New Final Fantasy 7 Remake Trailer

[stroopwafel]

Yeah, that overdesigned wreck that's clearly brought to attention. In fact, even having another motorcycle chase raises alarm bells. Like I've said elsewhere, this entire project has just seemed off from day one. It really reminds me of the Special Editions of Star Wars.

I don't even get the point. Probably none of the people working on this remake ever had anything to do with the original. They are changing the story, the tone, the pacing, the characters, the visuals, the gameplay, the music, everything. This won't be Final Fantasy 7 because FF7 already exists and is nothing like what we're seeing here. A decade ago I might have wished for a FF7 with character models that didn't look like Popeye the lego man, but I regret even thinking that now. Once you go in and start retroactively changing a work how do you know where to stop? When something is made it should stand as it is and not be constantly be rewritten over and over by new people who think they can do it better. Movies, games, and books, ect. are special because of the people that made them, a part of them ended up in the work. If you change the team you change the work and you lose what made it special to begin with.

Remakes for things which were already good in the first place don't make sense, because they are already good. You have just as much chance of making it worse as making it better. The only time I can see remakes being worth it is if you are remaking something that wasn't very good to begin with (and probably if only if you are the original creator taking another crack at a failed project with more experience.)

Remakes and sequels are two concepts I wish society on the whole would abandon.

It worked remarkably well for RE2 Remake though which is in my top 3 of the generation. Ideally a remake is keeping the identity of the original intact while re-envisioning it's design with current technology and modern concepts. That is exactly what RE2 Remake did and it's the same as the original it's based on yet totally different and a modern classic in it's own right. So far FF7 Remake is looking like it's going down the exact same path. Having my favorite games from over 20 years remade with such crazy production values is also exciting in it's own right.

Also some of the best games are sequels so I don't know what you mean by that comment. Sequels allow developers to improve on concepts and explore them more in-depth. I think you conflate sequels with uninspired annualized franchises and yeah, they mostly suck.

 

[CritialGaming]

I don't even get the point. Probably none of the people working on this remake ever had anything to do with the original.

Except the original game's director, character designer, concept artist, scenario writer. You know, basically the people who were core in the production of the original game.

 

[Fappy]

I don't have an issue with them introducing new SOLDIER characters considering their presence in the original are non-existent outside of Cloud and Zack. Hopefully they don't turn out to be dumb characters, of course, but the game looks great so I am giving SE the benefit of the doubt for now.

 

[CaitSeith]

the second half, where it became clear the budget ran out and the game was rushing from plot point to plot point without being able to let any of them sink in or expand upon them was just... depressing.

In some sense it fits the depressing tone from that part of the story.

 

[CritialGaming]

I wouldn't call FF XV bad either, just crushingly underwhelming, considering how good some of the trailers looked. I mean, I know the game had an extremely troubled development cycle and I'm not meaning to harp on it but the second half, where it became clear the budget ran out and the game was rushing from plot point to plot point without being able to let any of them sink in or expand upon them was just... depressing. I mean, as soon as the game actually has you visit interesting locations you don't actually get to explore these locations in an open world anymore. That was just sad. And then there's the combat, which had an interesting idea somewhere, in the sense that basing it around holding buttons rather than pressing them at least indicated that they were willing to think outside the box when it comes to action combat but it never quite clicked.

Anyway, FF XV is the reason why I'd not getting too excited about the FF VII remake. It could be good but it might just as well be another dissapointment.

You bring up an interesting point. FFXV was rushed as fuck at the end of the game. There was clearly developmental problems and eventually they just had to finish what they could and put the game out.

However.....the Royal Edition with all the extra stuff and revamped back-half of the game is great. And I wonder if that was the reason why Square decided to cut up FF7.

Instead of a big game with a long dev cycle, only to rush the ending. They cut the game into smaller chunks, which let's Nomura expand the story as he originally wanted back in the day. But now they can expand smaller portions of the game, without the huge scope of the game over their head. Now they make filled out chunks of the overall story, and make it into more parts which come out at a more reasonable timeframe.

It makes a lot of sense if you look at it like that.

