.

[luksy]

For that reason they're probably going to have to create a lot of rearrangements of the original themes to fit with the new cinematography

So what you're saying is...dubstep.

 

[hian]

So what you're saying is...dubstep.

No, what I'm saying is that you'll have to restructure the compositions and the arrangements - not necessarily the entire style or the melodies.

However, that's a lot of work and if you're going to go down that route, chances are you'll feel tempted to do more changes - at least that's my experience working with audio production. If I have to rearrange an entire track from the ground up, and I'm going to start chopping it up, fading, cross-fading with other tracks etc. changing the dynamic of a tune to fit a scene - then it's no going to take long before I start thinking "well, maybe this track don't work as well as I though... Maybe I should add some more percussion, or remove a synth and replace it with a guitar" etc.
Suddenly the end product is something else entirely, even if the base melody line(s) is/are the same.

 

[luksy]

Sorry I was being sarcastic, I'd rather poke my eardrums out with a hot poker than have another franchise jump on the dub-bandwagon.

 

[dkma841]

.

 

[DLPB_]

“Since there’s a possibility that the command battle system of the old days might not work today, we’re thinking hard about what kind of direction we can take it.

Yeah, because the old battle system is just impossible to program these days, isn't it *sarcasm*. "Might not work today" - what nonsense.  It would work very easily, but it wouldn't have the mass appeal your sell-out company now wants. 

It's a real shame that the ff7r didn't come about at same time as FFX for PS2...  it would have been the perfect time and would have maintained its roots.

 

[gjoerulv]

“Normally, when you do a remake, it becomes somewhere along the lines of a familiar action RPG, so we’re looking at how we can put out something like Final Fantasy VII while still surprising players.

Is... this translated correctly?? iirc all other FF remakes were made into action RPGs as well. Please, correct me if I'm wrong...

 

[hian]

EDIT, I went and did some fact-checking, so here's the original quote in Japanese and my translation -

Question
(リメイク版FF7について。リメイクしつつハイエンドにするのは相当ハードルが高いと思うが？)

In relation to/on the topic of the remake.
While/in remaking, I think it's safe to say the hurdle is pretty high to make everything high end, right?

北瀬「ビジュアルの方向性は見えてきている。

Kitase :
We can see the visual direction of it/the visual direction it's going to go in

一方でバトルシステムなどは試行錯誤しながら詰めている状態。

On the other hand, things like the battle system are in a state of being put together through trial and error.

当時のコマンドバトルは今は通用しない可能性もあるので、どういう方向に持っていくかに気を遣っている。

Because there is a possibility that the command battles of back then (in the original) won't be popular/won't resonate/carry through (with people) now, we're concerned about what direction to take it (the remake) in.
 
普通にリメイクすると、どこかで見たようなアクションRPGになってしまうので、
いかにFF7らしさを出しながら驚きのあるものにするか、を追い求めていく

If we [just remake it/remake it ordinarily/make a common remake] it'll just end up like [some typical action RPG/like an action RPG you've seen somewhere before],
so we're pursuing how to bring out the feeling of (the original) FF7 whilst also making it something that contains surprises.

開発度などは聞かないでください(笑)」

Please don't ask (anymore) about the direction of the development (laugh/smile)

So this is how I interpret this -

He is not saying they aren't doing a menu-based combat system, or that it won't work - He is saying that there is a possibility that a menu-based system won't be well-received anymore, and that this a concern they're thinking about at the moment.
He's qualifying this by saying that despite this, the primary concern for the development is to keep the feeling of the original, whilst adding something new and fresh that can surprise people.
He does not want it to become just another action RPG - He's specifically saying that if they were to simply "remake it", most likely meaning if they were to just follow conventional design trends etc. it would end up like just another typical action RPG, and the "natteshimau" verb-ending at the end of that statement denotes that that's not something he considers to be positive or desires.

