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Final Fantasy VII Remake Confirmed To Still Be Episodic

Back when the Final Fantasy VII Remake was first revealed in 2015, Square Enix said that the big budget build of the game wouldn’t be coming out in a single release but, instead, would be published as a series of episodes. Since then the project has been moved from a third-party developer to a in-house team at Square Enix and a significant rework of the game has been undertaken so there was good reason to think the episodic plan might have been dropped.

Last night’s trailer (below) already shows a few story deviations from the original game, with Cloud being offered a flower freely by Aerith in a cutscene. In the original game, Cloud could choose to buy a flower from Aerith, blow her off, or warn her to leave the area. This seems like a hint that we should expect other changes through the game’s structure and, considering the original was an open world RPG, an episodic structure could suggest it’s being streamlined into a more linear journey.

At this point we pretty much know how this is going to play out. Square Enix is likely going to announce a 2020 window for part one of the remake (which could be a portion or possibly all of the Midgar sequence of the game, semi-akin to much of “disc 1” of the original PSOne release) next month during their E3 stream. If they really want to blow minds they could announce that at the Microsoft conference and reveal an Xbox One port (only PS4 is confirmed at the moment), otherwise we can probably expect the remake to be a cross-generational game on PS4 and PS5.

Square Enix has reiterated that the game will still be split up into multiple episodes, as seen in the tweet below:

Stated at the very end of that game will indeed still be split into parts (分作) for those who were still doubting (not that I think many were). 『ファイナルファンタジーVII リメイク』最新トレーラー公開！ https://t.co/XvVxpe76wH — Netto the 吐露非狩フルーツPønch侍G (@hansuramu) May 10, 2019

Upon the original announcement, it was sort of assumed that nearly every episode would make its way to PS4, but over three years down the line, splitting the game up into parts throws up new questions. Final Fantasy VII Remake is in development for the PS4 and the PS4 only. However, the longer it takes to release, the better chance there is of a PS5 port. As for other platforms, Square Enix hasn’t mentioned any. In fact, it continues to say the game is in development just for the PlayStation 4.

A release window was not provided for Final Fantasy 7 Remake during Sony’s State of Play yesterday. Square Enix said more information will come in June at E3 2019.