The remake of FF7

[Traab]

Did it come out already? If so, whats everyones reaction to it? Its honestly one of the few things that might tempt me to buy a new game console.

[Hiro Protagonest]

No. there's not really more to say

[Antonok]

There's a rumor floating around about a March 2017 release but that'd be it. Personally don't expect it til sometime in 2018

[GloatingSwine]

There's a rumor floating around about a March 2017 release but that'd be it. Personally don't expect it til sometime in 2018

It's still intended to be episodic, so I'd expect the first episode probably sometime next year. Back half maybe though not March.

[danzibr]

Did it come out already? If so, whats everyones reaction to it? Its honestly one of the few things that might tempt me to buy a new game console.
Yeah, I'm buying a PS4 for this (and XV).

Oh, but right, as others said, not supposed to come out until 2017.

[Olinser]

Ever since I heard they're completely changing the combat system I've been firmly in the 'meh' camp.

[Gnoman]

Ever since I heard they're completely changing the combat system I've been firmly in the 'meh' camp.

Precisely. This is just another case of the "You don't really like that - you'll like what we tell you to like" syndrome that's been plaguing SE for a long time. Never mind that the further they deviate from the classic combat system the worse their sales get, or that an app that is literally nothing but the classic system boiled down to basics is wildly popular - they know that the classic system was just something that everyone tolerated, and what we really want is an action game shoved at us.

[danzibr]

Ever since I heard they're completely changing the combat system I've been firmly in the 'meh' camp.

Precisely. This is just another case of the "You don't really like that - you'll like what we tell you to like" syndrome that's been plaguing SE for a long time.
Man, I dunno. I claim FFVII as my single favorite game of all time, but I think overhauling the combat system could make it better. As far as gameplay goes, I had the most fun with Dragon's Dogma, recently. Plot stank, but fun gameplay.

Never mind that the further they deviate from the classic combat system the worse their sales get, or that an app that is literally nothing but the classic system boiled down to basics is wildly popular - they know that the classic system was just something that everyone tolerated, and what we really want is an action game shoved at us.
Oh? What app is this? I might need to give it a go.

Unless you're talking about ffrk. I play the hell out of that.

[Gnoman]

Man, I dunno. I claim FFVII as my single favorite game of all time, but I think overhauling the combat system could make it better. As far as gameplay goes, I had the most fun with Dragon's Dogma, recently. Plot stank, but fun gameplay.

Oh? What app is this? I might need to give it a go.

Unless you're talking about ffrk. I play the hell out of that.

FFRK is what I was referring to. It isn't quite identical to any of the old systems, but distills them down to the most basic essence.

As for "overhauling" the system, that isn't what they're doing. They're throwing it out completely and insisting that everybody has always hated it and wanted Kingdom Hearts gameplay exclusively.

[Traab]

Ugh, all they had to do was update the graphics, cinematics, and music. Thats what people wanted. FF7 is getting remade because FINAL FANTASY SEVEN WAS AWESOME! They dont need to alter the game itself, because they already did it right! As for combat, ugh. I grew up playing that style of combat in my rpgs. Thats my favorite setup. I dislike grids, I dont like having to manually send my character towards my opponent or whatever. I liked turn based combat standing in a line like two ye olde british army formations. Devs changing the combat style was a big part of why I stopped playing the new games as they came out. Ah well, I will still wait to see what the final product looks like, even if it sounds like im stuck waiting another year.

[GloatingSwine]

Ugh, all they had to do was update the graphics, cinematics, and music. Thats what people wanted. FF7 is getting remade because FINAL FANTASY SEVEN WAS AWESOME! They dont need to alter the game itself, because they already did it right!

Final Fantasy 7 was awesome 20 years ago. The things that made it awesome then, all the spectacle of its prerendered backgrounds and CGI cutscenes and 3D battles, look at best quaint now and at worst, well, a bit crap.

And the nature of the graphics actually makes them pretty hard to update. Reproducing all the prerendered backgrounds and CGI at a modern resolution would be amazingly labour intensive. Reproducing it all in genuine 3D would just expose how small and limited the areas actually are (which is disguised by the limits on the ways you move through them and the perspective).

At best the backgrounds could be created as 3D objects, lit, and then all exported as 2D images (like Pillars of Eternity), but that's still hell of work just to make the same game look a bit prettier.

Then you have all the ways the models interact with the backgrounds, which weren't actually particularly good in the original. It was a 3D model moving over a static 2D image or playing video, it looked janky a lot of the time. That didn't matter so much at the time because everything was low-fi anyway, but the more detail you put in the more the janky bits will stand out.

