Square Enix finally announced a remaster for Final Fantasy VIII at E3 2019 last week. To commemorate the occasion, the game’s original director Yoshinori Kitase shared some info and other tidbits in this week’s issue of Famitsu magazine. [Thanks, Ryokutya2089.]

Here are highlights from the interview:

The remaster has the original version’s battle programmer Hiroshi Harada, Tomohiro Kayano who did character model, and Tetsuya Nomura working on it.”

“The character refinement quality is the result of having the original staff work on it.”

“Battle Assistance will be implemented.”

“Chocobo World will not be included. The items you could only get from it will be available through Rinoa’s special ability.”

“Final Fantasy VIII was the first work that we’ve used motion capture on. At the time we didn’t know how things worked, so we made the actor use a heavy gun. Looking back now, I get the cold sweats thinking about any worst case scenario accidents that could’ve happened.”

“Final Fantasy VIII has had its share of influence in Hollywood entertainment, be it a game screen shown in a Hollywood movie or an offer we got last year from a major video game-related film that wanted to use the Gunblade.”

Final Fantasy VIII Remastered releases for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC in 2019. You can check out its recent announcement trailer here and a few comparison images in our previous report.