New Final Fantasy games “take precedence” over FF7 remake, says Square

Square Enix has implicitly stated that new Final Fantasy games “take precedence” over a Final Fantasy 7 remake.

The information came out in a Final Fantasy 7 retrospective in Japanese mag Famitsu, (thanks to Gematsu for the translation). Tetsuya Nomura, having admitted that there was significantly large demand from fans for a remake, said that Square Enix’s focus was on creating new titles.

“There are a lot of people who want a remake of Final Fantasy 7,” he said. “However, new titles take precedence. We work our hardest to make something that might be even better than Final Fantasy 7.”

Adding: “The new Final Fantasy must overcome the Final Fantasy of the past.”

Nomura has faith in Yoshinori Kitase as the true successor to the series.

Devs at Square Enix have expressed mixed opinions on whether or not the studio should go ahead and remake the hugely popular title from 1997. Ever since the game’s opening sequence was recreated with improved graphics as a PS3 tech demo in 2005 the prospect of a remake has been a much-discussed topic.

Past comments on the idea from Kitase have warned that if a remake were to happen, he probably won’t be able to resist making changes.

“If I may speak as a game creator, if we were to produce a remake of 7, for example, I would be really tempted to delete things and add new elements, new systems or whatever because if we were to make exactly the same thing now, it’d be like a repeat,” Kitase said.

“It’d be an issue of repetition and not as much fun to make such a game. So I’d be really interested in rearranging games or reshaping games into something slightly different even though it’s supposed to be the same game.”

Obviously this would be pretty likely to annoy a few fans, especially considering the kind of dedicated fanbase FF7 has, something Kitase acknowledges and perhaps one of the bigger reasons this might not happen.

“If we did that, the fans might be disappointed or [say] ‘this is not what I was expecting’ so in that sense maybe some might say that it’s better to let memory be memory.

“When we play the games we made years ago, sometimes we think ‘oh, that is not really cool’ or ‘that probably should have been a bit better than that’ and that sort of thing,” he continued.

“But on the other hand, those slightly negative features and bits, for some of the really enthusiastic fans of these titles, that gives the game extra flavor or personality or whatever. So maybe they would rather we didn’t do anything about it and we just leave it in as it is. It’s very difficult to decide what we should we keep in and what we should take out.”

2010 saw Square Enix boss Yoichi Wada get fans’ hopes up when he said the company were “going to explore the possibility” of developing a FF7 remake.

Kitase emphasized just how much of a huge task taking on the project would be just before FF13 was released:

“If we were to recreate Final Fantasy VII with the same level of graphical detail as you see in Final Fantasy 13, we’d imagine that that would take as much as three or four times longer than the three-and-a-half-years it has taken to put this Final Fantasy together!” he said.

“So it’s looking pretty unrealistic to happen!”