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Square Enix has angered fans of the Final Fantasy series by announcing that the Final Fantasy VII Remake will be released in episodic installments (archive.is):
It seems that Square Enix has unleashed a torrent of anger over the episodic nature [archive.is] of Final Fantasy VII Remake, so much so that producer Yoshinori Kitase has had to step in.
In a new blog post over on their site, Kitase has done his best to give his take on the situation. As he says, "One thing that we wanted to be clear about during this weekend to accompany the new trailer was the scale of this project. We wanted to tell you this now and not in the future so that you'd share our vision for what we want to deliver. The biggest reason why we haven't done a remake until now is because it's a massive undertaking to reconstruct Final Fantasy VII from the ground up with the current technology. Producing a proper HD remake of Final Fantasy VII that maintains the same feeling of density of the original would result in a volume of content that couldn't possibly fit into one installment."
"We've seen everyone's comments and reactions to the news that Final Fantasy VII Remake will be a multi-part series and many have speculated correctly as to the reason why we have made this decision. If we were to try to fit everything from the original into one remake installment, we would have to cut various parts and create a condensed version of Final Fantasy VII. We knew none of you would have wanted that."
The thing here though is that this is not really a remake of the original PSone game, this is a whole new and different game. In that sense, building the old game's narrative and setting would indeed become a huge undertaking with this new functional approach.
The argument here is that nobody asked Square Enix to change the game like this in the first place.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 15 2015, @02:46AM
Two lines stuck out at me.
A good remake will fix things that were never part of the artistic vision, but were forced by technical limitations or time/budget constraints.
A good remake will polish the parts of the original that were not up to the highest bar - "all the bad stuff you forgotten about", as you so eloquently put it.
Two things, the first is that part of the art is working with the medium. Second is that what you consider "needing polish" some people thing is just fine.
For example, I consider the original music that came with many games at the time a feature, not a limit. In addition to being a technical feat in its own to get such sounds out of the audio hardware of the time, my memory gets pinged by those renditions of songs. I have completely failed to recognize songs without those limitations, an example being the cave music in FF7. The original tingy and tinny version instantly makes me recall things, but I've completely not recognized it in other renditions. To me, there is nothing wrong with the music.
Another example is given by the extensive TV Tropes entry on Wooleyisms. Some people hate his translations, other people love them. Is a particular line in a translation a mistake at all? If so, should it be fixed or does it add to the flavor? Should pop culture jokes be updated or left as is? There are those decisions around and more.
Different people like different things. Say they bump the difficulty at the end of the game because one group of people complained about the ease and not feeling epic. Well, then you have a different group complaining it is too hard. Some want fully recorded orchestral pieces, some want the sounds from the time. Some think things are bugs, others think they are features. Some want more secrets and others want it the same. Some like swearing, some don't. Some like flavor descriptions, other like to know what things do. Different strokes for different folks.
Additionally, when I say "all the bad stuff you forgotten about" I am not just referring to technical glitches and the like of pacing due to grinding or simple slow start/ rushed ending or things like Navi bugging you more than you remember or being less helpful since you already know what is going on. But things that are literally unchangeable but still are bad, like a character being whinny or useless until some later story event or a fundamental part of the mechanic of the game like Paladin's Quest's lack of MP. Importantly, changing those leads to a completely different game.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 15 2015, @11:54PM
Paladin's Quest's lack of MP
I actually liked that there was no MP. IIRC in the game magic is tied to your lifeforce then it makes more sense that it would affect your health instead of some arbitrary power that can run out like some sort of "charged" enchantment.