Nobody wants to deal with the long wait between sequels, especially in video games where the wait can be especially longer. Two big game publishers are especially guilty of making their fans wait a long time, and of course that’s not a bad thing. Rockstar Games and Square Enix are generally known for putting out great games in their respective gaming circles. Now, in 2020, two games in particular are emphasizing a similar problem for both publishers: Final Fantasy 7 Remake Part 2, and Grand Theft Auto 6.
Both fanbases have entered a holding pattern as they wait for more news on upcoming games, and it may be a while. Square Enix and Rockstar Games have very long development cycles for the respective games that each publisher currently has in development. However, this time things are a little different from both publishers, for different reasons. Both are potentially taking an incremental development approach this time around for Grand Theft Auto 6 and Final Fantasy 7 Remake‘s second episode. Both have varying degrees of experience in episodic video game development, and both have their own degrees of marketing silence before release.
What’s particularly interesting about the development of these two games is they’re both relatively new ventures for both franchises. Grand Theft Auto 6 is reportedly taking an incremental approach to the game’s development, meaning the game will release “moderately sized” and expand with later updates. Final Fantasy 7 Remake Part 2 isn’t just a sequel, rather it’s adapting the original game’s story and taking it further. Neither publishers or their respective development studios have any kind of extensive experience with episodic release methods, so this is new territory for Rockstar Games and Square Enix.
Grand Theft Auto has had singleplayer expansion DLCs before (see: Episodes from Liberty City from Grand Theft Auto 4), but these were standalone narratives, never on the level of episodic updates/releases from modern games. Final Fantasy 13 had a few sequels, but they’re not quite the same as splitting apart Final Fantasy 7 Remake into separate episodes. Square Enix themselves were the producers for Life is Strange, an episodic narrative adventure game, but the development team Dontnod was not an in-house studio. Grand Theft Auto 6 and Final Fantasy 7 Remake are experimenting with very different styles of an incremental development plan, but both studios don’t have much experience with that method.
Because of this, the lack of information from both publishers is especially hard to stomach for fans. Rockstar Games and Square Enix are both infamous for making their fans wait a long time between trailers and reveals. Rockstar Games first announced Grand Theft Auto 5 back in 2011, and didn’t receive another official trailer for two years before the story trailer was unveiled in 2013. Even worse was Square Enix’s deafening silence on the Kingdom Hearts franchise, which was also partially due to the franchise’s development plans as well. Not counting the various spin-offs in the series, fans waited almost an entire decade for Kingdom Hearts 3, which was just as long as the wait for Final Fantasy 15‘s release as well.
Luckily for Final Fantasy fans in general, the wait hasn’t been as bad in 2020. Final Fantasy 16 was recently announced for PS5, so they at least have a completely new entry to look forward to soon. However, the big Final Fantasy 7 fans are going to be waiting a long time for Final Fantasy 7 Remake‘s next episode to be announced. As recently as May of 2020, Final Fantasy 7 Remake‘s second episode was reportedly still in the planning stage of development. As for Grand Theft Auto 6, Rockstar Games seemingly made it clear with the next-gen Grand Theft Auto 5 announcement that the newest entry still has plenty of development time left. As unfortunate as it is, both fanbases are used to the long droughts of information between official game reveals.
For now, the fanbases for Final Fantasy and Grand Theft Auto find themselves in a much more vague grey area than ever before. Fans knew what to expect in the jump between Grand Theft Auto 4 to 5; a larger scale and greater graphical fidelity, alongside more ambitious set pieces and narrative storytelling. Now, with all the news about Rockstar Games’ response to crunch and how it’s changed the publisher’s development plans, Grand Theft Auto 6 could release in a very different state. Final Fantasy 7 fans find themselves in a similar boat, albeit for very different reasons. Final Fantasy 7 Remake went above and beyond expectations with the reimagining of the classic game, which means there’s an equal lack of understanding on what to expect on the next episode.
These games are going to be far different from any previous development efforts by Square Enix and Rockstar Games prior. That’s absolutely a good thing, to be fair. Developers on both games are going to flex and change their development styles in interesting ways, and while Rockstar Games is doing it out of respect for its employees, Square Enix is doing so to create a very different type of Final Fantasy game. Hopefully, in the coming years, fans will get a better understanding of Grand Theft Auto 6 and Final Fantasy 7 Remake‘s next episode. At least they’ll be able to garner some kind of idea on what to expect from these games.
Grand Theft Auto 6 and Final Fantasy 7 Remake Part 2 are in development.
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