The Unknown Journey: What Lies Ahead in Remaking Final Fantasy VII
The path forward is likely to contain many surprises, twists and turns
When the Final Fantasy VII Remake project was announced to be an episodic series of games comprising the retold adventures of Cloud Strife and friends, the reaction of the fanbase to not receiving a single “complete package” was one of trepidation. From a consumer perspective, games take a while to make (especially modern games), so having to wait what could potentially be up to a decade to see the story of Final Fantasy VII concluded (again) gives some people pause. The first game in the new series, solely taking place in the original’s initial setting of Midgar, has been met with largely positive reception, but the fact of the matter is that Midgar is but a small fraction of the story told in the original game, not even taking up half of the story content contained within the original’s first disc. Though the ending of Final Fantasy VII Remake’s first instalment ensures that there can and likely will be a plethora of changes to the first game’s narrative, there’s still quite a lot of ground to cover, and doing so will be no small feat.
Even though Midgar is a relatively thin slice of the original game’s story, it’s understandable why the developers at Square Enix decided to focus in on it as the lone setting for the first entry in the remake series. Producer Yoshinori Kitase professed that the goal with the FFVIIR series is to expand on the essential parts of the original game, and given how Midgar is the most enduringly iconic locale in the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII it’s clear why the creators would want to feature it more prominently. That said, given the how complex game design has become since the 1990s there are also more practical reasons for developers to hone in on this one location. One setting means more tightly focused art direction and a greater ease with which devs can reuse in-game assets and locations.
The original FFVII takes players through a wide array of diverse locales and set pieces, including the cliffside city of Junon, the oasis in the desert that is the Gold Saucer casino, the frozen Great Glacier, and many more. Video game design level and area design on the original PlayStation was vastly different than that of today’s PlayStation 5. In FFVII, the overworld and select other zones are represented as a 3D space modelled completely using polygons, while the remaining majority of locales are hand-drawn 2D art backgrounds with 3D character models cleverly superimposed. Though hand drawing has its own difficulties and nuances, it’s a far more conducive medium for producing a large and varied volume of settings for a video game in a relatively shorter amount of time. FFVIIR’s Midgard is, by and large, extremely well-realized and detailed, but can that same level of polish and detail be extended to the tens of other locations in the world of FFVII that have nothing visually in common with Midgard? Perhaps, but matching the quality of Remake’s Midgard’s will doubtless take time for developers.
Let’s talk about time and pacing. Not in a narrative sense, but in a literal sense. The original FFVII’s polygonal super-deformed style for its characters and the comparatively low graphical fidelity mean that it’s easier to abstract the narrative events shown on screen away from what they are actually meant to represent. Cutscenes that are represented with text dialogue and basic gestures in FFVII become grand spectacles in Remake replete with dramatic voice acting and detailed facial animations. Bustling towns can be represented on the PSX with a handful of houses, which is not nearly as convincing with Remake’s realistic presentation style. Cloud appears as a giant as he traverses the world map, where towns and structures are dwarfed by the player character’s model. Even with all these abstractions of reality to make a narrative as grand as FFVII’s work on the PSX, it’s still a 30+ hour title that spanned three discs worth of CD-ROM space. Going forward with FFVIIR, the developers will have a fine line to walk between expanding on memorable scenes from the original while keeping the storyline well-paced and engaging throughout. Compromises will need to be made with adapting the story, a path that Square Enix has paved for themselves within the narrative of the FFVIIR by literally overturning the will of the Arbiters of Fate in the game’s final act.
I’m not saying that remaking the complete FFVII experience with modern-day graphical fidelity and realism is an impossible task; far from it. If anything, FFVIIR proves that the characters and settings from FFVII have aged splendidly even when translated to modern systems. However, it’s clear that doing so is a more involved undertaking than many gamers would like to believe. Square Enix will need to do more than lift and shift some graphical assets with the new engine to complete the story of Cloud and company. I would not be surprised to see some of the original’s story beats heavily edited down or even removed altogether in the interest of progressing forward with the main plot points. As much as fans would love a complete story in a single package, I can see it taking at least another one or two titles in the FFVIIR series before we get to end the fight with Sephiroth and save the planet for good.
