Final Fantasy 7 Remake: here's a video to round up everything we know so far
With the slow drip-feed of Final Fantasy 7 Remake news over the last four years, it's worth taking a moment to round up everything we know so far.
The Final Fantasy 7 remake was announced during E3 2015, and since then news has been slow. It might have been that the game was announced too early, but hype has never really died down.
It wasn't until 2017 that gameplay details really started to emerge, and we learned that the game would have new mechanics and combat systems. We recently saw some new footage, making for the most substantial reveal in years (we've already done a deep dive into it with some nerdy fan theories).
The game is also still on track to be episodic. It was in development parallel to Kingdom Hearts 3, which has since, miraculously, been finished and released.
The video below from Arekkz collects together all the footage, all the interview snippets, and everything we can say with some certainty about Final Fantasy 7 Remake.
The video points out that, while the new combat system isn't the same as the old Active Time Battle system, there's some indication that the ATB and Limit Break gauges will still appear in battle, and it's been said that the game won't be "as real time" as Kingdom Hearts 3. What this means, exactly, isn't quite clear yet.
The video reminds us that each separate episode is planned to be as long as the entire original game (we're not sure how many episodes there will be yet), and that the game is being developed in Unreal Engine 4, a depature from FF15's use of the in-house Luminous Studio engine. The characters are being built from scratch rather than being based on their Advent Children models.
There will be story changes made, with additional features and plot points added, for greater depth. The team has said that they don't want the game to be a purely nostalgic experience, and that there will be new bits to discover or sections that have been updated (as we've said, it's important that they get the tone right with all of this).
Finally, the video points out that the game's PlayStation exclusivity isn't necessarily confirmed beyond a 'play it first on PlayStation 4' note at the end of the very first trailer (which, with the PS5 on the horizon, should mean that we see a release before the end of 2020). It's likely to be at least a timed exclusive, but there's always the possibility of it showing up elsewhere.
In any case, more information is set to be revealed in June - hopefully we'll be able to fill in some of the blanks we're left with here.