Cyberconnect got pulled off the project in 2016 or 2017, and Square pulled it in-house to make sure it was right. And they had to redo a lot of what Cyberconnect already started. So really a 3.5 year dev cycle is really not bad. And you figure the next parts of the game wont need such long cycles because the engine can be reused, the models, most of the animations, all the stuff thats done already. I wouldn't be surprised to see a new FF7 part every 2 years or so. I imagine the complete package would be done in 2026.

 

[Dansen]

-Sees new character-

Oh god, we're officially in Nomura fanfiction territory. This...will not end well

Who, Jessie? Nah, she's not new. Avalanche had more members than just your party members.

https://youtu.be/4_qjybyni28?t=21

This guy wasn't in the original game.

Yeah, that overdesigned wreck that's clearly brought to attention. In fact, even having another motorcycle chase raises alarm bells. Like I've said elsewhere, this entire project has just seemed off from day one. It really reminds me of the Special Editions of Star Wars.

I can get not liking him but the new guy is far from over designed, hes wearing a pretty plain uniform, Sephiroph is much more showy and hes fine. He just has a crazy anime mullet. It could be interesting, the devs clearly want to re-contextualize some stuff and so far it doesn't seem bad. It isn't really clear to the player in the original that SOLDIERs are suppose to be superhuman until you have the flashback outside of Midgard.

 

[Fappy]

-Sees new character-

Oh god, we're officially in Nomura fanfiction territory. This...will not end well

Who, Jessie? Nah, she's not new. Avalanche had more members than just your party members.

https://youtu.be/4_qjybyni28?t=21

This guy wasn't in the original game.

Yeah, that overdesigned wreck that's clearly brought to attention. In fact, even having another motorcycle chase raises alarm bells. Like I've said elsewhere, this entire project has just seemed off from day one. It really reminds me of the Special Editions of Star Wars.

I can get not liking him but the new guy is far from over designed, hes wearing a pretty plain uniform, Sephiroph is much more showy and hes fine. He just has a crazy anime mullet. It could be interesting, the devs clearly want to re-contextualize some stuff and so far it doesn't seem bad. It isn't really clear to the player in the original that SOLDIERs are suppose to be superhuman until you have the flashback outside of Midgard.

Considering the first game's story is unlikely to take us to the Nibelheim flashback I think it makes perfect sense to show how insanely powerful members of SOLDIER are supposed to be earlier. It also kinda foreshadow's Jenova's power (considering it is her cells that make them super soldiers) before the party later encounters Jenova and Hojo in Shinra Tower.

 

[immortalfrieza]

I don't have an issue with them introducing new SOLDIER characters considering their presence in the original are non-existent outside of Cloud and Zack. Hopefully they don't turn out to be dumb characters, of course, but the game looks great so I am giving SE the benefit of the doubt for now.

No kidding. It was really pretty bizarre how they kept on talking about these badass super soldiers that Shinra supposedly sent after AVALANCE. However, aside from Cloud, Zack, and Sephiroth who are either dead, traitors to Shinra, or never actually were SOLDIERS you don't even see a single member. Maybe the new guy could help bridge that gap by actually acting as a representative of that group if there isn't more than just him.

Looks pretty good from that trailer. I'm just hoping that the combat is good and that a certain important person doesn't end up dead in this version since not only would it be incredibly predictable but waste so much character and story potential, not to mention that the way it happened was monumentally stupid. Hell, maybe they could even have somebody else die in their place with something resembling a choice in the matter to give the game a bit of replay value. If they follow FF15's combat I don't doubt that'll be good, the whole game was excellent and only made better from the DLCs.

 

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

I don't even get the point. Probably none of the people working on this remake ever had anything to do with the original. They are changing the story, the tone, the pacing, the characters, the visuals, the gameplay, the music, everything. This won't be Final Fantasy 7 because FF7 already exists and is nothing like what we're seeing here. A decade ago I might have wished for a FF7 with character models that didn't look like Popeye the lego man, but I regret even thinking that now. Once you go in and start retroactively changing a work how do you know where to stop? When something is made it should stand as it is and not be constantly be rewritten over and over by new people who think they can do it better. Movies, games, and books, ect. are special because of the people that made them, a part of them ended up in the work. If you change the team you change the work and you lose what made it special to begin with.

