News

The Final Fantasy VII Remake broke the internet on Saturday, as well as blew through a large number of my monthly allotment of texts on my phone. Because of the highly-predictable hype, Yoshinori Kitase and Tetsuya Nomura did a fast-follow interview with Dengeki Online and Famitsu to discuss all of the things that have been warmly- and not-so-warmly-acknowledged by fans.

Here are some highlights (or lowlights, depending on your point of view):

• The title will in fact contain the word "Remake." Because nobody would know otherwise, right?
• Dev is being managed in-house but with some actual development work being done by third parties.
• All of the character models are new.
• The most recent video is virtually all in-engine.
• You can control multiple party members in battle, or just one, with up to three party members available just as in the original game.
• The battles do have an ATB gauge, but it's not like in the original game. How exactly it differs is not clear, but it appears that it is still tied to Limit Breaks.
• You can still put Cloud in a dress.
• There will be new locations to explore, possibly incorporating some areas fleshed out in Compilation games.
• Yes, the remake will be episodic.

That last point seems to be causing a lot of contention in the community, but for my money, I don't see a reason to not give it a wait and see. Given the expectations around this game, it seems to me that doing it episodically will give the developers at least a chance to maximize the quality of the game, and in theory it will give us as gamers a chance to bail on it with a lower cost if for some reason it's truly awful.

This seems like a good time to remind everyone of the podcast we did on these and other subjects around the remake, right?

Source: Gematsu

Sony's PlayStation Experience Keynote presentation was today and didn't disappoint, revealing gameplay footage of Square-Enix's upcoming remake of Final Fantasy VII for the first time. The trailer focuses on the early game in Midgar, revealing in-game footage of Cloud, Barret, Biggs, Jessie, and Wedge through cinematics.

As the trailer continues, though, there is footage of how the battle system is likely to work. It appears to be more of an action-oriented combat system where the player controls one of the party members at a time, leaving the AI to control the others. Very interestingly, the player was shown controlling Barret in battle instead of leaving only Cloud as an option. Rather than a full menu system, there is now a menu where the player chooses what action they're currently taking. "Summon" and "Magic" were selections, though they went tantalizingly unused. Cloud's "Braver" and Barret's "Big Shot" limits seemed to be used, as well as an unknown dash attack. The battle area appeared very large but it was uncertain whether the player enters a separate area for battle or if combat takes place in the same environment where the player walks around and interacts with the environment.

The footage looked incredibly fun, if somewhat unpolished. The voices didn't match up with the mouths of the characters, which is probably just a factor of getting a trailer out before doing the final localization, acting, or voice matching. But we've finally got some actual game footage of a game some of us have been anticipating for decades, and if it's an accurate representation of what we'll get, we may actually have our long-awaited dreams come true.



Source: Kotaku, YouTube

Get turnt, CoN, because the impossible is coming true: Cloud Strife, of Final Fantasy VII fame, will be a playable fighter in the next Super Smash Bros., available on both Wii U and 3DS. The announcement came at the end of yesterday's Nintendo Direct, along with the promise of a "Super Smash Bros. Special Broadcast." The fact that Cloud was announced as an appetizer for this later event seems sufficient reason to get excited about what else -- perhaps even more of the Square Enix persuasion? -- might be in store.

We also learned from the same Squenix Nintendo Direct that two Dragon Quest games, VII and VIII, will finally be getting Western localizations on the 3DS in the second half of 2016. This confirms the rumors we heard last summer; the titles have not previously been released in the West due to concern at Square Enix as to whether they would be able to sell enough copies.

Source: Siliconera, Siliconera

In an interview with the French videogame website Jeuxvideo, Nobuo Uematsu said that he would not be working on the remake of Final Fantasy 7 "at all."

It's hard to know exactly how to feel about this. FF7 boasts, after all, one of the best-liked of Uematsu's soundtracks; it seems odd to not have the legendary composer involved, even in a supervising or purely symbolic/honorary role. On the other hand, the remake may well not actually require any new composition, in which case Square Enix have already proved themselves perfectly capable of remastering and re-recording soundtracks without the oversight of original composers.

Uematsu's last major composition project for Square Enix was the soundtrack for Final Fantasy XIV back in 2010 (though he has also been involved in music for its expansions); since then he has headed up several soundtracks for Sakaguchi's Mistwalker studio, and he is currently listed as lead composer for the Kickstarter-funded Project Phoenix.

Source: Siliconera

If Square Enix were Apple, they would have had the HD Remake done when they announced it, and it would have just shown up in the PlayStation Network store during the presentation. What's really happened, though, is that an unannounced port of the newest PC version of Final Fantasy VII has appeared for iOS devices, at least in New Zealand; regular readers of CoN news will recall that iOS releases tend to start there and appear in other locales going westward over the next day or two.

The release trailer doesn't seem to make anything clear regarding how the game works. There are no visible touch controls shown in any of the clips, which are mostly clips of FMV cutscenes. However, Engadget reports that instead of reconfiguring the game to be more touch-friendly, the game will have a virtual joypad on screen. I personally suspect that the game will remain in the standard 4:3 ratio, leaving room on the sides of the screen for controls, at least for phones. If you've already gotten the game on your iOS device, perhaps you can fill us in - the New Zealand price has come in at $19.99, so I can't say that I'm up for it just yet.

This version of the game will include a few cheats by default, such as the ability to max our all character stats with the push of a button, and the ability to turn off random encounters. This will essentially allow the player to treat the game as a Final Fantasy VII slideshow if desired, with most of the gaming elements replaced with short bursts between cutscenes.

The game is supported only by iOS 8, and the hardware required appears to be of the iPhone 5s generation, meaning phones and tablets roughly two years old and newer. There's no indication of an Android version at this time.

Source: Engadget

Yeah, of course you heard, duh. And you probably heard also that there will be changes coming to the new version, and we're not yet sure what most of them are. So, the CoNcast Team jumped at the chance to do some supposition while we wait for something more visual or playable, and we recorded an episode with our thoughts. Listen now, to be sure you can point out all the ways in which we were wrong later.

Also listen to more talk about Four Job Fiesta, as I played my FJF run and streamed it to Twitch as we recorded. It was a trainwreck.

Source: The CoNcast on iTunes, The CoNcast Subscription Feed, This Episode