Final Fantasy 7 Remake: The series?

Final Fantasy overload!

Tetsuya Nomura must be a trip to work with. At that base level, no matter where you look at the guy, there's no dying he has oodles of talent. He's the director of the much beloved Kingdom Hearts franchise afterall and has turned that into one of the longest running video game crossover events of all time. (No doubt contributing to the hefty Square Enix coffers in the process) But my god does he know how to drag things out. At this point I'm literally at a loss. Is this intentional? Is this some malady of genius? How in the heck did Final Fantasy 7 Remake get to be an episodic adventure with this many moving parts to it? You'd have thought that the Square guys would have learned their lesson when they gave him Final Fantasy Versus 13 and it took 10 years to make. (And then became XV) That's not 10 years for Nomura to make, mind you; no they had to pull him from the project because it took so long. I'm not entirely convinced that the episodic nature of Final Fantasy 7 Remake wasn't some desperate compromise to get this game out once Square management saw him naming his directing successor in his will.

I say this because at this point it it's far past speculation; Final Fantasy 7 is Tetsuya's new series of games in the same vein that Kingdom Hearts was. He's going to be telling this story for the next decade at least, and before you dare imply there's not enough content for that, oh don't you worry! At the recent Playstation Play event he made it clear how that is absolutely no problem for him and his 'adaptation' process. Final Fantasy 7 Remake will be celebrating the imminent death of it's exclusivity with a PS5 glowup that comes along with a brand new chapter called Final Fantasy VII: Intergrade. And yes, I mean 'Brand New' as in 'none of this story was in the original FF7, what are we doing, argh!' Yep, not content with simply straying from the script, Tetsuya is doing a Koishbe Rohan and just straight rewriting that. Heaven's Door or no. New chapter here, new character there; Aerith turns out to be moonlighting as Sephiroth and turns into a magical three-winged angel in the third act. Anything's on the table now!

So what could this new content possibly bring to warrant being attached to the storyline before a chapter 2? Well, Yuffie Kisharagi of course! That's right, the Wutai princess and everyone's favourite Materia thief is sneaking into the picture for a brand spanking new adventure in- Midgar? Is- is that allowed? Yuffie's been to Midgar before meeting the group? That seems slightly off to me, as though it's an example of a speed-running sequence break or something. I thought part of her development was in that she was inexperienced and hadn't visited the far off corners of the world yet; but to be fair I haven't played the original for years so I might be misremembering that. Either way, who cares; the final character has been added to truly bring the FF roster to full power and I'm so happy I can almost overlook how this spells disaster for anyone who wanted to see this remake finished before their grandchildren were born. Nomura's in this one for the long haul boys. (Yes, I know Cait Sif also isn't in the roster yet. But can I just say, screw Cait Sif. He's creepy, his whole deal is creepy and I couldn't care less if- wait I forgot about Cid. and Vincent. Dammit...)

Hmm? You're not yet sold that this is an indication of an impending barrage of FF 7 content, the likes of which cannot even be conceived of? In that case, allow me to introduce you to the other titles of the event. What about 'Final Fantasy 7: The First Solider'; The Battle Royale. Oh you did not misread me, dear viewer, I said Battle Royale. What's that? You thought the trend of endless Battle Royale games based on every intellectual property was dying? How foolish: it's only just begun! Now be forced to live in a world that takes place several decades before the beginning of FF7 and seems to be following the members of SOILDER- killing each other I guess? Not really sure how this is supposed to fit into the storyline, truth be told. Sort of sounds like a waste to even reveal the time setting. But that's nothing compared to their second game.

Okay, so bare with me while I try to wrap me head around this because I hardly get it myself. So it seems that Square are also releasing an IOS linear chapter-based turn-based version of FF7 that's animated in a style similar to, yet fundamentally different from, the original game. The big difference being that when the battles start it enters into a turn-based rendering of the remake's graphics rather than a voxel stage. Now, and here's the part I don't understand; apparently this remake is going to consist of the entire original storyline, which doesn't really make any sense because the Remake both isn't done yet and is stepping away from that storyline. It's also going to contain, apparently, Advent Children, Crisis Core, Before Crisis and Dirge of Cerberus. Now considering that Advent Children is a movie, Before Crisis is a 2004 mobile game, Crisis Core is a PSP game and Dirge of Cerberus is a third person shooter; I'm a little confused. Oh it's called 'Ever Crisis' by the way. 

Are they telling us that this a kinda faithful remaster of Final Fantasy VII heading our way along with remastered versions of every single piece of canonical FF7 content? Are they going to rebuild all of the content to run in an 'abridged' manner similar to how FF7's base game will appear in this pack? How will that work when Advent Children is a movie? Or is it just a compilation pack? There are so many questions to answer, but even in our current enlightened state I have to admit; this is kinda looking too good to be true. I say that to mean; a lot of these other FF7 game are hard to get our hands on now due to the constant evolution of hardware. Dirge and Crisis Core are made for consoles that aren't supported or made anymore and I have no clue how one would even go about getting a ROM for a 2004 mobile game working. Bringing them all together in whatever form it turns out to be is quite simply valuable. Incredibly valuable. I wonder how much Square will need to gouge potential buyers in order to justify this level of effort to themselves.

And then there's the issue to bring up of this game apparently coming to IOS and Android. What's that all about? From the sounds of it, this is looking to be a rather meaty compilation collection; shouldn't it come to actual consoles and PC? I've heard people compare this to Final Fantasy XV's 'Pocket Edition', and that would make sense if that's how the base game is going to shape up; (and I suspect it is) but even that ended up going to PC in no time, so what's this suddenly mobile favouritism about? I'm simply asking because the amount of value on offer here stands to seriously skewer the mobile marketplace more than Square already does on the daily. That's a place for low effort shovel-ware, not lovingly crafted compilation pieces! Have mercy on the app stores, Tetsuya; think about the bottom line!

But you know what the worst thing is about this impending and unending wave of Final Fantasy VII? The part that really grinds my gears to mush? I'm here for it. Every single little bit of it, I'm down. I'll be honest; I love the world of Final Fantasy VII and always get left with that feeling of sadness whenever we have to leave a world of FF characters behind. Getting to see them all again, going on so many new adventures alongside old one's that shape up differently to how you remember: that's very special to me. Even as the Final Fantasy franchise moves on and XVI comes out, I'll always have more room in my heart for VII's endless journey and the plight of Cloud Strife. I know that absolutely makes me part of the problem, but darn it I can't help myself. You got me, Nomura. You got me.