Remakes for things which were already good in the first place don't make sense, because they are already good. You have just as much chance of making it worse as making it better. The only time I can see remakes being worth it is if you are remaking something that wasn't very good to begin with (and probably if only if you are the original creator taking another crack at a failed project with more experience.)

Remakes and sequels are two concepts I wish society on the whole would abandon.

Well, Nomura, Kitase, and Nojima are all back. But that's a problem because all three of them have been creatively tapped out for YEARS. Kitase hasn't directed anything in over a decade and his producing track record has been spotty as best. Heck, he tried to push Motomu Toriyama as the new golden boy and now Toriyama has found himself exiled to the mobile division after the whole FFXIII mess. The last thing Nojima wrote that was halfway decent was FFX and that was nearly twenty years ago. As for Nomura, he's just become creatively stagnant. And of course that's before getting into how they don't even know how many parts this game is going to be (note to Square: episodic has been a complete flop. Thanks for being five years late).

And ultimately that's really what makes this whole project feel off. This doesn't feel like, say, the RE2 remake which was genuinely updating a pretty aged game and making stuff more in line with future canon of a series and maybe fixing some plot holes. VII never really had any problems in story or gameplay, to this day it's one of the best-aged entries in the franchise. In all honesty this is what it feels like: it feels like old men trying to relive their glory days. FFVII was the last time they had an FF that was universally loved (well, except for the relaunch of XIV, but that's a whole different thing) and it was the last really good thing guys like Kitase and Nojima worked on. It really feels like a bunch of washed up, geriatric rock stars trying to make a comeback by going back to the last thing that worked. And, as we know, that's not how things work. Heck, we already have proof this won't work with FFVII because they TRIED to do the whole Compilation of FFVII and that was a mess at best with a bunch of middling projects that nobody cared about. If Square thinks that this is going to bring back their golden age of twenty years ago they're going to be disappointed.

 

[meiam]

I love FF7, but it's aged, specifically the graphic. It was so early for 3D development they had to forgo luxury like hands and mouth!

I'm not super stoke about the gameplay, FF15 gameplay was piss poor, you just held button and let stuff happen, there was barely anything to do in combat, yeah you could teleport around... but why would you? That just split the damage across the board, focus fire is always king. And your attack didn't phase enemy at all, so they'd just turn around and smash your face at random. Magic was either completely useless or so overpowered you could finish boss before they'd even really start. Summon just randomly happened, but they take so long that most of the time the fight was done. There also wasn't really any interesting way to develop your character, FF7 system of materia was way more interesting, but that could very well get axed.

Story was also pretty bad, even beyond having to watch a bunch of extra material, stuff happened for no reason. You completely destroy an entire town to get a summon, yet that summon is only used once in story and any of them could have been used. This also end up killing a character and it's supposed to be really tragic... but the character is in the game maybe 5 minutes altogether, I spent more time talking to the guy at the diner where you start the game than the character who die.

They nailed the feeling of the road trip, and the character banter when your just exploring is great, along with the fun random picture being taken. But part of it didn't work, there was never any reason to camp outside since you were never more than 2 minutes from the closest inn, which give massive exp bonus. And exploration wasn't really rewarded, loot wasn't very interesting, exp wasn't that important and most of the interesting environment were place you'd go because of the story anyway.

Anyway, FF7 is supposed to have a semi turn based mode, I'll see what that look like. I'm playing pillar of eternity 2 at the moment and they'd introduced a turn based mode (previous the game was only real time) and even though they did an incredibly shit job making the turn base mode, it's so much better than the real time combat.

 

[stroopwafel]

In all honesty this is what it feels like: it feels like old men trying to relive their glory days. FFVII was the last time they had an FF that was universally loved (well, except for the relaunch of XIV, but that's a whole different thing) and it was the last really good thing guys like Kitase and Nojima worked on.

Yeah, but what is wrong with that? The current generation of AAA game developers(either in the west or Japan) aren't, for the most part, hitting it out of the park either with uninspired, mediocre, repetitive crap. There is a reason why FF7 is such a beloved game to this day and why it's one of the most pre-ordered and hyped games of any trade show whether in the States or Japan or Europe. Ideas don't exist in a vacuum and maybe contemporary culture is creatively stagnant rehashing the same crap over and over(not just games but movies and music as well) as a reflection of a soulless society. FF7 Remake I think brings back that spark of the '90s when there was still this sense of wonder and it's telling not just for gamers approaching middle age. FF7 had a kind of magic that is lost to time but Remake appears to recapture a lot of it without feeling dated or purposefully nostalgic.

