Following Square Enix’s 2022 anniversary broadcast, fans have been ecstatic to finally get more news on the upcoming Final Fantasy 7 games. The biggest of these is the announcement that the main series remake will be a trilogy, with the next title Rebirth being out in the summer of 2023. The wait, at least for the next step, seems to be coming to an end, but what happens after that? It’s an interesting question with modern remakes, and it’s an issue that the FF7 main series remake illustrates well.
Time to Completion
The original Final Fantasy 7 was released in 1997 on the PlayStation 1, where it quickly became a series standout. The first 3D entry, and the first mainline entry outside of Nintendo, FF7 was a driving force in bringing RPGs to the west. FF7 was an introduction to the series for many, remaining a favorite in the decades to come. As a result of this success and fame, there were talks as early as the PS2 to remake the game, and these talks and rumors would persist.
In 2005 on the PS3, Square released a tech demo of the intro to FF7 running on the hardware in real-time, which again sent the rumor mill spinning. To many, the legacy of the series meant a remake was inevitable, but this introduced the problem of scope. As broad as the world of FF7 was, it was also a game that was quickly dated by changing standards. Its prerendered backgrounds and the limited story wouldn’t work in the modern AAA game market. In other words, to create a real AAA remake, Square Enix would have to up the ante.
Balance and Escalation
To illustrate the opposite end of the remake spectrum, some of the best examples can be found in the online casino industry. On the exterior level, just like in video games, these games are collected by different major platforms, in this case competing with the likes of free spins and deposit matches. Less obvious to outsiders is just how many of these games went through a remake and remaster process in the mid-2010s. Following the decline of Flash, hundreds of titles needed to be remade to the new HTML5 standard, and this was accomplished quickly and easily.
The Final Fantasy 7 Remake was first announced in 2015, as what we now know as the first of three parts. It wasn’t until 2020 until the title hit shelves, and it won’t be until 2023 until players get their hands on part 2. By this rate, the final third won’t be released until at least 2026, more than ten years after the initial announcement. If you haven’t guessed already, the disparity between this one game and the hundreds of casino titles demonstrates the dangers of leaning into such a rapidly moving industry.
As far as the casino industry has come, many of the games are, at their cores, the same as before, as small and self-contained experiences. Video games, on the other hand, have become immensely bloated, requiring enormous time and financial investments to live up to the modern standard. In a nutshell, this is the remake problem as it exists today, and in video games, it’s only likely to get worse.
Ultimately, this difference between these two industries raises the question of what is necessary, and what is following trends for trends’ sake. While the FF7 Remake release has been a success, others like Warcraft 3: Reforged and Oddworld: New ‘n’ Tasty have fundamentally missed what made the originals great. It’s a balancing act, and where the wrong choices could harm the legacy of the titles we once loved.
