Is the Final Fantasy VII remake back on tap at Square Enix? The long-rumored PS3 remake of Square’s FFVII PS1-classic has long been one of the most wanted titles of the modern era, with rumors of a remake persisting ever since Square debuted a tech-demo of the FFVII intro running on the PS3 back at 2005’s E3.
However mum has been the word since on the project, although Square briefly brought it up last year when Yoshinori Kitase, producer of Final Fantasy XIII, spoke on the possibility of remaking the RPG epic, but not exactly in friendly terms.
To quote:
“If we had the manpower and the time to work on a project, if we were to remake FFVII with the quality of FFXIII it would be a tremendous project… It’d take as much as three or four times longer than the three years it took us on FFXIII!” — Yoshinori Kitase, FFXIII producer
“As for a VII remake, all I can advise right now is to play the PSN release that just came out for the time being. Maybe, perhaps we’ll have some news for you at a later time. I’m actually working on multiple projects right now, I don’t know exactly what new projects I’ll be taking on after XIII, but I am working on Final Fantasy Agito XIII (now known as Final Fantasy Type-0 as well, so maybe I’ll be able to focus a little bit more on that project once XIII is complete.” Apparently the Final Fantasy VII style is too difficult for HD translation on PS3; he later stated, “It 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 (FFXIII) together! So it’s looking pretty unrealistic to happen!” And later added, “If we had the manpower and the time to work on a project, if we were to remake Final Fantasy VII with the quality of Final Fantasy XIII it would become a tremendous project. If we can get the number of people we need by all means that would be the one I would really want to remake.”
Adding to the fire, in March of last year CEO Yoichi Wada revealed that they were exploring the possibility of the FFVII remake following such high demand.
And now there is some new news regarding the project!
Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima revealed via Twitter that he and Square Enix producer and key artist, Tetsuya Nomura, along with Art Director Yoji Shinkawa, got together for a dinner at which they discussed a Final Fantasy VII Remake! He says that, at the dinner, he passed along the word that every gamer would pass if they could be eating with the Square Enix, to remake FFVII!
Here is the original PS3 FFVII tech demo from E3 2005.
Kojima also told them to hurry up and make Seiken Densetsu/Secret of Mana 5 and Kingdom Hearts 3! Here are his tweets of what he told Square Enix or talked about at the meeting:
“Hurry up and release Kingdom Hearts 3D.”
“I know it’s tough for Square Enix, but you can do it!”
“Tell Wada I’m waiting for Seiken Densetsu/Secret of Mana 5.”
“I’m looking forward to the new Zelda game (The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword).”
He also told Tetsuya Nomura to get a Twitter account!
So does this mean anything and should we read into the meeting? Probably not, but it is also true that many interesting projects have come about from these types of meetings. I recall, if memory hasn’t failed me, that Shigeru Miyamoto and Hideo Kojima met in an elevator one time by chance, and that meeting eventually lead to the GameCube remake of Metal Gear Solid by Silicon Knights called Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes.
So something may come from this. Its my hope that Konami and Hideo will join forces with Square Enix to create the FFVII remake. It sounds to me like the main stumbling block is simply lack of pure manpower to create the amount of graphics and content that’d be needed for the Final Fantasy VII remake. But if you were to join the two companies, it’d make it much more feasible. Or maybe something is already underway and that’s why they had the meeting? Kojima just decided to let it out of the bag to catch the interest of fans and build interest leading up to E3 2011? We’ll find out soon.
Do you think the PS3 FFVII remake will ever happen?
Via Andriasang