Ben-DutkaI hated math in school but I still I should be able to better understand Square-Enix's comments here.
Okay, so while the idea of a Final Fantasy VII remake is always a hot topic amongst RPG fans, Square-Enix has taken to providing the press with one explanation as to why it really can't happen: it would simply take too long. This has been difficult for people to understand, but it seems as if the company doesn't wish to devote a huge amount of resources to a remake; i.e, they don't want to make it the focal point of their development studio, which they apparently would have to do. See what you think about the following statement from FFXIII producer Yoshinori Kitase, who provided TechDigest (as spotted by Connected Consoles ) with this:
"If it were possible that we had all the right facilities and the right environment to be able to make and prepare a Final Fantasy VII remake within a year, we'd very much like a go at it! But even Final Fantasy XIII has taken over three and a half years to create. If we were to recreate final Fantasy VII with the same level of graphical detail as you see in Final Fantasy XIII, we'd imagine that that would take as much as three or four times longer than the three and a half years it has taken to put this Final Fantasy together! So it's looking pretty unrealistic! But if any such situation came about by any remote chance, then yes, we'd do it!"
Okay, so basically, he's saying it's impossible. But why, why would a remake take "three or four times longer" than it took to make FFXIII? WHY ? I'm having extreme difficulty with this one. I am aware the graphical upgrade would have to start from scratch, but didn't you have to make other things for FFXIII that already exist for FFVII? Like, the story? The setting? The characters? The freakin' dialogue should stay the same, too, as far as I'm concerned. So you're telling me that a graphical (and sound, I suppose) overhaul would take 10-12 years to do? …what does that even mean ?! I confuzled.
I get a chuckle out of how they previously said that FFXIII is really linear because they needed 30 hours to set up the story properly. Now it seems pretty obvious that the reason it's linear is that it would have been too much work otherwise.
petitiononline. com/mod_perl/signed. cgi?ff7remke
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"56019. Gonzalo Totorica This game ruled in South America, please leave Xbox out of this…"
I hope we never get a remake… It will end up on the R.I.P.360 and that would cause me more grief than not having it.
This is BS from Square. They already have the combat system, character designs and story that would be the same. The only thing they'd have to redo is the graphics, and some of the character models are already done from Advent Children.
Yeah… everyone tells me redoing the graphics is just like re-wallpapering. Piece of cake!
I'm guessing they know if they try to remake the game everyone will hate them why because it will be nothing like the original the end
LOL! HAHA, they better get started then
Im just really getting tired of S-E's excuses. I don't understand why, but they really have gone down as a company. I truly believe they are spreading themselves too thin across too many platforms…consoles, portable, mobile phones…..
Just do ONE thing…and do it RIGHT
Pure unadulterated BS!!!!!
LAZYNESS!!!!! If its going to take that long they should have gotten started 3 yrs ago
Once again Square-enix falls on their balls. I have played HD mods of FF7 which fans have made and they look great and created when they had some spare time! All square has to do is upgrade the sprites and the backgrounds to HD! They wouldn't even need to change the music. They could do it in 6 months. When's the last time Square produced a good (original) game since becoming enix?
Why would anyone buy that game when they can get the original for $10?
Is it really that hard to fathom? FFXIII had a development team of over 300 people. Do you really think they would allocate those kinds of resources to a remake, taking people off of the long-term projects that are the bread and butter of the company? It's a serious resource sink and though it may pay off in the end, it's a risk, it delays other projects, and honestly it's not cost-effective (sorry).
And those who are saying it'd be so easy to just "update the graphics" frankly don't have the slightest clue what they're talking about. Have you ever tried parallel vector programming for a Cell processor? It's a complete paradigm shift. You're basically learning to program from scratch all over again. And the only decent engine Square has for Cell is Crystal Tools. To port FFVII to Crystal Tools would require a complete ground-up rebuild. With a small development team, I can easily see how it would take a decade to complete.
If we were talking about a refresh done on a contemporary processor such as the PSX or even the 360, then that would probably be doable if they wanted. But here he is specifically talking about "if we were to recreate final Fantasy VII with the same level of graphical detail as you see in Final Fantasy XIII" ie. on the PS3.
Complete rubbish. 10 years? Rubbish. The whole point of the current generation of console is that they are powerful enough that the graphics engines can render games in real time with little or no pre-rendering required. The big pieces to game development these days are art, design and graphics engine. It doesn't take 10 years to build a decent graphics engine (especially when they already have one) and unless they only have one capable artist, it can't possible take that long to design and model the characters and environments needed.
Could make it for the PSP and cut the time by more then half
Here's the problem:
"If we were to recreate final Fantasy VII with the same level of graphical detail as you see in Final Fantasy XIII"
Dear Square Enix,
Awesome Game with Good Graphics > Good Game with Awesome Graphics
Graphics are great and all, but really, a FFVII remake would not HAVE to be as detailed as FFXIII. Really, at this point, it seems that all your company cares about is graphics, and not anything else.
