Grey Carter said:
Personally, I'm choosing to interpret that last quote as a warning. Essentially: 'Stop asking! Stop it! Stop it, or I'll put Goofy in it, so help me God.'
Funny you should say that, because adding Goofy to a video game proved quite well for them. Kingdom Hearts ended up being better than a lot of their recent Final Fantasy games. In fact the traditions and norms of Final Fantasy seems to be something holding them back.
They've always had a formula for different games, and this meant that a lot of real innovation was saved for other games, while they worked with a very certain formula for Final Fantasy, the traditional NES and SNES formula. Because it was beloved and they're fearful to change it. Again, it's a part of a very specific tradition.
Which is why, say, Final Fantasy VI, is much more Final Fantasy traditional, than Chrono Trigger. Which is more groundbreaking and has a different focus.
There would be a time that Final Fantasy could have kept going with tradition, but they've broken away with many of the better pieces for years, and it's just time that they threw tradition to the wind and created a new kata or formula. They could have kept going with tradition, had they done so properly, but they've squandered it and the formula must be reinvented now. It can't be helped. Because that formula has lost prestige and trying to force it to work has met with losing face for the very formula itself.
To take into mention some of those piece of formula that could have kept going if Final Fantasy had kept prestige as "knowing what it is supposed to do, and doing so with grace". Meant shying away from so much as adding a jumping mechanic to most games. Kingdom Hearts benefits from having very fluid action oriented controls, and while may not have great strategy like Final Fantasy, is incredibly engaging and fast paced. And games like Chrono Trigger completely did away with not only random battles, but also screen changes for battle. And both of these games came out fluid and innovative. And lets not forget a slew of other things that haven't been adopted by Final Fantasy because of prestigious tradition. No New Game Plus, and so forth.
These were nice things that could have improved Kingdom Hearts much sooner, as well as many lessons from their other games. But the Final Fantasy formula in the SNES and even PlayStation days had the most prestige, so they wouldn't dare tamper with a very specific formula. Because of course, they believed and understood that Chrono Trigger, and Final Fantasy were different and had different focuses and needs. But that formula is no longer prestigious and moving into modern hardware it has fumbled around embarrassingly and hasn't brought any status to the Final Fantasy name.
The only choice now, is again, to cast is aside, and actually for once not care about taking risks as long as you're aiming to make
good ones that are certain to benefit gameplay. Instead of bad experiments like the Draw system.
I think that Kitase is right, there are a lot of things that need to be changes, especially for new hardware. Many things about old games were left to imagination. It's best to just change things up. Adding more content and fleshing out things that weren't able to be there before. Changing is bad if it means more content. The problem with change is that things like Final Fantasy XIV have less content than Final Fantasy XI.
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My recommendation, is to make intelligent tweaks to the materia system. Minor, but intelligent. Something that could add an extra layer of depth to the materia system while not taking anything away from the original. One that would leave the game more tactical than before.
And next, though it would take a lot of time and money, leave more areas to be explored. Towns less figurative, and more to scale. jRPGs have always relied on assuming that, in canon, towns are bigger than you actually see. Many places being blocked off, and so forth. You can see how this assumption works when you compare Dirge of Cerberus to the original game, areas are much more fleshed out(at least the size of towns and areas). I know this is one of the things Square loathes most about such a project, but if you put the effort in, it would pay off. Bethesda was able to do that, Elder Scrolls games are explorable in almost every way, pretty well every building can be gone into, and are just as big as the Final Fantasy games, without even having an overworld map. And you can also interact with almost every object. It's a heavy undertaking that Square did not want to take part in, but it can be done. And given how badly XIII was reviewed for it's linearity and how highly Skyrim was reviewed and sold, it would certainly make the effort worth their while. It's pretty clear that players want more Skyrim in their Final Fantasy, and less linearity. More open world and more to interact with. That means that places like Wutai need to be able to be explored completely.
And furthermore, there's a wealth of NPCs, character interaction/dialogue, and a great many other things that can, and should be added.
And also, with the current technology, there is no reason they need to leave random battles or even screen switches in a Final Fantasy VII remake. They weren't even necessary in the SNES era, they can certainly be avoided on state of the art hardware. There's so many suggestions I could make as to changes, it could fill a book.
The remake could include the prequel and a re-vamped version of the sequel, and New Game+.
PHP or not, there's no actual reason that the game couldn't include realtime character switches in battle for a great many battles. There's just a wealth of changes they could add to a remake other than just giving it a graphical makeover.
I, for one, encourage Square to
intelligently modify the game if they remake it.