It's not like the HD upgrades of eg. FFX/X-2 where they can use all the same models, animation, and rigging for 99% of the content and just touch up a few textures (which were probably all created at a higher resolution and downscaled originally anyway).

"Remake FF7 but prettier" sounds like the simple path, but it's actually just as much work as making a brand new thing. And frankly I'm not sure the effort would be financially worth it. The number of people who say they would want it and the number of people who would put down full price for it (because remember it would cost as much as a full price game to make) are I suspect radically different.

[Hunter Noventa]

Yeah there hasn't been much news about FF7R due to the hype machine surrounding FFXV, which I'm less than excited about personally.

I'm also cautious about FF7R and it having a more active combat system. You would think after the success of Bravely Default they might realize that there are plenty of us who do still like turn-based combat. I never got into KH so I don't know how I feel about FF7R being more like that.

I won't deny that standard ATB combat can be a little boring and wouldn't mind something to make it more interesting, but they don't need to make it an action game. Frankly I still think FFX had the best combat system of any mainline FF game.

[danzibr]

Yeah there hasn't been much news about FF7R due to the hype machine surrounding FFXV, which I'm less than excited about personally.

I'm also cautious about FF7R and it having a more active combat system. You would think after the success of Bravely Default they might realize that there are plenty of us who do still like turn-based combat. I never got into KH so I don't know how I feel about FF7R being more like that.

I won't deny that standard ATB combat can be a little boring and wouldn't mind something to make it more interesting, but they don't need to make it an action game. Frankly I still think FFX had the best combat system of any mainline FF game.
Oh man, I'm with ya there. I'm in the process of making an RPG, my combat system is similar to X's (I wouldn't say I'm ripping it off (okay, maybe a little), it just happens to be my favorite).

[Hunter Noventa]

Oh man, I'm with ya there. I'm in the process of making an RPG, my combat system is similar to X's (I wouldn't say I'm ripping it off (okay, maybe a little), it just happens to be my favorite).

Yeah, it just felt right, you know? In truth I love the original FFT the best, but since the only strategy RPGs anymore come from NIS or IS I'm not gonna hold out hope for that to make a comeback.

[Anteros]

Chaining an outdated 20 year old combat system to a brand new AAA release is a recipe for disaster. I think it's good that they're changing some things, that makes the new game worth playing for some reason besides pure nostalgia.

[Hunter Noventa]

Chaining an outdated 20 year old combat system to a brand new AAA release is a recipe for disaster. I think it's good that they're changing some things, that makes the new game worth playing for some reason besides pure nostalgia.

I don't think anyone is saying they should bring it over exactly as-is from the original. I think people are worried about it being more of an action game than anything, if only because most modern action combat is relatively similar. I don't think I'd enjoy it if it played say, like everything we've seen about FFXV's combat.

[Alanzeign]

I don't understand this notion of outdated combat system. Action/adventure rpgs are just as old as turn based, so why isn't that considered outdated?

Speaking of the specific style of combat from Kingdom Hearts, that is from 2002, 14 years ago. You can also make an argument that this style traces back to the Tales series (1995/21 years old), Wanderers from Ys (1991/25 years), and even Legend of Zelda II (1987/29 years) as just a few examples.

As far as the remake is concerned, I think there are plenty of things they could include to make it more than just nostalgia without completely replacing the core method of gameplay. This may sound like a ridiculous comparison, but imo this is no different than announcing a Super Mario 3 remake and instead it turns out to be Dr. Mario. It's not that Dr. Mario is a bad game, it's that its gameplay is something completely unrelated to Super Mario 3.

I'll probably watch someone play it on twitch but I don't really have any interest in the gameplay if it is more action/adventure.

[GloatingSwine]

I don't understand this notion of outdated combat system. Action/adventure rpgs are just as old as turn based, so why isn't that considered outdated?


I don't think it's the actual combat system, but the way the combat system meshes with the presentation. The more high fidelity and detailed everything else (visuals, animations, audio, etc) is in the game, the more the limitations of "everyone line up and take turns" stand out. When everything is clearly abstracted it doesn't matter so much, but a high res, high fidelity model doing a half second idle loop looks really really silly.

As much as anything, I think the changes in 12/13/15 are to make sure that the characters stay in motion more.


