Final Fantasy VII Remake Trailer Offers First Glimpse of New Combat

[Conrad Zimmerman]

Final Fantasy VII Remake Trailer Offers First Glimpse of New Combat

Real-time combat and so much Barrett.

During the PlayStation Experience keynote event today, a new trailer for Final Fantasy VII Remake was debuted and it shows a lot more than you might normally expect from a Square Enix project announced less than a year ago.

Most of the trailer consists of CGI sequences, early scenes from the game introducing Cloud, Barrett and secondary members of the eco-terrorist group AVALANCHE, but gameplay is in there too. Exploration through Midgar is demonstrated, and the footage gives the impression that environments will be fully rendered and use a player-controlled camera.

Even combat gets a little bit of play, and looks like it's scrapped the "Active Time Battle" system in the original game for something more like modern Final Fantasy.

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In other Final Fantasy VII news announced at the show, the PlayStation 4 port of the original is available now on PlayStation Network. The port features upscaled graphics and retails for $15.99.

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[Tanis]

Looks like FF7 post Advent Children.

So, nay/yay?

Still not very excited about it.

Maybe when FF6 gets a proper HD remake I'll care.

Maybe it's like for Atlus to be given control of such things?

 

[Rosiv]

If they do a PC release I'll snag it up when its on sale. FF13 and friends kind of made me, "once bitten, twice shy" to new Final Fantasy games.


As an aside, it looks ok. I just wonder how they will do the "cloud in drag" scene with such a serious tone.

 

[sniddy_v1legacy]

....I want to believe

I honestly think simply because FF7 was 'my' game - this will never work for me

 

[Valkrex]

I'm excited!

Loved the original, and the new combat system looks a bit more like Kingdom Hearts and more action style games. I am VERY okay with this!

Also is this coming to PC? I remember reading that somewhere but I can't seem to find where I did.

 

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

uh, Nomura, you do realize this is supposed to be FF and not a KH game, right? Because that's what I saw. Which isn't a good thing. This isn't going to end well for him.

 

[Bat Vader]

If the combat featured here is anything like Kingdom Hearts I may have to pick this up when it releases.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

WEE-OO WEE-OO WEE-OO WEE-OO! *imminent flamewar alarms go off*

Combat seems to be kingdom heart-y, and not at all like the original. Impending fanboy freakout imminent! And his eyes aren't "shiny Mako Blue"! Hide yo wives, hide yo kids and if you have a husband, hide him too! XD

Personally, though, I like what I see. It looks neat and the way magic seems to be handled tells me that each character will use it in a different way, so there might be more reason to swap characters around. That and I like Barret, they did a decent job with him. He looks buff as fuck, but not a caricature muscle-monster like he was in the original. I DO kinda miss the ATB system, but this one looks alright too.

Mind you I do find it kinda hilarious to see Cloud running in a street with a GIGANTIC LENS FLARING SWORD on his back. That would normally lead to a million phone calls to the police. XD No rational person runs around with a sword that huge in the middle of the street.

I know I'm not getting a PS4, so unless this eventually comes out on PC, I have no dog in this fight, but this looks pretty neat. If I can borrow a PS4 at some point, I might give the remake a spin even if, looking back and disregarding nostalgia, the original was kinda iffy.

 

[crimson5pheonix]

Hrm, that combat system looks like the RPG controls in Dissidia. Those controls, by the way, were obnoxious.

 

[Saltyk]

Well, there was a thread in the forum about this already. So, I think I'll be lazy just this once and quote myself here.

Yeah, that's about what I expected. Too soon to say that they completely changed it. And it looked like you could control other characters like Barret. It honestly didn't show enough to say for certain how it works. Materia is too important to the story to remove it from the game, so I'm certain that is still in there. It looks like there is a gauge in the corner.

Upon closer inspection, that looks like a Limit gauge. And it seems to slowly build as you attack and to deplete when you aren't. But it seems that once maxed it lets you use some Limit skill. I certainly recognized Barret's Big Shot Limit, but not Cloud's attack. So, yes, I feel confident that it is an Action type system, like in FFXV.

Color me intrigued, though not entirely happy. I wasn't really sure what I wanted from the combat. I'm a huge Final Fantasy fan (especially of VII), but I'm not so childish as to call this crap. I think it could work. Crisis Core was a solid game, for example, and I think XIII could have been okay with some minor tweaks. Looks like they may have learned some lessons, but I wanna see more before I pass my Judgement [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iV3KBvtgPjE].

