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+--- Thread: FF7 Remake will be episodic... (/showthread.php?tid=6925)
FF7 Remake will be episodic... - Dark Jaguar - 7th December 2015
In what seems like the ultimate admission that, yes, old RPGs really were far larger in the sheer size of their worlds, locations, and events than modern ones, Squeenix has announced that the upcoming massive remake will be episodic. This was explained as a result of the sheer amount of work every single building will need to match the size and scale of the FF7 world. I can believe that, but it also basically admits that, yes, games like FFXIII really WERE way smaller tube quests compared to the giant fully fleshed out planets of the older games.
The cost of detailing those worlds simply has ballooned out of control. Games like Bravely Default have ran counter to that trend, but notably lack all the flash and dazzle (and intricately rendered cinematics) of the modern FF games, opting for very basic character animations during story telling sequences so they can put more of those sequences in.
*sigh* This basically means that each "episode" will be completely cut off from the others, so that sense of being able to explore a large world and backtrack to previous locations most likely won't be there, unless they work to make sure they all interlock so that each piece is more of an expansion pack in nature than a separate game. I also don't like what I'm seeing with the combat. I don't want to have a combat system that even comes close to resembling what they did with Crisis Core, and that's what it looks like, me controlling Cloud alone in real time while my allies just use AI scripts. Sure, that "command menu" is still there, but guess what? It was also in Kingdom Hearts, and that's still a real time action game. For all their talk about keeping the "spirit" of the game alive, so far they're doing everything they can to annoy the fans.
For my part, all I've ever wanted was a rerelease with an ACCURATE translation. That's it. There's the fan translation, but it requires doing everything from "downgrading" the game to the 1998 release to "hosting" an ISO as a virtual drive JUST to get the dang mod running, so I haven't bothered with it.
FF7 Remake will be episodic... - Dark Jaguar - 11th December 2015
http://www.polygon.com/2015/12/10/9889204/final-fantasy-7-remake-episodic-yoshinori-kitase
They're restating what they said at the start. It also reaffirms that FFXV is going to be smaller than the 1-7 set of games, basically what we've been saying since FFX. They assure us they'll maintain the original game's "density", but what I really want to know is how well they're maintaining the original game's sense of exploration. The old FF games weren't exactly "open world", but they were closer than modern ones to that, and once you got far enough you basically could go anywhere, finding hidden side quests and new quests in old locations. The same was certainly true of FF7, and I'm not even sure it's going to HAVE a world map. Now, I'd be fine if the "world map" was just integrated into normal game mode so it felt like any modern open world game. What I'm afraid of is they won't do that, and it'll be as linear as the more recent Final Fantasy games. Even the demo for FFXV didn't inspire confidence in a real open world experience. Each "section" of the tube looks like it'll just really expansive and wide, that's all. I also worry they'll make it a real time action game, as I said, where you JUST control Cloud and the rest of your party acts on pre-set scripts. When it comes to how combat works, I say keep it turn based, just add more unique abilities to each character (outside of their limit breaks) and make the enemies visible on the map instead of random encounters. That's all I want there.
They're talking about expanding the story beyond what FF7 did. I kinda expected that, I'm just worried about how they'll pull it off. My biggest worry is they'll hit every single story point, but it'll all be one big train ride from point A to point B and the airship won't even let me fly around in real time, because doing that means reaching areas in "chapter 1" of the game that aren't in "chapter 3".
I've said it before, but they better treat each episode as an expansion onto the existing world instead of a totally independent "chapter" that won't let me backtrack. Yikes, this remake is stressing me out here. All I wanted was something closer to a remaster...
FF7 Remake will be episodic... - A Black Falcon - 23rd December 2015
Yeah, it's weird that it's going to be episodic, though it is a fairly linear game, yes? You probably could break it up into episodes, considering that... but yeah, it isn't a great sign for the game. And saying that it won't be ENTIRELY action-based combatwise is saying that it's not going to be fully turnbased like the original, either, isn't it? I know action combat is the current trend in RPGs, but it's not all for the better...
FF7 Remake will be episodic... - Dark Jaguar - 23rd December 2015
It's a bit more open world than that. It's true there's a linear story. This isn't something like Fallout. However, once you open up the world map, the world's your's to explore and, within the confines of the story, you're free to go to entire continents and such. One of my favorite bits of this is parts of the story that say "we've got no time to lose, we need to get to Juno and stop them from shipping that cannon!", at which point I take a few weeks off to breed chocobos and travel the world, doing side quests and getting rare items and such.
This was true of every Final Fantasy up to and including 9. In Final Fantasy 1, for example, you can do most of the dungeons out of order, find the air ship early, and just go wherever. Final Fantasy 6 is linear right up until the part where you pick a scenario after the river, then it opens up more. The world of ruin is completely open once you get the airship back, open in the sense of a Fallout game in fact. Open world isn't some brand new concept after all, older games had it a lot more than many give it credit for. 10 changed all that when they started the annoying "tube quest" trend, which was as linear as you say.
If they went episodic, they'd have to basically include the entire last game IN the new episode if they wanted to be sure it kept that more open nature. Barring that, there's a lot that's going to be lost and it may end up being as I feared, a "tube quest" version of FF7.
FF7 Remake will be episodic... - A Black Falcon - 28th December 2015
Ah. I guess part of it will depend on how many episodes they break it up into. If it's only a few you could, like, have one episode per disc of the original game or something, I'd think... but with more, you would need to make more changes. I haven't played enough of most of the classic FF games to really know how it'd work, but by your description here I'd think they would probably need to change a lot. Will they restrict access to some areas by episodes, or will only the main story be like that and side areas might be available earlier? Who knows...
FF7 Remake will be episodic... - Dark Jaguar - 28th December 2015
In the original game, most game regions and their data were stored on all 3 discs. This meant you could backtrack pretty much to any point. The exceptions were large sections of Midgar (which can only be accessed during the first section of the game) and the Gold Saucer (which is "closed for repairs" during disc 2). Aside from that, most of the space across the 3 discs is taken up by FMVs.
I must confess I did always want to see far more of Midgar than we were shown in the game proper.