The cynic in me would tend to agree with XLord. Of course, *IF* it ends up being a great game (I'm not holding my breath) my guess is that most people won't mind shelling for it.

Ditto, same here.

At $60, provided I own a next gen system and even with the new battle system, it's an easy buy. Just for the graphics and music alone. IF it's one game.

Multiple ones...Wait for the combo pack. Which will probably be a PS5 launch title.

Edit: I think a VERY possible scenario is they completely over-design this thing and it ends up similar to Xenosaga.

Patience is for people with nothing better to do

Indifference overrides patience.

The episodic format of the remake doesn't bother me much in itself.  What bothers me is that given Square Enix's track record, the episodes are going to be released over the span of years.  That's not the right way to episodic.

I also wouldn't put it past no-shits-given Square Enix to casually abort the remake partway through the episodes.

Agreed. There's definitely a solid chance of that happening.

If we could get fully designed pieces that can be viewed/playable as a stand alone product with just carry over between parts I think I could get behind it. But I just don't see that happening. Square's and players perspective of what content is is just too different now. We saw this with 13.

Sadly new or additional gameplay will probably cost as much or more than hi-res animation and cinematics and that just doesn't sell. It would kill the hype and brand.

Have they done episodic games before?
The only one I know of is Life is Strange, which had a "normal" release schedule for an episodic game.
And no, FFXIII-2 and 3 don't count, because those are sequels, not episodes.

FFIV The After Years jumps to mind. Actually, they may have done a few others on mobile but I don't know how comparable they are in terms of being relevant here.

When this was made physical wasn't it bundled with the remastered FFIV on the PSP in the Complete Collection?

Yep, it was.

Technically, Life Is Strange is by Dontnod Entertainment (if you could call it entertainment), but published by Square-Enix. As far as I know, Square-Enix had ZERO hand in the design of the game, or how it was released.

As for the Final Fantasy VII remake, the more I hear people talk about it, I reiterate what I've always said: They really ought to just make a Final Fantasy VII anime (or 3D CG animated series).

What was the short Final Fantasy VII anime that was eventually packaged in with the Advent Children movie? Was it "Last Order?" I've never even actually seen it yet, I think it was pretty obscure, all considered; was it a Japan only release? Was it even dubbed in English?

I don't know. I don't feel this way about Final Fantasy VII, but I've always felt this way about the first Xenosaga. The first game would be so great if it wasn't for the freaking gameplay and that's... just a terrible thing to say about a game in general.

I bought a copy of the pre-order DVD with the first game's cut scenes on it and honestly I'd rather own that than the game itself. I thought the story was good.

And yes, I know saying this is ironic given there is a Xenosaga anime.

Haha, I'm guessing you didn't like it then?
I dunno, I've heard a LOT of positive things about it, and I quite liked the demo.
I bought the full season for $10 recently and I'm looking forward to trying it out.

Let's keep in mind that Squenix said the FF7 Remake would be released in parts, not that it would be episodic. Each part is supposed to be a "complete" game, whatever that means. There's a lot of different ways this could play out, from true episodic to FFXIII style sequels or perhaps something less conventional like a series of games that tell different tales with different game systems.

Getting to this rather late, I know, but let me have at it anyway.

Yes, I'm probably one of the few people on the planet who HATED Life Is Strange.

I don't understand the critical acclaim it's getting, especially from intelligent people who are averse to bullshit; even YouTubers like Total Biscuit and Alpha Omega Sin quite liked it; I can't help imagining that they were paid off to say good things about it.

When you get down to it, Life Is Strange is teen drama and teen angst cranked up until the dial breaks off, it's high school girls bitching about first world problems, and the time rewind mechanic is there to give somewhat of a sci-fi bent to what is essentially a high school story, but they don't really do anything with it. Really, the time rewind mechanic is only there so you don't have to reset the game every time you want to go back and change a choice you made. For that matter, much like a lot of "choice-and-consequence" point-and-click games these days, your choices don't really matter until the very end. I'm talking, like, Catherine levels of "don't matter," but Catherine was at least funny and stylish.

One of these days, I'm going to be making a YouTube Let's Play! series lampooning this game to hell and back; I'm actually working on a script right now, but my capture device and editing software are horrible, so I'm probably going to need to replace those.

My God, this game was so depressing though, I got sick and bedridden for a week; true story, not kidding. Got the date on my save file and the doctor's bill to prove it. The ending SUCKED. May not have been as PAINFUL as the Evangelion anime (I vomited over the side of the tub after finishing that one), but it still hurt me pretty profoundly.

My advice, just replay Heavy Rain (or play it for the first time, if you haven't) if you really want to play a game like this. At the very least, Heavy Rain is actually unintentionally funny in many places, as is Beyond: Two Souls. I still haven't gotten to the point in that game where Ellen Page is crying while sitting on the toilet, however. Honestly, I'd love to riff on those games, too.

