I’m writing this post the night before the “Big Reveal” so this introductory part is without knowledge of what is going to show up tomorrow. I figured it would be worth writing about, even though my prediction is it’s going to be some compilation album or book or something I’m not going to buy. Maybe it will be a game, but I suspect any game that they’re showing characters from all the Final Fantasy games is not going to be one I’d enjoy. But hey, who knows! Maybe it will be the holy grail AKA Final Fantasy VII REMAKE!!! I’ll write more when the reveal happens tomorrow.
The Reveal
Okay, so it is a game and it’s called Final Fantasy Record Keeper. Astonishing. Anyway, as I suspected it looks kind of like a cash-in on the whole series, though depending on how they do it it may be fun. The premise is some guy is studying with a Moogle and is researching Final Fantasy history. He’s going to research the stories of the games and you can pick up different characters along the way as you complete areas in the other FF games.
The problem is that the reason we love final fantasy so much has been because of the stories told therein; but how do you tell a story in a mash-up game like this? I don’t know if it’s going to be possible. Color me skeptical and probably not playing.
I guess we still have to wait for the “holy grail.”
In the meantime. I hope FFXV will be awesome. It better be, considering how long we’ve waited.
Eclectic Theist 
If they ever remade FFVII with modern graphics they would have to change the feel of the game in many parts and cut out some charming elements. A few months ago they released the game on Steam again (Steam is a PC client, not sure if you’re familiar with it) . I picked it up for around 5 bucks at the time with one of their many sales. (You can still get it for around $12 along with FFIII, FFVIII).
As I played through some of it I was thinking about how they might do a remake and I can see how some of it–especially the humor–might be infeasible on a modern graphics engine. For instance, when you get off the train for the first time in the slums a fat guy runs out of the train to his woman. The woman picks the guy up and spins him around. Also recall the part where you have to dress up and seduce the guy in the slums. The switch between quirky humor and serious drama worked well with the sprite-esque characters. How do you pull that off in realistic looking graphics without it breaking the mood in an awkward way?
I’m not saying that it would necessarily be a bad thing to change the feel of the game by leaving out some of these quirkier moments. I’m sure a lot of fans would just be overjoyed to have the main story and environments intact and updated. But I can see why those who were involved in the original project might be reticent to try and re-capture what they were doing back then.
I agree–there would be many challenges to updating FFVII and some of the humor would have to be either redone or left out. But I think it could be done and I think it would be amazing. If they announced it right now, I’d immediately commit to buying whichever system it came out on. I don’t even care. One of my all-time favorite games. I’ve been re-playing it on my Playstation that I still have. Oh yeah.
Just so you know, the Steam version of the game gives you boosters as an option. This allows you to play through the story without having to grind. It’s compatible with xbox controllers so you don’t have to use the keyboard and it doesn’t require high end PC to run, of course.
Wow… that suddenly got much more tempting! I might have to wait on a sale to pick it up myself.