Square Enix's Final Fantasy 7 Remake was one of the biggest no-shows at E3 2018, and it may still be a long ways off from release. But Tetsuya Nomura today gave fans a sliver of hope, stating that the remake has at least moved past the conceptual stage and into full development.

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Nomura told IGN during an E3 interview that Final Fantasy 7 Remake is being developed "in parallel," to Kingdom Hearts 3, which he's also directing. The director added that he's putting a full effort into Final Fantasy 7 Remake - when he's not working on Kingdom Hearts 3, that is."It's not just in the early concept stages," Nomura said of Final Fantasy 7 Remake. "We are actually in development. So right now, I've been putting 100 percent into Kingdom Hearts and 100 percent into Final Fantasy 7 and 100 percent into Kingdom Hearts and going back and forth."He's putting in some long hours at the office to make that possible, but doing so doesn't bother Nomura. In fact, he prefers working overtime to having leisure time to spend with other people."I don’t get fatigued by that at all," Nomura explained. "It’s really fun for me to do. I actually don’t like human relationships more than just work, so I just want to focus on work and creating things if I don’t have to deal with human relationships. It’s actually a little bit easier for me to do than not working.”It helps that he has so many fans in his corner. More than just enabling Nomura to have a career making video games, his fans also keep him invested in the work.“I do need fans to play my games, to be able to create it, and so fans are definitely a factor to motivate me to keep on going," he said.Kingdom Hearts 3 was delayed this week due to sales and marketing reasons . And while Nomura will have one less full game to work on when it releases January 29, 2019, he may still have to work on DLC after that Until then, Nomura isn't giving away any secrets about the game, insisting players experience it for themselves to find out where the adventure will take Sora and friends

Reporting by Jonathon Dornbush.Nick Santangelo is a freelance writer based in Philadelphia. He loves video games and sports, but not sports video games. Follow him on Twitter