So from this what we can gather is -
A.) they've decided the visual direction of the game, and the general design, but not on the specific game-play mechanics, such as how to do the battles, so they're slowly trying different variants at the moment to find one that satisfy their criteria for what a good FF7 battle system should be (which he then goes on to state)
B.) they want to change up the battle system to make it a new and surprising experience, but they don't want it to turn into your average action RPG
C.) they might opt out of the command system based on popular sentiments.

That's it.

Everything after this is now outdated. I am not going to edit it out, because that would be kinda dishonest, so here's me jumping to conclusion based on bad information. Enjoy. (really though, I should know better than to accept random translations on the internet by now. Even amongst journalists, most are just bad at translating Japanese. Not because they don't know the language, but because they're knowledge is mostly theoretical, and they don't enough enough experience with the natural use of the language.)

Yeah, because the old battle system is just impossible to program these days, isn't it *sarcasm*. "Might not work today" - what nonsense.  It would work very easily, but it wouldn't have the mass appeal your sell-out company now wants. 

It's a real shame that the ff7r didn't come about at same time as FFX for PS2...  it would have been the perfect time and would have maintained its roots.

I can't believe Kitase is saying BS like that when his company's previous numbered FF title (FF13) had a menu-based fighting system, and when one of their best-ranking and best-selling RPG franchises at the moment, the Bravely series, has menu-based combat.

I can't believe he is saying that as they relaunch the original FF7 on new platforms constantly, and it being the best-selling FF game in the entire franchise, which still sells today despite it being so "dated" its system "no longer works" apparently.

I can't believe he is saying this when Japanese companies are still producing several of RPGs for next-gen consoles, like the Persona series, the Atelier series with menu-based battle systems.

It's BS plain and simple. Kitase, I am sorry to say that despite being a long-time producer of video games, you clearly have no idea what you're talking about. You're out of touch with the fan-base, judging by almost every single poll and comment I've seen on the topic of the remake, you're also out of touch with the industry and the very genre that the game you're now producing original came from. That's disgraceful to say the least.

Is... this translated correctly?? iirc all other FF remakes were made into action RPGs as well. Please, correct me if I'm wrong...

Every FF remake I've ever seen was a menu-based game (FF3-4 most notably among them), as has every other RPG remake I've ever seen (granted they are few and far between - the Wild Arms 1 remake though is a good example though).

Kitase is pulling things straight out of his ass. Maybe he's grown senile?


Seriously though - this is so hilariously bad it's giving me a headache. I am this far from sitting down and recording a lengthy rant in Japanese directed at Nomura and Kitase, and sending the link to the SE members twitter, or writing a letter and sending directly to the HQ.
Probably won't have an impact but at least when the remake turns into a turd completely butchering anything and everything that made the original a good game, I can send another letter/video and go "ファンたちの言う事無視して、FF7のオリジナルは何でいいゲームとして思われた理由がか分からんのにリメイクしたらこうなるって言っただろう！ざまあみろ！”

 

[Kefka]

Wow, I can't believe I didn't hear the news of a REAL FF7 remake until just this week! (And then it took me a while to read this entire thread, lol). Anyway, I'm afraid I have to concur with those who are sceptical or even anxious about SquareEnix screwing this up big time. Their latest games are just proof that they simply don't know how to make good RPGs anymore. Most of it has already been said in this thread multiple times, e.g. the abandonement of the classical world map, the number of towns, NPCs, and sidequests continuously shrinking from game to game, ability systems getting simpler and leaving less room for customization (the crystarium, ugh!), and so on...

Funny thing is, instead of thinking about  the things I'd like to see, I always come up with a list of what I absolutely DON'T wish for in the remake. Here's my top 5 absolute no-nos for an FF7 remake (which would give me nightmares if implemented):

1.) Dropping the world map. I didn't like that approach in FF10 and FF12, and FF13 was the horror. When the world map is not there, something is missing. In fact, whether I buy this game or not will heavily depend on the existence of a world map. On top of that, so much important stuff AND sidequests in FF7 happen on the world map, so I simply can't imagine the game working properly without it. This is basically a make-or-break factor for me.