Certainly you can do a FFVII remake, put it at 720p, and it'll look a LOT better than the original FFVII.
That's all people want, every last detail of every game doesn't have to be uber graphics….
…. I'd rather have FFXIII have towns, than Uber graphics, towns and great graphics would suffice.
Oh and trohpies, people want the FFVII remake to have trophies.
@bridgera
I'm going to have to slightly disaggree with you on the whole, SE is only in for graphics… See, with FFXIII going multiplat, it only weakens the quality of the graphics. Have you noticed that most multiplat games are not really the best graphics that it could have been an exclusive? (Except ACII, which held beautiful graphics.) SE is in for money more than anything else. It makes sense. Offer the game to a bigger variety of people, rack in more cash for the developers. Graphics may have gone down, but we have nothing to compare it to so… Jackpot for SE.
And SE is just too darn lazy to even attempt a remake of VII. It would not take so long for a game to be made. It doesn't even take a decade or so to make a console if you have dedicated workers, which SE seems to have a good supply of. So, once again back to my statement, they're just lazy and don't really want to go back to their old franchise for a remake. Makes no sense, but they don't care about what we fans want, they're just doing what they think would be best for them.
Ok Square-Enix, okay…
I'm with Sweedie on this one and call total BS on Square Enix for making such a stupid statement. The only reason it took them so bloody long with FFXIII is that they developed the game three times and once while they were learning the platforms. The first time they built for the PS3 which they then essentially scrapped and rebuilt for both the PS3 and 360 (1 + 2 = 3).
Are they saying that they have to pre-render every frame of action to ensure we get high quality? In which case their game engine must seriously suck if it can't render graphics in real time.
10-12 years to re-do FFVII? Does that mean that FFVII is 3 times the game that FFXIII is? That's the implication. Complete rubbish. I can see it taking a long time to build and design all the HD models and art, but the game is being rendered in real time by the console, not pre-rendered, so once those models are done, the engine does the heavy lifting. I can't see any reason why a game like FFVIII would take a decade to bloody well make, that's just stupid. 10 years? That's 1 and a half console generations for God's sakes, stupidity. IMHO Square Enix are BSing liars if they are honestly saying it would take more than a decade to make a remake of FFVII. Holy crap in 10 years there's be 5 generations of Intel CPU, g generations of GPU improvement and at least two console generations would exist. Are they really saying it'd take longer to remake FFVII than it would to design, research and built an entirely new video console?
that's what they are saying.
Squeenix are full of crap.
I do not believe for one minute it would take that long to do it.
There are alot of implecations of that comment.
Some of which, is:
1) The squeenix team isn't good enough to make a amazing game in 3 years.
2) FFVII remake would be 4 times the game XIII is
3) They don't care about their fans
etc etc
XIII took a long time, because they had to get used to the PS3 tech, plus they had to recreate the game for the 360 and refused to give us the PS3 version until the 360 one was complete.
-Minor story and location changes.
-Minor dialogue changes.
-More sidequests/secrets.
-Making Yuffie and Vincent MAIN characters this time, instead of secrets.
-Complete upgrade of the graphics and cutscenes.
-Trophies.
Sorry guys, that would take any GOOD developer about 2 years i reckon. Longer if they wanted to make it perfect. And this is coming from a multimedia developer.
The stench of MS's money is simply gotten way too overpowering at SE headquarters, seeing as it's turned all of SE's brains to pure unadulterated bullsh!t.
SE should have made MS add an extra clause in their contract, so that a dozen 15 wheeler sludge trucks would always be on 24 hour standby to suck their craniums clean, whenever the aroma oozing out of their ears got too pungent.
The gaming industry is already a mess with all these developers milking every single penny out of you with DLC the worse case scenario is Capcom who charged you for ALTERNATE COSTUMES (SF4) and then content that was already on the disc but you had to pay to unlock it (RE5) now you want developers to re-make OLD games and continue milking the cow? It's just absolutely ridiculous. FF 7 is in the PAST. We are living in the HERE and NOW. Fanboys really need to get over the fact that FF 7 will most likely never be remade.
@ Gamer Girl Gemo
Truth is they do like money, M$ money, my last hope on Squeenix is that somehow Tetsuya Nomura gets enough leverage inside the company to start a project of his own choice.
@ RustEDalex I thought the same, I bet ppl would even buy a PspGo if it came in a bundle with teh remake. HECK! I'd even buy a "FF-VII Mod" for FF-X on PS2!!!
Square's fall begun with that tumor that used to be called Enix
Last edited by totozero18 on 2/21/2010 6:01:14 AM
S-E Is missing a huge point here. There are two wheels in motion with their comments and neither are being properly addressed!
