In an interview discussing the recently announced Final Fantasy VII remake, game director Tetsuya Nomura told Wired a bit about the team’s vision for the project. With a remake comes much excitement from loyal fans, but also apprehension at the possibility of their beloved game world being soured.
Nomura explained the team does not “want to interfere with what makes the original title so iconic”, he says, “There are certain plot points we don’t want to interfere with or disturb, nor will we want to change elements that fans have very big attachments to.” Fans can remain hopeful for fairly loyal reproduction of Final Fantasy VII’s world and story.
The remake won’t be without changes however, “In terms of taking such an iconic game and giving it a fresh feel we can’t go into too much detail, but we’re not intending for this to become a one-to-one remake or just the original Final Fantasy VII with better graphics,” said Nomura.
“My goal with the remake is to make it apply to the current era, the current generation of players that are going to be coming into contact with or playing Final Fantasy VII for the first time through this remake. I want to make it so it’s relevant to the modern era, as well as having an element of surprise.”
Nomura continued, “It has to be something that riles up this sense of wonder and amazement. I don’t want to change it so much that it’s unrecognizable as Final Fantasy VII. That’s what I’ll be keeping in mind as I work on this.” Players may see changes to their favorite set-pieces, some plot points, and tone. With original writer Kazushige Nojima returning to write any new story content, fans shouldn’t worry too much.
Nomura also touched on the improvements in technology and production. “We’re taking something that’s text based with no voice over. If we add voice over to it, that will trigger some adjustments that need to be made to accommodate for that. Then, because we’re making it in full HD, we’ll need to think about all the resources that are needed to populate the screen. We’d need to go in and see what needs adjusting in that aspect. It’s like a chain of events; ‘OK, we’re going to revamp this part, what do we need?’, and see if there are any changes that creates. As I say, we can’t go into the specifics at this point, but we’ll need to revisit elements within the game to see what is appropriate.”
The Final Fantasy VII remake began production some time last year, so we can expect it will still be a while (2017 at the earliest), before we play the game. It will come first to PlayStation 4, with no set plans for other platforms past that.