Final Fantasy VII Remake

Unreleased

Final Fantasy VII Remake is an upcoming HD remake of Final Fantasy VII, originally released for the PlayStation in 1997. The game is entirely remade, using the story and characters from the original, and will be released in parts. The official title is Final Fantasy VII Remake to convey its status as a remake rather than a spin-off or sequel. The game is being developed by Square Enix's Business Division 1, helmed by Yoshinori Kitase as producer (the original director of Final Fantasy VII) and Tetsuya Nomura as director (original character designer known as the director for Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children and the Kingdom Hearts series).

A surprise announcement was made on June 15 during E3 2015 that Final Fantasy VII would be remade for PlayStation 4. The debut gameplay trailer was shown on December 5, 2015 during PlayStation Experience 2015. The entirety of it is in-game, except for the snippets from the E3 2015 teaser trailer.

Gameplay
After the first gameplay trailer was shown in December 2015, producer Yoshinori Kitase said the new game is not completely action-based, but would have more of that element than the original game. He identified the unique point of Final Fantasy and RPGs being the players' ability to choose equipment, capabilities and magic to be strategic-minded, saying this would be preserved for the remake.

Unlike the encounter battles in the original version, the team is aiming for a seamless active battle for the remake. The battle is to be similar to Dissidia Final Fantasy. To achieve this kind of flavor, the team has gathered developers that worked on both Dissidia and Kingdom Hearts. There will be ATB and Limit gauges, but players won't have to wait for the ATB gauge to fill to attack; instead it will be a new system integrated in the action style. The party will include three members and the player can freely switch among them.

Setting
Gaia, referred to as the Planet by the people of the world, is a technologically advanced planet dominated by humans, who are the only major sentient race other than a few nearly extinct species. The world is economically, militarily, and politically dominated by the powerful conglomerate of Shinra Electric Power Company, which profits from the use of Mako Reactors.

The reactors siphon a special type of energy—called "Mako"—out of the Planet and convert it into electricity. One of the byproducts of the extraction and refinement of Mako energy is Materia, a concentrated form of Mako which allows the wielder to harness its magical properties. President Shinra leads his eponymous organization, and is the world's de facto ruler. Unbeknown to most of the world Shinra is involved with many horrible genetic experiments, which have created many of the monsters that roam the Planet.

Mako energy is drawn from the Lifestream, a flow of life-force beneath the Planet's surface. All life originates from the Lifestream, and returns to it upon death and the Lifestream is the sum of all the life that has ever and will ever live upon the Planet. The process of extracting Mako energy drains the life of the Planet to generate electricity. This can be seen in the Shinra's capital city of Midgar surrounded by a wasteland where plants barely grow.

Characters
The cast featured in the original Final Fantasy VII is said to return with all the same playable characters. So far, Cloud and Barret have been shown.


 * Cloud Strife is the main protagonist, posing as a former member of SOLDIER now operating as a mercenary caught up in the actions of eco-terrorist group AVALANCHE.
 * Barret Wallace, the leader of AVALANCHE, wields a gun on his right arm in place of his injured hand. Despite his brash and loud-mouthed personality, he is a caring person.

Story
The story is expected to follow the original closely. The first gameplay trailer shows scenes faithfully recreating AVALANCHE's bombing mission on the Sector 1 Reactor.

Music
Nobuo Uematsu will not return for the remake ; it is still unknown who will compose/arrange the music for it.

During the trailer shown at PlayStation Experience 2015 the Distant Worlds orchestrated version of the "Opening - Bombing Mission" played.

Development
The team had plans for a remake on several occasions, but finally decided to do it. One of the main reasons was the timing for the staff members developing the game being suitable, and "hitting that age". Of the staff that worked on the original Final Fantasy VII, and those who are working on the remake, Tetsuya Nomura is the youngest at 45 years old. With the timing and opportunity in mind, the trio of Kitase, Nojima and Nomura decided to go for it.

Shinji Hashimoto, a Square Enix executive and Final Fantasy brand manager, came to Kitase and Nomura with the topic of the remake, as he had been involved with marketing and sales with the original version, and the game has a special place in his heart. Tetsuya Nomura assumed Kitase was to direct the remake, and was surprised when he realized he had been given the role.

The remake will be different from the original game. Nomura has said that simply overhauling the graphics would not surpass the original version. He described the remake as "vastly evolved" to the story as "there will be more work added to it". Parts of the announcement video will be used in the game. The team will be looking to the movie Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, which Nomura also directed, for visual references and inspiration.

Various companies, including CyberConnect2, are assisting development. CyberConnect2's production tastes differ somewhat from that of Square Enix's, so the two companies are keeping close with each other.

2015
On June 15 the video game website Siliconera reported Final Fantasy VII is getting a remake and would be coming first to PlayStation 4, with other platforms to be announced later. Later that day, during Sony's E3 conference, the announcement trailer for the remake showed scenes from Midgar, its slums and glimpses of Cloud and Barret. Yoshinori Kitase was announced as producer, Tetsuya Nomura as director and Kazushige Nojima as scenario writer. The remake announcement was met with wild enthusiasm and sent Square Enix's stock surging to its highest since November 2008, at the close in Tokyo trading. The announcement trailer became the most-watched E3 2015 video game trailer.

The project had been in development for some time before it was announced at E3 2015. The announcement decision was done to boost PlayStation 4 sales in Japan, in the hopes of widening the install base by reassuring the platform will have games to look forward to.

A trailer featuring gameplay was shown on 5th December 2015 during PlayStation Experience. It was announced the game would be released in parts due to the dense content, and producer Yoshinori Kitase addressed fans directly in a blog post afterward explaining the decision.

Visuals and art direction
Nomura has said there are people even within Square Enix who put "too much of a focus on the 'VII-ness' and are resistant to changing it." He has said that the "FFVII-ness" isn't easily defined as it means different things for different people. Nomura wants to separate the feelings of nostalgia and being "trapped" by the series of the past, as in his opinion declaring "FF is like this" makes one unable to create a Final Fantasy game.

The starting point of development was to maintain the graphic quality of characters like Cloud, Tifa and Aerith as how they had appeared in Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children in real-time while playing the game. The team is aiming to balance realism and a stylized look. If the characters were to appear too realistic, they wouldn't be recognizable.

Square Enix is using Epic Games' Unreal Engine 4 to create the game, rather than the Luminous Engine Final Fantasy XV is being developed on. Graphics technology company Geomerics will be involvement using their "award-winning global illumination technology, Enlighten, as the indirect lighting solution of choice.

Release
The game is planned for multi-part series as a remake of Final Fantasy VII would not fit into a single release. Was the team to dedicate to a single release, the content would need to be cut, so rather than remake the game as a full volume, it was decided to do it in parts.