First, their fan base. I think a lot of people are missing a huge part of what people want. The FFVII tech demo was great, but not their set standard. Fans would be happy with a lot less than what they were given to drool on.
Second, BUILDING BRIDGES! S-E made comments they should commit to. They should like other parties chime into the recreation of the game with a global supervision of the project. Hence, you give three dev crews assigned responsibilities and get the job done in a year.
They would benefit immensely, even if not financially. What they would learn from other devs (ie, let naughty dog handle graphics and in return they can "share" their dev styles for more competent computing processes for the Cell) and give to the community would essentialy be bending over backwards for their customers and, most importantly, loyal fans.
Look at industry as an entertainment industry. You see this everywhere. Musical bands/singers doing projects, movies with large popular casting crews, and most recently the jointed push for 3DHDTV.
Sure, you split your profits on what you're getting, but how much would S-E actually be doing if their "firms" are handling the project's modeling and having a few S-E devs supervising each one of their teams.
The way I look at it, the Gaming industry has too much greed working against them. Will the game take forever to build through S-E? Probably. Not because it's so incredibly complex, but likely due to how little they'll invest. They're not going to throw their dev brainchildren into a remake when they can hand it over to a smaller crew and do what they've been doing… "Trying".
Sometimes what you get for your efforts surpass any lost profit you'll see. For example, when fans become happy, what do they do? Buy more. Look at the GoW Series. Since the fanbase is so loyal and happy to see that their 3rd installment is MORE than they were anticipating after the E3 Demo we all played, people are grabbing the GoW Collection like it's a limited item!
Bottom line is the fan. You piss him or her off and you won't have one. Lieing to us about how long it'll take, how "impossible" it would be to produce towns, not cities, in this game, and how much work it'll take to restructure a game is retarded.
Also, to address some statements on this thread.
Dialog – You don't change it. You don't even NEED voices. I wouldn't give two shits about voices, in all honesty. It's an old game of a different generation. I think that "feeling" should still remain intact.
FMV – We don't need them! Make cut scenes real-time. If they don't blow our minds away with technical advancements, WHO CARES?! If it can look anywhere near as pretty as FFXIII, which it really doesn't HAVE TO, I'm sold and I'm sure hundreds of thousands of people would forgive them.
Towns – Ok, they need work. Don't rework them, though. Utilize your same towns in HD. Utilize shaders to give them the depth a polygon structure can bring and map them well.
Characters – You only need to make each character once. Different Armor and weapons are their only visual distinction.
World Map – Again, I want a remake, not a new game. You leave it intact. Map the image in 3D.
FFVII is a fabulous game. I still believe a remake is very possible and should be done! I hope people are willing to compromise for an updated game. If you want more, fine. Live without it. We need to be realistic. It IS a lot of work because of the length of the game. You can't expect it to be beyond this generations' graphics or a milestone in graphical achievements.
I just want a FFVII game where I can move in diagonal directions for Christs' sake! Some more detail here and there, high def resolutions and not so cheezy sound effects.
Anyone here agree?
@ DemonNeno, yeah agreed, as for the sound effects you gotta give Uematsu some credits the guy worked with just MIDI's and the ambience and music is TEH AWESOME. I wouldn't mind at all to have HD towns and then the good ol' world map, it could work as a cameo like the MGS1 flashback in MGS4…gotta leave it'll continue at home (yes I'm working now)
absolutely stupid comment by the SE guys : they admit FFXIII is not fully developed as another game would take 3/4 more time, and even that is particularly stupid as the development time was longer because they did it on 2 platforms (maybe 2.5 years for PS3 and 1 year for X360) ; their mouth is so full of Microsoft's money they can't say interesting things anymore
im a giant fan of FFVII and i would love for them to make a remake of it. but i understand why they say it would take so long to make. Its mainly because of the graphics, its the same reason they didn't include cities in FFXIII, and we all know that the cities are very important in FFVII. without them we'd loose half the game alone. at the same time i dont see why they couldn't try and make one that has atleast ps2 graphics. but i think we can all agree its not gonna happen until the process of making cities with such detail can be done more efficiently.
They are giving a real reason why they wont do it and probably an accurate time frame. What there not telling you straight up is that they aren't willing to dedicate they're full resources. True, a remake would be profitable but not profitable enough to dedicate more than a small portion of they're resources. so say they only dedicate 20% to the remake, considering only the die hard fans would buy the remake cause the original is available off psn for 20$-30$ and the remake is gonna be full price. so in order to make it profitable it will take them 5 times longer in this instance while all current projects, the true cash crops, will only be working at 80% and that looses money for them. personally i still have 1 unopened copy and another that is in good condition that i still play. i'd still by a remake though:D but that said, i think they will wait till they don't have any really big/consuming projects left in they're arsenal before they can even consider financially undertaking the remake cause they will be loosing money on everything else for all those years that they're working on it. realistically we probably wont see the remake until SE is almost ready to go under… or we can hope some rich fan-boy privately sponsors the project:)
To all of you people who keep saying that SE is doing this because they don't want to make money: Please be quiet. Do you honestly think that a company is against making MONEY?!
