Final Fantasy 7 Remake’s producer, Yoshinori Kitase, has promised that the team has no intention of making any drastic changes to the original game’s story in subsequent games.

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Talking as part of an interview for the Final Fantasy 7 Remake Ultimania book (translated by Aitaikuji ), Kitase said “I’ve talked about this extensively with [co-director Tetsuya] Nomura, but I’m sure fans of the original are expecting to revisit familiar locations and scenes, so we have strong feelings to not stray away from that.”“From here on out, we’re not drastically changing the story and making it into something completely different than the original,” he added. “Even though it’s a Remake, please assume that FF7 will still be FF7 as usual.”Following on from this, story and scenario writer Kazushige Nojima said “For me, I create scenarios that follow the general flow of the original story but with the assumption that the way things are presented or how events occur might be slightly different.”This news may come as a relief to many players who are worried that their favourite moments from the original game may not feature in future Remake installments. Square Enix has made no secret of the fact that this new version of the Final Fantasy 7 story is expanded and tweaked, but it seems that any changes to be made will not stray away from the familiar narrative.This promise of the Remake project being “FF7 as usual” stands in contrast to what appears to be promised in the finale of Remake. As detailed in our Final Fantasy 7 Remake ending explained feature , the destruction of the Whispers seems to suggest that fate has been eliminated, freeing the writers to stray away from the original story. While it seems like we should expect some further changes, this interview does suggest that the departures won’t be as drastic as many players have feared.In regards to “doubts”, Nomura says “The story will still continue, so I don’t think we can answer much.” He does, however, confirm that Zack is alive. “That’s the biggest highlight of the mysteries that have been set up in this scene, isn’t it? (laughs)”Nojima also references the mascot dog Stamp, which in Zack’s scene is a different breed of dog. While not divulging what this means, it is clearly important to the future of this aspect of the story. Our ending explained video presents a theory on what it could be.Further adding to the intrigue is that the Ultimania interview reveals that Remake is officially the fifth part of the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, which is made up of the movie Advent Children, mobile game Before Crisis, PSP game Crisis Core, and PS2 game Dirge of Cerberus. That official link lends further reinforcement to fan theories that the Sephiroth present in Remake is actually the Sephiroth from Advent Children, having traveled back in time in an attempt to foil Cloud.For more Final Fantasy 7 Remake, check out the developers' plans for future FF7 games , how a save game editor can put Red XIII in your party , and our guide to tackling FF7 Remake's hard mode

Matt Purslow is IGN's UK News and Entertainment Writer. You can follow him on Twitter