2.) Having only one controllabe party member in battle. What I always liked most about RPGs was the "party feeling" they provided, and that comes from being able to command multiple characters at once. The approaches taken in FF13 (and now apparently FF15 as well) are an absolute worst-case scenario to me. I sincerely hope that when Kitase and Nomura talk about preserving the feeling of the original, they mean having a fully controllable party. Together with the existence of a world map, this will be another make-or-break factor for me.

3.) Changing the story (that includes both cutting content due to laziness/convenience, or adding stuff from the mind-bendingly stupid compilation)

4.) Advent Children-like character design. They've always looked strange to me, so... unfamiliar. I've always preferred the anmie-style of the original, and my ideal characters for a remake would be those that are seen in the FMVs of the original, only in HD.

5.) Keeping all the funny scenes. Some of them have already been mentioned here, so I'm not going to repeat them. I know this will be very hard or even impossible when opting for a realistic graphics style, but it's scenes like these that give a game a "heart". And if realism means that funny and humorous scenes can't be made anymore because they would seem absurd, then they shouldn't choose a realistic character style to begin with.

@hian: yeah, you really should write them a rant letter telling them how to do it right. I would if I knew any japanese. Or maybe, we could start an online petition for the stuff we want and absolutely DON'T want to see in the remake. Do you think it's too late for that already? At least then, when the game still gets messed up, we can at least say that we tried.

 

[hian]

@hian: yeah, you really should write them a rant letter telling them how to do it right. I would if I knew any japanese. Or maybe, we could start an online petition for the stuff we want and absolutely DON'T want to see in the remake. Do you think it's too late for that already? At least then, when the game still gets messed up, we can at least say that we tried.

They still haven't started to select for game-play systems, just concept testing, so I wouldn't say it's too late to voice one's opinion.
Whether it is likely to have an effect is another tale entirely.

At the end of the day, I don't really think Nomura and Co are much open to suggestions. First, they're getting on in their years, and people at that age tend to be more stubborn in their ways than young people. Secondly, they've obviously already secluded themselves from fans, because they're already flirting with ideas that both the majority of western and Japanese fans alike, vocally object to all over the internet.
Finally, Nomura has said some pretty disturbing things about how it's important to not be too tied down to the original, and that he doesn't like the concept of JRPGs etc.

However, I am considering giving this a go.
If there are others here who thinks this is worth a try, and have some words they'd like included feel free to chip in. I'll write a script over the weekend, and then I'll decided whether to deliver it in writing or as a video.
If it doesn't pan out, I'll at least get to make a follow up saying "I told you so - you guys should be flogged. kthnxbai"

 

[dkma841]

.

 

[DLPB_]

Secondly, they've obviously already secluded themselves from fans, because they're already flirting with ideas that both the majority of western and Japanese fans alike, vocally object to all over the internet.

Yup.  Years before this was even announced I predicted this would be the outcome.  It didn't really take the Oracle.  I hoped it wouldn't.  They have no intention of making FF7r faithful to the original, because they consider FF7 too archaic and want to have mass appeal.  They should just call the remake "FF7: Alienation".  I am still really interested in which parts I will find an improvement and which they will completely fuck up.  ;D

 

[Fischkopf]

To illustrate - While in the original characters just stood around and talked to each other rather statically with the camera locked in one position, that's probably not going to be the case anymore. Scenes will be designed to be more cinematic, with angles changing, panning, etc.
and more movement from the characters etc. for dramatic effect.
In that kind of cinematography the old-school set-up and use of the score won't work very well. It will feel very unnatural.

For that reason they're probably going to have to create a lot of rearrangements of the original themes to fit with the new cinematography - meaning they'll probably redo the entire soundtrack.

