The Final Fantasy VII remake stole the show at Sony's PlayStation Experience event over the weekend, but publisher Square-Enix then threw fans a curve ball. According to a press release sent out by Square-Enix, the Final Fantasy VII remake will actually be episodic in nature, as opposed to the company releasing the entire game at once as many fans were expecting.
"FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE will be told across a multi-part series, with each entry providing its own unique experience," the press release states.
The announcement took fans entirely by surprise, but now it looks like Square-Enix is offering a little bit of an explanation. Speaking to Dengeki Online (via Kotaku), original Final Fantasy VII game director Yoshinori Kitase says the idea was for the FFVII remake to be bigger than a single release since the beginning.
"If we took everything that's in the original game and remade it at that quality, we couldn't get it all on a single release," said Kitase, speaking on the high-quality of the Sector 1 and Sector 8 areas shown at PlayStation Experience.
Tetsuya Nomura, who is working on Kingdom Hearts III, Final Fantasy XV and the FFVII remake, had this to say about dividing up the remake's content:
"If you did get it into a single release, there would be things we'd have to put into a shortened compilation. Since we thought there would be stuff we would probably have to pare down and supplemental things we probably couldn't add, we decided to divide it up, concluding that we have to do a remake that's fully packed with content."
Whether or not an episodic release plan for FFVII will be more or less successful than releasing the entire game at once will be up to the fans. It certainly seems like a gamble on Square-Enix's part, but perhaps they are confident that players will gobble up the FFVII remake no matter how it's released.
The game's episodic release format isn't the only aspect of the original that's changing. As shown during PlayStation Experience, the original's turn-based gameplay seems to have been completely cut out in favor or a more action-oriented approach similar to what we've seen in gameplay footage of FFXV. Square-Enix, however, assures fans that the story of the game will remain intact. You can check out the latest footage of the game below.