I believe that this statement is one of two things.
1) They are not as convinced as the entire gaming community that the game would sell well, meaning that they're obviously not willing to put the time and money into development of something that's not guaranteed to give them a return.
2) They simply don't want to make the game. As much as I would love to have a FFVII game in HD, they don't have to make it to survive as a company.
Realistically, how many other games out this generation are complete re-makes of old games? I can't think of any off the top of my head. I can almost guarantee you that there would be a portion of the gaming community that would love the re-make, and would have no qualms whatsoever with it's design (as long as they didn't change anything drastically). However, I also believe that there would be a LARGE portion of the gaming community that would lambast SE for making a "next gen" game that still followed by the old gaming style, or that followed the exact same story. People, especially gamers, are really pissy nowadays, and they're one of the most fickle markets in entertainment.
And this is the point that I'm getting at. I believe that this statement is a lie. No confusion, it's a straight up lie. The lie, however, is a way for them to deter from the truth of the matter, whatever that may be. It's just a shame that the company feels the need to lie to their audience instead of telling them the truth.
Don't believe that SE would lie? What about the images they released to prove the PS3 and 360 version looked identical? It was proven that they photoshopped the images to appear as if they were on the 360, while it was the PS3 version being displayed.
They released images that were supposed to be from both consoles, but really they were from the PS3 version and photoshopped to look like the 360 version. Problem being, how could they capture the EXACT same image twice for both consoles, with everything being in the EXACT same place? I cry foul.
http://img692.imageshack.us/img692/8995/merge.jpg
http://img508.imageshack.us/img508/3076/merge.gif
I remember reading on this site that S-E ddnt include any cities in ff13 bcoz they wd take a huge ampunt of time to make in HD.
FF7 had a billion cities so im guessing that is why it wd take 12 yrs to remake.
At least six months of that time was due to the scrapped PS2 version, where life began for FFXIII and probably even more.
The over world map issue MIGHT have been a problem but that could easily just be done the old fashion way (I want to be able to fly/control airships again dammit) so then there's the towns which for some reason is really hard Square to do apparently. Like what was already said, a huge amount of the work is already done.
Truth of the matter is that it's an excuse for try to fend off the Final Fantasy VII fanboys. But Square did it to themselves with that teaser. Personally I have zero interest in a remake since I played it several times over 12 years ago. The resources would be much better spent on new things.
I can't believe there are so many people mad that S-E won't put the time and resources into remaking a game so many of you have already played to death.
You have the original. You have the digital download from the PSN. Move the eff on with your lives.
I can understand that development can be lengthy and time consuming. But 10 years is very exaggerrating. And the only reason why final fantasy XIII took so long to complete are because that development first started on the playstation 2 before they scrapped it and had to redo everything on the playstation 3 AND the 1 year delay because of the xbox 360. Add them all up and you get 5+ years.
I still don't get why they just can't borrow from Advent Children Complete for character designs or something. They have the main structure of it at least with characters, just put their old cloths back on, and the characters are pretty much done. Just gotta get them able to animate and controllable. But also, that game has a LOT in it. They would actually be recreating a very large game. That whole world map, all the areas, the weapons, everything would have to made up from scratch. They couldn't just take the original surroundings and just implement them, they would have to rebuild all the stuff. I think that's where all the time would be coming from. Versus XIII has been in production since 2003. That's 7 years!! So the way I look at it, Versus XIII is going to be the scale of what an FFVII remake would be, just the FFVII wouldn't be an Action RPG, lol. The scale of things ould be huge, they wouldn't want to remake it and it turn out like crap, they'd want to create something mind blowing.
I know it's an old article, but I can't help but add. Hasn't it occurred to them to make the remake for PSP? It would be a HUGE system seller.
If they do end up making a remake, which is obviously leaning on slim chances, I just hope they don't put in voiceovers. We don't want the voiceacting to be as crappy as it was in the movie
Hm… As said by NeoHumpty, the PSP would be a strong alternative. Crisis Core is such a huge testament to the power of the PSP and I am sure it can be made to do even more. I, for one, am all for FFVI being remade on the PSP as opposed to the DS. (<– Off topic) Honestly, though… a remake in SOME form would be pretty epic, even if it was on the PSP. I'd settle. Fo' sho'.
i can see why they won't do it, and its not because they are lazy, they are probably trying to save it for a 20 year anniversary or something like final fantasy 1 and 2 for psp.