That being said, it looks fucking beautiful. Cloud looks like he might be the classic FFVII Cloud rather than emo Cloud ("I don't care about your politics"). Graphically, it is beautiful and brings Midgar to life. The voice acting seemed okay, though the Wedge voice seemed a little off to me. And I think we saw how they might be doing the whole voice talking to Cloud moments, too. The music felt like a modern version of the classic music, and like it didn't forget it's roots.

Looks like we saw some cut scenes as well as some actual walking around. It occurs to me that the scene of them watching an explosion happens in normal gameplay. I swear I saw Cloud get pushed back slightly there.

I suspect this is an early build. Based on what news I've heard and how this all comes from very early in the game, didn't even show Tifa or Aerith, I'm expecting it will get more polish and probably be released in 2017, around the 20th anniversary.

Oh, and...

And I'll just add that with the still images, I'm able to appreciate the models just a little but more. And I'm really appreciating that the models look very faithful to the original. Even Biggs, Wedge, and Jesse. They look exactly like I imagined they would. Okay, maybe I wouldn't have given Wedge shoulder armor, but otherwise pretty faithful.

 

[MonsterCrit]

Huh. > You know .. just once I;d like my cynicism to be disproved. Seriously. No ATB... for frigs sake Nomura, I'm starting to think you need to sit down and watch a few Jimquisition episodes. DOn't over do it. Just give us the exact same game we loved with high def graphics. That's all... all you... you know what forget it. Just forget it.

 

[Tony2077]

it doesn't look that bad hmm depending on the price i may get it at launch

 

[Samtemdo8_v1legacy]

Looks like FF7 post Advent Children.

So, nay/yay?

Still not very excited about it.

Maybe when FF6 gets a proper HD remake I'll care.

Maybe it's like for Atlus to be given control of such things?

I prefer a Final Fantasy 12 remake with the plot and gameplay as originally enviosioned by the director before he left for psycholigical reasons. (Appearently he could not handle the stress of AAA game development and not surprising since he made rather small games)

(Fun Fact there was no Vaan or Penelo)

 

[Saltyk]

Wait a minute! I just looked at the still images again. I just noticed there are FOUR gauges.

We see Cloud's name with a gauge under it. Then beside that we see HP with a gauge under that. And MP with a gauge under that. THEN we see Limit with a gauge under it.

So what's the first gauge? It could be an ATB gauge. But that confuses me. I thought it depleted when he wasn't attacking and built when he was. Now, I really wanna see a full fight. So I can figure out exactly how it plays.

However, this could be ATB or some sort of hybrid.

 

[circularlogic88]

Have they confirmed whether or not you'll be able to rotate between active party members or is this going to be like XIII and Kingdom Hearts where you're only controlling one party member while the AI does the rest?

 

[chocolate pickles]

Oh look. A final fantasy game with a decent, non-turn based combat. What a turn up for the books.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

Huh. > You know .. just once I;d like my cynicism to be disproved. Seriously. No ATB... for frigs sake Nomura, I'm starting to think you need to sit down and watch a few Jimquisition episodes. DOn't over do it. Just give us the exact same game we loved with high def graphics. That's all... all you... you know what forget it. Just forget it.

You...DO realize that the original had a LOT of problems with the writing and the combat mechanics, right?

How in combat all the characters were virtually identical except for Limit Breaks, and some were hands down way better than the others? (Seriously, NO ONE used Cait Sith, Nanaki, or Yuffie because their limits were either terrible, or sub-par. And most people only used Vincent for "rule of cool" because even though his limits are badass, they're also too unpredictable to be worthwile in any boss fight).

Look I like ATB a lot (in fact I'm moving more towards ATB in my own RPGs), but there were a lot of other problems under the surface with the original FF7. I don't think they needed to turn it into Kingdom hearts, but just slapping an HD graphics thing onto the game would have resulted in the game showing its age horribly.

 

[Kaimax]

Finally a proper render of Jesse...now I can have more Feels when "it" happens....

 

[Clive Howlitzer]

I still find it hard to believe that anyone is looking forward to this. Remakes were never my thing. Let it die and make something new.