I wouldn't really compare Remake with half-hearted, dispassionate attempts like Collection etc. It's obvious they are giving it their all now.

 

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

Yeah, but what is wrong with that? The current generation of AAA game developers(either in the west or Japan) aren't, for the most part, hitting it out of the park either with uninspired, mediocre, repetitive crap. There is a reason why FF7 is such a beloved game to this day and why it's one of the most pre-ordered and hyped games of any trade show whether in the States or Japan or Europe. Ideas don't exist in a vacuum and maybe contemporary culture is creatively stagnant rehashing the same crap over and over(not just games but movies and music as well) as a reflection of a soulless society. FF7 Remake I think brings back that spark of the '90s when there was still this sense of wonder and it's telling not just for gamers approaching middle age. FF7 had a kind of magic that is lost to time but Remake appears to recapture a lot of it without feeling dated or purposefully nostalgic.

I wouldn't really compare Remake with half-hearted, dispassionate attempts like Collection etc. It's obvious they are giving it their all now.

Because this isn't the Square of 20 years ago; this isn't the company that was making groundbreaking titles like FFVII, FF Tactics, Vagrant Story, Parasite Eve, and Xenogears, this is the Square of the present who struggle to get mainline FF titles out and have no clue what to do with the other titles in their library. Sure, good games are made at Square but usually from projects the executives don't pay attention to (like Bravely Default and Octopath Traveler) or are so successful that they can't bully the project heads (like FFXIV). A big part of this is that they've just continually bled talent for years and they have no rising stars.

Speaking of which, the guys they still have do not inspire confidence. Seriously, they think having Kitase and Nojima back is somehow a good thing? The two of them are completely over the hill, their track records over the past twenty years being completely pathetic. Nomura is a bit better, but he's also responsible for a lot of Compilation of FFVII that was basically a flop when you get down to it and nobody remembers it. These are not guys at the top of their game, these are old men who are creatively spent and the more I see the more it's clear they don't get why FFVII was so powerful. This is just them indulging in their past glories

 

[immortalfrieza]

I'm not super stoke about the gameplay, FF15 gameplay was piss poor, you just held button and let stuff happen, there was barely anything to do in combat, yeah you could teleport around... but why would you? That just split the damage across the board, focus fire is always king. And your attack didn't phase enemy at all, so they'd just turn around and smash your face at random. Magic was either completely useless or so overpowered you could finish boss before they'd even really start. Summon just randomly happened, but they take so long that most of the time the fight was done. There also wasn't really any interesting way to develop your character, FF7 system of materia was way more interesting, but that could very well get axed.

Uh... no? The rest of the post is fine but at this part I was so dumbfounded it was a while before I could form a coherent thought greater than that. It's not quite these levels:

but it's not far off. As someone who played the game I can honestly what was said here about FF15's combat system almost a complete load and I say almost only because your judgement of the magic system (which I hardly ever actually used) and the pointlessness of the summons was correct (but then, they seem to have serious problems making summons worth existing after they perfected it with FF10). Not only is it the greatest combat system they've ever had, bar none, but actually fighting the way you claimed would get a player slaughtered even in some cases where the team was massively overleveled. You had to watch what the enemy was doing and dodge and warp around the battlefield to avoid damage to avoid getting killed, particularly during hunts and boss battles. You couldn't just stand there holding a button against anything but the weakest enemies in the game and expect to win.

 

[meiam]

I'm not super stoke about the gameplay, FF15 gameplay was piss poor, you just held button and let stuff happen, there was barely anything to do in combat, yeah you could teleport around... but why would you? That just split the damage across the board, focus fire is always king. And your attack didn't phase enemy at all, so they'd just turn around and smash your face at random. Magic was either completely useless or so overpowered you could finish boss before they'd even really start. Summon just randomly happened, but they take so long that most of the time the fight was done. There also wasn't really any interesting way to develop your character, FF7 system of materia was way more interesting, but that could very well get axed.