(FF7's combat system isn't very mechanically interesting though, even compared to most of the other ATB games it doesn't have a lot of noticable inherent character variety because they pushed all that into the materia system, it's distinctly a step back from Chrono Trigger with its clearly defined characters, positional effects in combat, and dual/triple techs)

[Hunter Noventa]

(FF7's combat system isn't very mechanically interesting though, even compared to most of the other ATB games it doesn't have a lot of noticable inherent character variety because they pushed all that into the materia system, it's distinctly a step back from Chrono Trigger with its clearly defined characters, positional effects in combat, and dual/triple techs)

Yeah this has been a problem since 7 that pervaded through 8, 10 and even 12 to an extent. The characters in your party are fairly interchangeable/customizable after a certain point, the only notable difference being their limit breaks. In 6 at least everyone had their unique command to utilize on top of learning magic. 3 and 5 had job systems as their gimmick. 4 had a rotating party where everyone had a distinct role to play. 2 had a rotating party, but characters were still interchangeable. 1 was just 1.

They could definitely do better, but the real problem is that with any kind of non-turn based system, you're pretty much only controlling a single character from your party. Some games make this work fairly well, like Xenoblade Chronicles X, but it remains to be seen exactly what they plan for FF7R.

Actually I think that might be part of my problem with the idea of making it more of an action game if that's indeed the route they choose, if you're only controlling a single character as you usually are in these games, it subtracts a great deal of flexibility and strategy from the fight, since by default your other characters are controlled by the AI now. I'll admit that I'm aware that KH doesn't quite work that way, but I've also never played that series.

[Anteros]

A lot of games these days allow you to customize your party member's AI quite a bit. Or they could simply allow you to give your party commands on the fly. For example, press down on the D pad to toggle to a previously determined support structure. Press up for attack, etc.

[Traab]

Yeah this has been a problem since 7 that pervaded through 8, 10 and even 12 to an extent. The characters in your party are fairly interchangeable/customizable after a certain point, the only notable difference being their limit breaks. In 6 at least everyone had their unique command to utilize on top of learning magic. 3 and 5 had job systems as their gimmick. 4 had a rotating party where everyone had a distinct role to play. 2 had a rotating party, but characters were still interchangeable. 1 was just 1.

They could definitely do better, but the real problem is that with any kind of non-turn based system, you're pretty much only controlling a single character from your party. Some games make this work fairly well, like Xenoblade Chronicles X, but it remains to be seen exactly what they plan for FF7R.

Actually I think that might be part of my problem with the idea of making it more of an action game if that's indeed the route they choose, if you're only controlling a single character as you usually are in these games, it subtracts a great deal of flexibility and strategy from the fight, since by default your other characters are controlled by the AI now. I'll admit that I'm aware that KH doesn't quite work that way, but I've also never played that series.

The downside with 6 was, in their effort to make everyone have unique skill sets, there were invariably good ones and bad ones. As an example, a team of edgar, sabin, cyan, and gogo was just mind bendingly powerful compared to pretty much any other combination. Meanwhile you had relm and gau and celes whose special skills were lame, obnoxious to get the good ones, and lame, respectively. I still liked it better than ff7 and its "everyone is the same in every field" setup though.

[Hunter Noventa]

The downside with 6 was, in their effort to make everyone have unique skill sets, there were invariably good ones and bad ones. As an example, a team of edgar, sabin, cyan, and gogo was just mind bendingly powerful compared to pretty much any other combination. Meanwhile you had relm and gau and celes whose special skills were lame, obnoxious to get the good ones, and lame, respectively. I still liked it better than ff7 and its "everyone is the same in every field" setup though.

Yeah, it is true that not everyone there was a winner, but like you I do prefer it to everyone only having their Limit Break to set them apart, which meant that the mechanically best party in FF7 was Cloud, Yuffie and Cid, as they all have solid, multi-hit limit breaks.

[Anteros]

I do like my characters to be differentiated, but sometimes they go too far. Like FFXIII where certain characters have stats that are so much higher than others that they're literally twice as good.

I liked FFX's sphere grid the most I think. All of the characters start out useful at different things, so you need to use all of them, but you can still grow a character how you want.

[danzibr]

Yeah, it is true that not everyone there was a winner, but like you I do prefer it to everyone only having their Limit Break to set them apart, which meant that the mechanically best party in FF7 was Cloud, Yuffie and Cid, as they all have solid, multi-hit limit breaks.
That's my usual team. Plus, Conformer.

I do like my characters to be differentiated, but sometimes they go too far. Like FFXIII where certain characters have stats that are so much higher than others that they're literally twice as good.

