Three person party with free switching
Now that we have the first in-game (Unreal Engine 4) trailer for Final Fantasy VII Remake, people are facing the tangible result of months-long concern over Square’s previously discussed decision to change the battle system. That and the game being released “across a multi-part series.”
New interviews with Famitsu and Dengeki, translated by Gematsu, provide a bit more context for what we’ve seen with the latest trailer.
Firstly, Kitase said that the game was always planned as multiple releases because Final Fantasy VII‘s world is enormous and recreating it with modern visual expectations is a huge undertaking. Nomura followed, “If we dedicated our time to a single release, parts of it would become summarized. We’d have to cut some parts, and additional parts would come in few, so rather than remake the game as a full volume, we decided to do multiple parts.” And there’s something to that — the density is impressive, a to-scale recreation of Final Fantasy VII‘s more cartoonish, large environments. Plus you can explore bits of Midgar that weren’t explorable in the original.
Final Fantasy VII Remake also aims for, “a seamless active battle.” Again with the lengthier answer, Nomura says, “Regarding the battle speed and tempo, for the sake of a stress-free battle, we want to do something on the level of Dissidia Final Fantasy. As far as the degree of action goes, it’s Dissidia Final Fantasy, then Kingdom Hearts, then Final Fantasy VII Remake. There won’t be any actions that require a technique. By using the new system, we want to do action battles while also being able to fight while thinking strategically.”
The ATB gauge (and Limit Breaks) still exists despite this, but “with new ways to be used.” You can see the gauge in the video and should pay attention to when it fills and turns red (Barret’s attack at 1:22 in the trailer). There will still be three party members, but you can switch freely between them (or just play as one of them, which means AI will handle the others and you can do a Final Fantasy VII run through as just Yuffie).
Cloud still cross-dresses for Don Corneo, too. Though there will be other story changes, according to Kitase, “I don’t want the remake to end as something nostalgic. I want to get the fans of the original version excited.We’ll be making adjustments to the story with this feeling in mind.”
Other tidbits: there are other external collaborators besides just CyberConnect2, “Final Fantasy VII Remake” is the full title (if you couldn’t tell), and Advent Children‘s character models are too old and “deformed” (the bodies are too unrealistic) to be used. From the Famitsu interview, it’s noted that, “ CyberConnect2’s production tastes differ from that of Square Enix” and that, “Director Tetsuya Nomura was annoyed by the direction of the latest trailer, so Square Enix changed it to be closer to its own style,” which I guess implies CyberConnect2 produced it first? Also, I’m starting a tech sex startup called Cyber2Connect.
ファイナルファンタジーVII リメイク』北瀬佳範氏＆野村哲也氏に訊く分作の意図――バトルはATBありのアクションに!? [Famitsu]
『FFVII リメイク』のバトルにはお馴染みのリミットブレイクも搭載。分作にした経緯にも迫る[Dengeki]
Final Fantasy VII Remake details: reason for multi-part release, CyberConnect2 collaboration, more [Gematsu]
