Square Enix is releasing its highly anticipated Final Fantasy VII Remake as a multiple-part series.
According to director Tetsuya Nomura, releasing the remake in this way — which sounds almost episodic — will avoid the need to cut content from the role-playing game that’s sold over 100 million units since its 1997 release. Square Enix confirmed to GamesBeat that Final Fantasy VII Remake will come in installments, translating an interview from Famitsu magazine. “Producing a proper HD remake of Final Fantasy VII that maintains the same feeling of density of the original results in a volume of content that couldn’t possibly fit into one installment,” producer Yoshinori Kitase said.
Given the visually impressive gameplay footage shown at this weekend’s PlayStation Experience in San Francisco, it’s clear that remaking Final Fantasy VII (with upwards of 39 hours of gameplay), essentially from scratch, is going to be a massive task. In this light, and considering the likely difference in budget between the PlayStation original and the PlayStation 4 remake, the decision to split up the release does make some sense.
“If we dedicated our time to a single release, parts of it would become summarized,” said Nomura, as reported by Gematsu. “We’d have to cut some parts … so rather than remake the game as a full volume, we decided to do multiple parts.”
“The idea that a remake of Final Fantasy VII would not fit into a single release was there from the very beginning,” added producer Yoshinori Kitase. “As you can see in the trailer, we showed Sector 1 and Sector 8, but in those areas alone, I think you can see a lot of density. When you’re remaking the entirety of the original version in that quality, it’s not possible to fit it all in one release.”