I liked FFX's sphere grid the most I think. All of the characters start out useful at different things, so you need to use all of them, but you can still grow a character how you want.
Yeah, wasn't a fan of XIII's leveling.

Agreed, I liked X's.

I probably like Breath of Fire III's (and IV's) leveling system the most. Also, that game where you play as Cthulhu. Every level you get a choice, usually more physically oriented or magically oriented (but not always, sometimes you choose between stats and utility stuff). Makes it good for at least 2 playthroughs.

[Traab]

Breath of fire 3 and 4 are among my favorite non final fantasy rpgs. Suikoden, I honestly am not sure which ones I liked as its been awhile but I played several. Legend of Legaia probably had the most unique battle system I enjoyed. You had to put in move combos to pull off special attacks. And as you leveled up you got to add more and more moves per attack which let you chain special attacks and do all sorts of fun things. Plus I really liked the story.

[cobaltstarfire]

Hearing that FF7 has more "kingdom hearts" style gameplay actually made me more likely to want to get it. I have already beaten ff7 I don't need to play it again, but now it'll be different.

Somewhere between the end of highschool and now it got to where I feel really bored by FF type combat. I remember trying to replay 4, and dropped it after the mist dragon because the combat just couldn't hold my attention.

I have only played the first Kingdom Hearts, and I really enjoyed the combat in that game.

[danzibr]

Breath of fire 3 and 4 are among my favorite non final fantasy rpgs. Suikoden, I honestly am not sure which ones I liked as its been awhile but I played several. Legend of Legaia probably had the most unique battle system I enjoyed. You had to put in move combos to pull off special attacks. And as you leveled up you got to add more and more moves per attack which let you chain special attacks and do all sorts of fun things. Plus I really liked the story.
I like your style! (pretty sure I've said that before, but worth repeating)

I wish BoF3 had some of the nicer BoF4 mechanics (like guarding -> examining everyone, for one).

Hearing that FF7 has more "kingdom hearts" style gameplay actually made me more likely to want to get it. I have already beaten ff7 I don't need to play it again, but now it'll be different.

Somewhere between the end of highschool and now it got to where I feel really bored by FF type combat. I remember trying to replay 4, and dropped it after the mist dragon because the combat just couldn't hold my attention.

I have only played the first Kingdom Hearts, and I really enjoyed the combat in that game.
I agree here. I love the hell out of FFVII, put at least 700 hours into it, srsly. Played it over and over, maxed the game clock over and over. I suspect it's closer to 1000. Anyway, simply making it as pretty as modern games and adding content would've made for a good game (depending on the content, I guess), but I'm looking forward to seeing something new. Now... I dunno if I'll like exactly what it's going to be, but the simple fact that's it's going to be different doesn't turn me off.

[GloatingSwine]

I liked FFX's sphere grid the most I think. All of the characters start out useful at different things, so you need to use all of them, but you can still grow a character how you want.

Unless you're using the alternate International grid, you can't really customise characters until a point after you've basically completed the game and the sphere grid is actually super linear (http://gameinternals.com/post/3364162387/straightening-out-final-fantasy-xs-sphere-grid) until you get to that point, and takes too much fiddly clicking (it takes seven clicks to get from gameplay to buy a sphere level).

Also it dooms Kimahri to just be a crap version of someone else with a crap limit break.

The Crystarium from FFXIII is actually very very similar to the sphere grid except it takes less clicks to work, and it's gated by story progress (which isn't actually a bad thing because it means the designers can tune the difficulty of encounters better. Not that they did mind, but the problems with FFXIII were not the levelling system or even the combat engine, but how the designers populated the combat engine, it's a system which only works properly with a full party in a game where you only have two characters for 2/3 of its runtime, and a system which is based on figuring out the solution to encounters populated with far too many repeat encounters.)

[Anteros]

I've played through the non international version like 5 times, and you can get teleport spheres extremely early. Before you even have a full party. No one is locked into anything outside of the very start. The crystarium allows no customization at all. Ever. It's similar, but lacks the freedom of the sphere grid.

Even without spheres you don't have to make Kimarhi a crap version of someone else unless you choose to. I usually start by moving him down towards Riku to get steal, then pick up haste from Tidus, some accuracy from Wakka, and finally move him into Auron's grid for power.

That said, I'm not arguing that the sphere grid was a perfect system. It's just the one that allows the most freedom out of past FF games. It could certainly be improved on. Not that I think we'll get a system anything like that anyway for future releases.