The Final Fantasy 7 Remake got another trailer at PSX, back on December 5th! The game looks stellar so far and, I'm excited!!
Back when it was announced at E3, my opinions on the FF7 Remake were more like "holy crap? they're actually doing it???" than legitimate excitement for the game. But when I watched this trailer, my attitude shifted quite drastically. This trailer managed to remind me how much I cared about FF7, and how excited I was to see it retold in better graphics and in full voice acting. (No lie: I had to pause the trailer the first time I watched it when Jessie said her opening line because I was too overwhelmed.)
I'm excited for a lot of things shown in this trailer!! The graphics look gorgeous, and the gameplay looks like it's gonna be a lot of fun.
The trailer showed Cloud, while navigating what I assume is Sector 7's dilapidated Mako Reactor, ducking through a hole in the wall, and squeezing between a small gap, which, are little things, but seeing that sort of stuff on a more frequent scale could be pretty interesting, in my opinion! A Midgar that's fully capable of being interacted with? Awesome.
Not to mention, Midgar itself. It's HUGE. The streets are fully rendered, completely with city lights (that reflect off of Cloud's sword!?) and an atmosphere that feels really good. There were only a few sections shown in the trailer, and not for very long, either, but it feels really big. It feels like there's a lot to explore, and, that's one of the things that excites me the most about this trailer. I can't wait to walk around this Midgar. I can't wait to see the buildings around me, rather than looking down on them. I can't wait to move through these streets, especially now that there won't be any preset camera angles to deal with. I can't wait to explore Midgar as if I'm really there. It looks.... It looks wonderful. It looks fantastic. I really, really can't wait.Another thing that caught my attention about the trailer was at roughly 1:10, when Cloud is surrounded by Shinra troops. This is an effect any fan who's watched the Advent Children movie will be familiar with. The image glitches, flashing, blurring, accompanied by a high-pitch whine and static.
In Advent Children, it was meant to portray the effects of geostigma. Or, basically, portray that something is wrong.
Here, I figure it is meant to signify Cloud's not-quite-stable memories and mental state. This happens plenty of times within the original game itself, just with different effects. (The latest I saw: a red overlay, that high-pitched whine, while Cloud's model distorts for a second.)
I'm really excited to see this play out, to see how they carry out this plotline with the technology and graphical capabilities they have today. I have high hopes.
(Also, did anyone else find it interesting this happened when he was surrounded by Shinra troops? I mean, considering....)
Slightly on this subject, here's something a lot of people have pointed out, including tumblr user princessmatsuoka and Nomura himself:
Cloud looks sick.
He's thin, he's pale, he's got bags under his eyes---sure, he's got muscles, but his skin is still sticking to them, and he's hunched over most of the time. It's a good reflection of all the trauma he's been through before getting to Midgar: locked in a test tube for four years, Mako poisoning, on top of his emotional / mental state.
To quote tumblr user leonheartleon, Cloud doesn't look like pretty. He looks "like a young adult who suffers from multiple traumas and mental disorders". And that's real good.
(The thing I'm obviously most excited about when it comes to this remake? The things they can do to portray this story with the technology they have today.)
Anyway, I should probably talk about the battle system, too.
As shown in the trailer, the game is going to have an action-based battle system. Or, more action-based than the original, anyway.
Kitase says they're aiming for a "seamless active battle".
Nomura adds:
"There won’t be any actions that require a technique. By using the new system, we want to do action battles while also being able to fight while thinking strategically.”
A couple of people are mad about this decision, and would prefer it stuck to more traditional-RPG roots. While I agree revamping the original FF7's RPG battle system to make it more interactive might not have been a bad idea, I honestly couldn't care less.
I started replaying the original FF7 a few nights ago, because I wasn't sure how else to vent my hype for the Remake, and found myself quitting within the hour because I kept getting really pissed off at random encounters. Sitting around and waiting for your attack bar to fill is boring, the encounters felt like they happened too frequently---you walk three steps, and then, oops! Another random encounter. It was really frustrating, and how slow they were paced played no small part in that.
Honestly, I'll be glad to see any battle system in the Remake, so long as it's not the exact same as the original's. Besides, it's reportedly going to be a little like Kingdom Hearts, and, I love Kingdom Hearts. So, I'm alright with that.
Finally: the FF7 Remake is going to be a multi-part series. Kitase says they knew it wouldn't fit into a single release from the beginning.
Here's the full section of that interview:
Final Fantasy VII Remake is a multi-part series. Please tell us more about this decision.
Kitase: “The idea that a remake of Final Fantasy VII would not fit into a single release was there from the very beginning. We still can’t share more information about its multiple parts, but please look forward to future announcements.”
Nomura: “If we dedicated our time to a single release, parts of it would become summarized. We’d have to cut some parts, and additional parts would come in few, so rather than remake the game as a full volume, we decided to do multiple parts.
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.”
The world has been made so big that they can't fit it on a single disc.But, hey, in my opinion? I'd rather have the giant world to explore. I'd rather have all the story there. I don't want anything to be unnecessarily cut from this, and if this is how they have to ensure nothing from the original is lost, then so be it.
This multi-part approach means that they can explore each episode, each section of the game more deeply, too. And, they can even expand on parts of the story. Nomura says this about it:
“In addition to delving into these episodes more deeply, we’re preparing a number of mechanisms and such. To those who played the original version will know the important parts and understand the story from the beginning to the end. Also for these people, I hope that they can be surprised once again.”
I'm looking forward to see where this is going.
All in all, I think it looks like the FF7 Remake is gonna be really great.
