The Final Fantasy 7 remake skipped E3, but it's still in active development
Surprise surprise, the Final Fantasy 7 remake was a no-show at E3 2018 - but it's still being worked on, and it's well beyond the initial concept stage.
The Final Fantasy 7 remake was first shown at E3 2015, a full three years ago. We were hyped, and since then? Slivers of information. We found out in 2016 that it would span multiple full games, although we're still not entirely sure what that means. In 2017, we got these two screenshots. "Great", we said, "it's real"!
Since then, we've had almost nothing. We've heard talk of the game changing hands, starting again, shifting development teams. In May last year, Square Enix was hiring more people to work on it. Earlier this year we got a little bit of concept art.
Mostly, though, we've had silence.
You could be forgiven for thinking that Final Fantasy 7 was either not happening, or was on hiatus. But, according to an interview with Square Enix's Tetsuya Nomura at The Verge, this is very much not the case.
According to Nomura the game is being developed "in parallel" with Kingdom Hearts 3, and is "not just in the early concept stages" - it's in active development.
Once Kingdom Hearts 3 launches on January 29, 2019, Nomura and his team will be more able to devote time to Final Fantasy 7.
Perhaps the game was revealed somewhat prematurely, but Square Enix is dealing with two games here that have massive fan expectations placed on them - it makes sense to take their time and do them right.