Just saying.

I can see what you mean but I'm not sure if the game would profit from such drastic changes...

I'm not sure if I even want every scene involving dialog to be more cinematic, because there is so much dialog in the original game, they would have to cut out a LOT of stuff for budget reasons alone, which again would mean less interactivity in the game. Speaking of which, I don't like the cheesy soap opera-standard acting they have going on with the cutscenes in their latest games anyway...

In my opinion they need go a little more back to the basics in that regard. In the original ending there isn't any talking in the cutscenes (except the ending). They were used merely for dramatic purposes to support climaxes in the story. They provided a nice contrast to the more calm dialog heavy parts of the game.

 

[hian]

@hian Gematsu is not some random bs journalist it's one of the most popular, well known and respected Japanese game website's out there and many sites like Neogaf and many other game sites gets their Japanese games info from there most of the time first. So dunno why your acting like you know better than them

Because in this case I do, as demonstrated by translation - which if you spoke the language you'd be able to make an educated opinion on, but if you don't, obviously can't.
I am not "acting" like I know better, (as a person of higher education dealing primarily with the Japanese language, who speaks, read/writes the language, and lives in the country) I am making a correction on the framing of the story due to a fault in the translation. These people are no more an authority on this, than am I.

In this case, the translation is shoddy (perhaps it was rushed) - end of story. Point in case, the IGN "re-article" on this piece features a cleaned up translation that is much closer to mine, than to the original one.

I even provided the actually quotes broken down, with alternatives for the words and inflections that are ambiguous. If you still think the original translation isn't bad or misleading, I can break the entire thing down to you word by word, particle by particle, verb-ending by verb-ending, and show you exactly where it gets things wrong. Would that satisfy you?

I can see what you mean but I'm not sure if the game would profit from such drastic changes...

Depends on what you mean by "benefit".
It benefits the cinematic experience of the game for people who're looking for that kind of stuff, but it ties together with what you say next, and leads to -

I'm not sure if I even want every scene involving dialog to be more cinematic, because there is so much dialog in the original game, they would have to cut out a LOT of stuff for budget reasons alone, which again would mean less interactivity in the game. Speaking of which, I don't like the cheesy soap opera-standard acting they have going on with the cutscenes in their latest games anyway...

- the fact that they'll probably cut a lot of story content and dialogue to stream-line the scenes.

People standing around spouting tons of dialogue and exposition is not good movie-making. Games these days approach story-telling much more like the movies, than what games used to do.

They'll probably rewrite the entire script, and stream-line all the major story events to enable a more "exciting" telling of the story.

In my opinion they need go a little more back to the basics in that regard. In the original ending there isn't any talking in the cutscenes (except the ending). They were used merely for dramatic purposes to support climaxes in the story. They provided a nice contrast to the more calm dialog heavy parts of the game.

Well to be fair, this game might not even feature much in terms of cut-scenes, because the graphic and animations will be good enough to support these dramatic scenes without the use of FMVs. If anything, FMVs in games were often used to portray what in-game engines couldn't at the times and now we don't have that problem anymore, so to use FMVs for one type of events, and in-game graphics for others make very little sense most of the time, except when you just really want to amp up the graphical fidelity of a scene for the pure wow-factor.

I am just afraid that in the attempt at making the game more cinematic and interesting to watch, the costs of that will hurt the amount of content of the game.

I've always been of the opinion that if a game dev team can pick between having really good graphics or lowering graphical fidelity in order to put more power into game-play mechanics, smooth frame-rates, more awesome physics in the world, and more moving objects on the screen, then they should definitely do that.
Imagine how huge of a world (perhaps the entire thing destroyable like a map in "Worms") with how many moving interactive parts, and physical wonders you could make in a PS4 game if you decided to be satisfied with PS2 level graphics for a game.