Uh... no? The rest of the post is fine but at this part I was so dumbfounded it was a while before I could form a coherent thought greater than that. It's not quite these levels:
but it's not far off. As someone who played the game I can honestly what was said here about FF15's combat system almost a complete load and I say almost only because your judgement of the magic system (which I hardly ever actually used) and the pointlessness of the summons was correct (but then, they seem to have serious problems making summons worth existing after they perfected it with FF10). Not only is it the greatest combat system they've ever had, bar none, but actually fighting the way you claimed would get a player slaughtered even in some cases where the team was massively overleveled. You had to watch what the enemy was doing and dodge and warp around the battlefield to avoid damage to avoid getting killed, particularly during hunts and boss battles. You couldn't just stand there holding a button against anything but the weakest enemies in the game and expect to win.

I mean... I made it all the way to the terrible second part of the game (where I quit, literally the only good part was the road trip aspect and once that got taken out, no reason to keep playing). Did all the optional dungeons, never grinded, and didn't really care whether I was fighting during the day or night and I was just fine (can't remember if there's a difficulty setting, but I wouldn't have been playing on easy or anything like that). I think this is one of the case where the gameplay looks deep so people think you have to play in fancy way, but it's actually incredibly shallow and the more you try to play it fancy, the harder you make it for yourself. So the player will double down on the fanciness (teleporting around, anticipating/dodging and all that useless stuff), but if you just stand there and hold button, you'll do way better. The only part where that doesn't work is boss, but then you just use 5x magic a few time and gg.

 

[Drathnoxis]

It worked remarkably well for RE2 Remake though which is in my top 3 of the generation. Ideally a remake is keeping the identity of the original intact while re-envisioning it's design with current technology and modern concepts. That is exactly what RE2 Remake did and it's the same as the original it's based on yet totally different and a modern classic in it's own right. So far FF7 Remake is looking like it's going down the exact same path. Having my favorite games from over 20 years remade with such crazy production values is also exciting in it's own right.

Also some of the best games are sequels so I don't know what you mean by that comment. Sequels allow developers to improve on concepts and explore them more in-depth. I think you conflate sequels with uninspired annualized franchises and yeah, they mostly suck.

I wasn't really a fan of RE2 Remake. I enjoyed the original more and thought they made some rather pointless changes.

I don't have an issue with them introducing new SOLDIER characters considering their presence in the original are non-existent outside of Cloud and Zack. Hopefully they don't turn out to be dumb characters, of course, but the game looks great so I am giving SE the benefit of the doubt for now.

No kidding. It was really pretty bizarre how they kept on talking about these badass super soldiers that Shinra supposedly sent after AVALANCE. However, aside from Cloud, Zack, and Sephiroth who are either dead, traitors to Shinra, or never actually were SOLDIERS you don't even see a single member. Maybe the new guy could help bridge that gap by actually acting as a representative of that group if there isn't more than just him.

Looks pretty good from that trailer. I'm just hoping that the combat is good and that a certain important person doesn't end up dead in this version since not only would it be incredibly predictable but waste so much character and story potential, not to mention that the way it happened was monumentally stupid. Hell, maybe they could even have somebody else die in their place with something resembling a choice in the matter to give the game a bit of replay value. If they follow FF15's combat I don't doubt that'll be good, the whole game was excellent and only made better from the DLCs.

You do see SOLDIERS in FF7, they are random mooks you fight: SOLDIER 1st, 2nd, and 3rd.

They suck like any other mook.

 

[CritialGaming]

After seeing the TGS stage presentation, they are doing a great job with this game. The animations, the combat flow, the menu, the options. Everything is just....stellar. I really don't know why people are still so down on the game, even if you hated FF7 originally, you have to respect the amount of effort they are doing to try and get this game right.

Really the only fear left to have is how good of a job they do expanding a small part of the Original into a full 30+ hour game. Clearly they've shown sneak peaks already of how they've added things, and expanded on the original portion of the story, so even that I am less worried about.

It just looks amazing. And that's really all there is to say. Hate it if you want, but it's looking more and more like hate just for the sake of being a nay-sayer.