PlayStation fans were blown away when the remake of Final Fantasy 7 was officially announced at E3 2015. Many would’ve figured a full-on modernized remake wasn’t possible for one of Final Fantasy‘s most popular, if not the most popular entry, in the whole franchise. However, Square Enix seems to be pulling out all the stops on Final Fantasy 7 Remake, with plenty of new developers as well as the many veterans who worked on the original game. It seems the ambition of the project has ended up splitting the project into episodic chunks, news that wasn’t exactly met with widespread approval or understanding from fans.
Since the beginning of when the news broke, Final Fantasy 7 Remake‘s episodic approach to releases has been a big point of contention for fans. Some feel it justifies the additional content and depth where the original game never went, others feel it’s stretching the game far beyond its narrative capability. The capability of an episodic release plan was first shown when Final Fantasy 7 Remake‘s first episode was released. The entirety of the first episode, around 30-35 hours of playtime, takes place in Midgar, a section of the original game that only took around seven hours to beat. Now, many are wondering how long future episodes will be, and what the story will entail.
Especially with next-gen consoles right around the corner, this right where Final Fantasy fans get to deal with an issue that’s plagued the Kingdom Hearts fandom for years. Albeit the wait won’t be a decade long, but Final Fantasy 7 Remake‘s next episode likely won’t be out for some time. For one thing, this new project has to start from the ground up in a work-from-home setting because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Square Enix has already made it explicitly known that this has delayed production on the next episode already. Not to mention the scope and scale of the game is still being nailed down by Square Enix, who as recent as May of this year, stated that Final Fantasy 7 Remake‘s second episode is still in the planning stages.
Now this wouldn’t inherently be a bad thing if the second episode was simply a sequel, but Final Fantasy 7 Remake‘s second episode continues the main story of the original. There’s an expectation from fans who’ve played the game before that the continuation of the story is not that far behind. Comments made last year by Yoshinori Kitase, producer on the project, stated that future Final Fantasy 7 Remake episodes should not take as long as the first. Though the comments on delayed production were more recent, the mixed messages aren’t necessarily a good sign for future episodes. It could be a long wait until Remake Part 2 does eventually release on PS5.
That being said, there’s no real info about the scale or scope of the game moving into the second episode either. Will players need to upgrade to PS5 to continue the story? Will it also be available on PS4/PS4 Pro? Again, because fans of the original have expectations on what’s going to be coming in Remake‘s second episode, it’s easy to wonder what form the next game will take. For the original game, when players initially left Midgar, that was when the original game really opened up into a less linear and traditional JRPG. Final Fantasy 7 Remake will presumably do the same, though it’s unclear if the experience will be similar to Final Fantasy 15, or something far different.
Final Fantasy 7 Remake‘s episodic release also brings up the important question of what will take place during its next episode. Expanding the beginning Midgar section of the game made sense as an introductory episode. Adding depth to Midgar was overall a good decision, even if a few elements of the game ended up being filler to make up for other expanded sections. However, in Final Fantasy 7 Remake‘s second act, there’s a whole lot of pivotal story beats that will likely occur. That’s without even taking into account whatever changes to the overall story are made thanks to Final Fantasy 7 Remake‘s strange cliffhanger.
The real crux of the problem comes is this: How many episodes of Final Fantasy 7 Remake are left? There’d be no harm in sharing that information at this point, considering Final Fantasy 7 Remake‘s development has made it clear that plenty of the story content is, at bare minimum, not as it seems. Couple that with the fact that potentially Square Enix may not have a concrete idea of how many episodes are left, though this report has not been clarified or disproven. That also brings up the debate of how many episodes of Final Fantasy 7 Remake would be considered an acceptable or unreasonable amount.
It’s not like Life Is Strange, where five episodes split up about three to four hours of playtime each. Final Fantasy 7 Remake‘s episodes are promising to be full-length RPGs, which is incredibly ambitious but could certainly be feasible. However, splitting that time up equally with all of the expected events in the Final Fantasy 7 timeline in wait, there’s a lot that needs to happen between now and the last episode. Three episodes makes sense, five episodes is too much, but there’s a lot of grey area in determining how long Final Fantasy 7 Remake‘s episodic structure can last.
Final Fantasy 7 Remake Part 2 is in development.
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