF games except maybe 2, 13-2 and 15, those are like 3 out of 18 main games.

I noticed some of the fan base hate alot of the great ones, it's sad, i never seen a fanbase soo divided before.

Click to shrink...

I think it's partly due to how high the standards are set for people because they love the franchise. Personally I think None of the numbered FF games I have played are bad games per say. But in terms of Final Fantasy, games like FF8, 10-2, 13 trilogy and 15 were disappointment because they were (kinda) numbered FF games with certain expectation.

 

[kortvarsel]

This looks way too good.

 

[PlanetSmasher]

Like you can do in zones. You can enter one side of a town exit the other got through 2 or 3 connected zones with the terrain slowly changing and enter another town.

FFXII had this and to a lesser extent FFX.

Click to shrink...

And like I said, I hated XII's world. It never felt like a real place, just a bunch of disconnected shadowboxes lined up in a row.

X's was just as bad. Give me a game world I can explore with an airship and that feels like an actual planet.

 

[Tornak]

And like I said, I hated XII's world. It never felt like a real place, just a bunch of disconnected shadowboxes lined up in a row.

X's was just as bad. Give me a game world I can explore with an airship and that feels like an actual planet.

Click to shrink...

To be fair with XII, I believe that's mostly because of the console's limitations: the zones felt claustophobic at times and the seams were incredibly obvious. That wouldn't necessarily happen with a PS5 game, you could have much bigger, more dynamic places there with shorter (or even seamless, or at least masked) transitions between zones.

Of course you'd still have the issue of having a flying vehicle or mount, but I think they could deal with a Highwind-specific map that's way higher up in the sky (and more of an abstraction) and you would just go to the overall location you want to land in and then you'd be loaded up into said zone.

It's not ideal, but the sooner you accept them not doing classic world maps, the better. Nomura already tried with Versus early on and ditched that approach for whatever reason he deemed important. Hence this later approach:

The old Versus XIII world...

Click to shrink...

 

[PlanetSmasher]

To be fair with XII, I believe that's mostly because of the console's limitations: the zones felt claustophobic at times and the seams were incredibly obvious. That wouldn't necessarily happen with a PS5 game, you could have much bigger, more dynamic places there with shorter (or even seamless, or at least masked) transitions between zones.

Of course you'd still have the issue of having a flying vehicle or mount, but I think they could deal with a Highwind-specific map that's way higher up in the sky (and more of an abstraction) and you would just go to the overall location you want to land in and then you'd be loaded up into said zone.

It's not ideal, but the sooner you accept them not doing classic world maps, the better. Nomura already tried with Versus early on and ditched that approach for whatever reason he deemed important. Hence this later approach:

Click to shrink...

I just really don't see any value to zones. If there's no clear delineation between dungeons and the overworld then dungeons are meaningless, and that's basically what happened in every single modern Tales game and FFXII. It's just hours and hours and hours of drudging through areas that all look and feel identically to each other, and the entire world is just endless highways and hallways.

There are some things I'm never going to come around on, I'm afraid. Zones are simply an inferior way of designing a world.

 

[Chibs]

At this point I feel like most people who're interested in the title already are fully aware that it's only covering Midgar.

Click to shrink...

Don't count on it. People may be excited about the game, but that doesn't mean they keep up with the news like we all do around here. Hell, three friends of mine, who are big FF fans, are incredibly excited about the remake and did not know that it would be Midgar only. They all thought it would cover the entire story and yes, they were disappointed when I told them that wouldn't be the case.

Square-Enix would be smart to make this as obvious as possible, it'll save them some backlash in the future. Best to rip that band-aid of asap.

 

[Onikage]

The game looks great and everything, but...

Am I the only one anoyed by the camera angle?
I really, really hope we have more options of camera, to put it further away from the characters.

In all the gameplay videos so far the camera is too close and almost touching the ground.
I know they like this angle, close and low, because it makes pretty scenes.
But I really don't want to play the whole game like this.

Please, tell me we will have more camera options and they just used this one to do close ups on the characters...

 

[Xenosaga]

The game looks great and everything, but...

Am I the only one anoyed by the camera angle?
I really, really hope we have more options of camera, to put it further away from the characters.

In all the gameplay videos so far the camera is too close and almost touching the ground.
I know they like this angle, close and low, because it makes pretty scenes.
But I really don't want to play the whole game like this.

Please, tell me we will have more camera options and they just used this one to do close ups on the characters...

Click to shrink...

it's confirmed there is camera setting in the options menu. They didn't go into the menus to see what sort of sub-menus are in there, but I assume there would be camera distance there as well hopefully.

 

[Lockheartilly9799]

it's confirmed there is camera setting in the options menu. They didn't go into the menus to see what sort of sub-menus are in there, but I assume there would be camera distance there as well hopefully.

Click to shrink...

That's good. My demo experience showed me that I felt that the camera was too close as well. If you can change it, that would be rad.

 

[Onikage]

it's confirmed there is camera setting in the options menu. They didn't go into the menus to see what sort of sub-menus are in there, but I assume there would be camera distance there as well hopefully.

Click to shrink...

I am glad to read this! Lets hope for the best.

 

[Spehornoob]

Don't count on it. People may be excited about the game, but that doesn't mean they keep up with the news like we all do around here. Hell, three friends of mine, who are big FF fans, are incredibly excited about the remake and did not know that it would be Midgar only. They all thought it would cover the entire story and yes, they were disappointed when I told them that wouldn't be the case.

Square-Enix would be smart to make this as obvious as possible, it'll save them some backlash in the future. Best to rip that band-aid of asap.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, I've seen a number of people who were excited for this who were unaware of the fact that this entire game will only cover the Midgar portion of the story. Square Enix really needs to make it outwardly clear. If they' don't want to use a "Part 1" subtitle, then they should at least use a "Midgar" subtitle or something like that.

 

[icyflamez96]

The game looks great and everything, but...

Am I the only one anoyed by the camera angle?
I really, really hope we have more options of camera, to put it further away from the characters.

In all the gameplay videos so far the camera is too close and almost touching the ground.
I know they like this angle, close and low, because it makes pretty scenes.
But I really don't want to play the whole game like this.

Please, tell me we will have more camera options and they just used this one to do close ups on the characters...

Click to shrink...

Yup I too was having issues with some of the camera stuff. For me it was mainly just that the monster kept not being fully on the screen lol

 

[TheJollyCorner]

The game looks great and everything, but...

Am I the only one anoyed by the camera angle?
I really, really hope we have more options of camera, to put it further away from the characters.

In all the gameplay videos so far the camera is too close and almost touching the ground.
I know they like this angle, close and low, because it makes pretty scenes.
But I really don't want to play the whole game like this.

Please, tell me we will have more camera options and they just used this one to do close ups on the characters...

Click to shrink...

it's confirmed there is camera setting in the options menu. They didn't go into the menus to see what sort of sub-menus are in there, but I assume there would be camera distance there as well hopefully.

Click to shrink...

Not that I'd use it (much), but it would be neat if there was a 'classic' battle camera option that mimicked the one from the original FFVII.

 

[Onikage]

Not that I'd use it (much), but it would be neat if there was a 'classic' battle camera option that mimicked the one from the original FFVII.

Click to shrink...

That is what I hoped for the "classic mode".
I wished we had a traditional cinematographic camera using this mode.

But it is just the same action mode with AI...

 

[Prototype Viktor]

the more i see this game the less i like it so the marketing is working

 

[Quinton]

Fine they will bulb a great engineer and get it done in 6 parts in 11 years

Click to shrink...

I...

I like you.

 

[Tomeru]

Advent children not canon? When did that happen?