Take FF12. If you had that graphical baseline, you could spend so much more processing power in really creative dynamic lighting and shadows, magic effects, put more characters, buildings and things on screen at the same time, increase draw-distances and even make an entire expansive version of the FF7 world in 1:1 scale, fill it with content and probably still cram it all into one blue-ray, and have it run without any major snags.
And the sad fact is that FF12 is still a beautiful game, even if a new generation of retrograde Call of Duty fans don't understand that, because they're incapable of enjoying graphics for its artistry, only for how well it mimics the real world.

Graphic-whoring is literally the major obstructing force for good game development. It's starting to lampoon the entire industry at this point, by leading to production costs so huge that they cannot possibly be covered without major mainstream success, which creates the necessity for dirty and dishonest marketing campaigns, paid DLC and micro-transactions, and non-challenging, bland and unoriginal game-play mechanics.

I didn't want an FF7 remake to fall victim to that - but because of Nomura stylistic choices, and his obsession with making the graphics (of an anime styled game...) more realistic, that's probably what's going to happen.

As I said before - the new style will cost SE their shirt if they don't manage to sell it to the mainstream western market. That means they're going to have to look to games like Fallout, GTA5, The Last of Us etc. when making design choices about this game - "how can we capture that market with this game?".

 

[Fischkopf]

I didn't want an FF7 remake to fall victim to that - but because of Nomura stylistic choices, and his obsession with making the graphics (of an anime styled game...) more realistic, that's probably what's going to happen.

This is exactly the reason why I hate the way the characters look in FF XV. I mean look at this:

Gay Emo smoothly seamless skin Cloud

Badass Anime Cloud

Why they simply can't just adapt the style of the original artworks and apply that to 3D models is beyond me...

 

[DLPB_]

Yeah, it's utterly pathetic.  How can the original designers NOT see the issue there?

 

[gjoerulv]

C'mon, it's obvious. They cater to the trends.

 

[Fischkopf]

C'mon, it's obvious. They cater to the trends.

But that's not the reason why FF VII has gotten so popular in the first place.

If they have to make it all trendy and hip I don't really mind, except for the fact that they would have wasted a great opportunity to make the true-to-the-original remake fans have been waiting (and asking) for. Wasn't that the main reason why they even considered a remake in the first place?? Why don't they just make the game for the fans then...

Making everything 'hip' and 'cinematic' and adapting 'modern game standards' wouldn't ruin the original for me personally, just as Advent Children doesn't ruin FF VII for me. I haven't watched it to this day, neither do I care about it in the slightest. I can just play the original version with lot's of mods installed, and it's as awesome as ever.

BUT it would for sure get ripped apart by critics and fans alike, which as we know can have huge implications on the financial success of a game. I guess in the end the financial success and critical reception of FFXV will decide, whether they keep that cinematic approach, the fagotty emo characters, sh1tty acting, 'modern' gameplay idiosyncrasies, etc. or if they go a little more back to their roots...

 

[DLPB_]

I'll guarantee you that even if the game is an abomination it will get 9 or 10 from most big review companies.  It's the fanbase that will render the ultimate judgement.

 

[Fischkopf]

I'll guarantee you that even if the game is an abomination it will get 9 or 10 from most big review companies.  It's the fanbase that will render the ultimate judgement.

If that's the case Square Enix can kiss my butt forever...

 

[hian]

This is exactly the reason why I hate the way the characters look in FF XV. I mean look at this:

I just had a rather large debate over at thelifestream forums about the art-style of the remake and the compilation titles like Advent Children -

And most of them were of the opinion that AC and the compilation is very true to the original art-style *facepalm*

Seriously? I mean - anyone not blind and artistically speaking completely ignorant can see the obvious difference between the original anime-styled FF7 style and the semi-realistic style in the compilation and the remake. I mean, wtf.

Apart from concerns for mainstream appeal, it's because people like this exist, and because of their numbers, that we'll never get a true remake.