Final Fantasy 7is one of the most iconic video games of all time, but it’s one of those games that everyone knew through osmosis even if they missed out on playing it. A lot of us who grew up with consoles were beholden to whatever games our parents bought us, and even by the time we were old enough to search out the games we actually wanted, consoles were still hit and miss with backwards compatibility. Besides, people are always hungry for new experiences. That’s why it’s no surprise it was earmarked for a remake.
Remakes and remasters make the old new. They take out the janky mechanics that modern players won’t tolerate as easily, polish the blocky graphics, and make it look and feel like a modern video game. Though they’re still primarily aimed at fans of the original who want to experience it all over again without the barriers around access and outdated gameplay, remakes also give new players a chance to play a game for the first time. For a title like Final Fantasy 7, a contender for the Mount Rushmore of Must Plays, a remake is a no brainer. ButSquare Enixdid something far bolder.
Final Fantasy 7 Is The Only Game That Could Have Been Remade This Way
As you’re no doubt aware by now, Final Fantasy 7 did not get a standard remake, but a trilogy of remakes that added more depth to the story, changed parts of the narrative around, and dropped the turn-based combat for faster action gameplay. It’s more like a reinterpretation than a remake. In fact, it’s closer to the remakes you typically see in cinema, when a new director putsa fresh spin on the bones of a story that’s already been told, than it is to the ground-up polishing of gameplay mechanics as we usually see in the world of pixels and polygons.
Even more intriguing is that this is not a new team, as several key figures from Final Fantasy 7’s original development team have climbed the ranks at Square Enix, and are now leading this project. Tetsuya Nomura and Motomu Toriyama, two of the game’s directors, worked on the original game, while the third director, Naoki Hamaguchi, has been working onFinal Fantasy since 12. This all means it’s a project that, rightly or wrongly, we will probably not see the likes of again.
For one thing, there aren’t many games that are both worthy of this kind of adaptation and available for it. Plenty of modern games are inspired by past classics, but the inspiration is kept at an arm’s length because the studio in question don’t own the rights to the game they really want to make. And while there are plenty of other games like Final Fantasy 7 that have narrative substance still relative to games released today, across all of gaming history, those games still form the minority of the roster.
But even parking all of that, it feels like a major risk. The positive spin is that Final Fantasy 7 is offering a more engaging remake for old fans, and a more accessible, modern story that new players can experience that offers them just as much discovery as it does veterans. The more cynical version is that this is not a remake at all, not as they’re usually marketed in gaming, and is just using Final Fantasy 7’s iconography to sell more games. That’s an extremely harsh interpretation of Final Fantasy 7, but perhaps might be more fitting for a game that would copy its strategy to attempt to sell three remakes from just one game.
Then there’s the question of just how much they sell at all. The first game,Remake, was highly rated by fans and critics, selling five million copies in its initial run on PS4, rising to seven million when adding PC to the mix. The second game,Rebirth, has been just as well-received by players, and reviewed even better than you’d expect the middle chapterwithout the classic opening sequenceor a clear ending to help it, scoring 92 on Metacritic to Remake’s already-impressive 87. It’s currently second favourite for Game of the Year behindAstro Bot, and I suspect it might sneak Player’s Voice off the backs of ‘Real Gamers’ not wanting a more child-friendly game to take the crown.
But its sales have slumped, withan estimated two million in the time Remake moved five. PC will boost it, but those numbers won’t move it past or even to the seven million mark. Not enough to put the third instalment in jeopardy, but enough to highlight the flaws of a three-part remake: your audience for Part 2 can only draw from the audience for Part 1. Between the ambition of the devs, the creativity and experience (and rights to the game) to pull it off, the draw of Final Fantasy 7 as an entity, and the fact it hasn’t resulted in the kinds of sales that cause executives to greenlight bad ideas hoping to win the lottery, the Final Fantasy 7 remake trilogy is an entirely unique project, and we should enjoy it while it’s here.
Update 10:20am BST 22/09/24:The original version of this article switched the careers of Toriyama and Hamaguchi