I played the demo for Life is Strange and it felt like it was written by someone who doesn't understand teens or drama, and had only a cursory glance at a gaggle of high schoolers before putting his pen to work.

I gotta say, though, as a huge Evangelion fan, that if this is your barometer for shittiness, the full Life is Strange game must be pretty f---ing awesome.

L:ife is Stange is one of the most emotionally invested games I've ever played.

*shrug*

I actually enjoyed Life is Strange. You could argue that it's not exactly in touch with teenagers, then again, would you really want to play a game that accurately portrays most teens and/or is written by teenagers?! No thanks I thought the ending was pretty asinine. Basically the game was all about "your decisions affect the present, past, and future!" and then it turns out at the end that no matter what you did you ended up with the exact two endings. LAME.
Still, I enjoy such games as LiS and Heavy Rain. So for me it was an enjoyable experience, although not as good as Heavy Rain.

Well....the decisions DO affect the story. Sometimes in a way that makes you unable to even make a later decision, as it were. It's more about the journey than the destination. Though I think most people agree the last episode and the endings were not up to par with what went before.
But the game made ME so invested in it I actually have been reading a HELLA lot of fanfic of it, and though I enjoy fanfics the number of media that I actually regularly will read from has always been pretty small.

Oh wait, wasn't this topic about FF7? Eh.

Emotionally invested? More like emotionally EXHAUSTING.

I wouldn't have such a problem with Life Is Strange if it wasn't just bleakness all the time; at least Evangelion had some slapstick and sexual innuendo, among other jokes, to help wash down the otherwise soul-crushing human drama. Then again, the soul-crushing human drama was certainly in the latter half (or later) of the series, without being broken up by much comedy, either, now that I think of it.

The game DOES attempt humor, but the jokes are about selfies and cat pics, and said jokes simply involve, more or less, just thinking it's funny that such things exist, like the words themselves are funny or something. "Selfies." LAUGH at that, damn you, the game says to me.

Too bad Life Is Strange considers itself too high-brow for slapstick or sexual innuendo. Okay, there was the one kid who bent his dick skateboarding.

Just remember, we can never consider accidents or prat falls by women to be funny, ever. All that shit ever done by actresses like Amanda Bynes? Demeaning to women [/sarcasm].

As far as I was always concerned, Life Is Strange has American teens pegged to a "T" (and the game was written by Frenchies, for chrissakes) but I guess I wouldn't really know for sure, being 34 and all.

It's not that I found Evangelion shitty, but it made me pretty damn depressed, and more or less convinced me - during my formative teenage years - that people in general were psychotic, and all have some sort of psychological, mental disorder. Not even joking; I pretty damn well WITHDREW from humanity for some time after watching Evangelion. I don't know when it really was I recovered from watching that show. There are so few legitimately traumatizing works of fiction as Evangelion (I mean, c'mon, it's about the end of the f---ing world!) Anything else more traumatizing would be a non-fictional, historical account of people escaping from Nazi Germany, or North Korea, or about the Holocaust, or Auschwitz, or in general, accounts of life under totalitarian, dystopian dictatorships or post-apocalyptic events.

Granted, I probably read more into Evangelion than I should have - little discretionary income at the time, but a free internet connection meant that fan sites about the show were a primary source of entertainment or pre-occupation at the time. But Goddamn, if the girls I knew in high school didn't, on some level, remind me of Asuka Langley Sohryu.

It also probably didn't help that I watched the suicide scene ON REPEAT, because I was watching the show late at night, and trying to stay awake against drifting off to sleep, that I probably totally fucked MYSELF in the head; I forget how many times I must've repeated that, because (1) I couldn't believe what was happening, and (2) Was having trouble paying attention. Also, bug-eyed Rei Ayanami coming towards you from the screen. Creepier than The Ring (I was actually bored out of my mind by The Ring - it was playing on a Greyhound bus I once rode for travel late at night, and remember saying, "Stop screaming, I'm trying to sleep here."

And yes, Life Is Strange has a suicide scene in it, too. SPOILERS! Who am I kidding, you'll see it coming from 15 miles away. Not nearly as traumatic as Evangelion, though. It's really just the constant whining in Life Is Strange that got to me, and mainly from Chloe, with Max and Kate being 2nd and 3rd.

Suffice it to say, I don't really watch/consume a whole lot of teen-oriented content these days. At least, not WESTERN teen-oriented content. Japanese high school anime, on the other hand, are usually pretty damn upbeat (Persona 3 & 4, for example).

Yeah, I know, the irony is that I'm whining about a game that has a lot of whining in it, like I'm whining back at it for whining at me. It's like it has the subconscious power to turn intelligent people into whiners.

THANK YOU. The fact that even a single person I've come across is willing to admit this means SO MUCH to me!

I also hate how the game more or less tells you to eat shit on account of the choices you made, no matter that they didn't really GIVE you choices, or the choices more or less resulted in the same outcome, except for the very last choice in the game.

The ending was pretty fatalistic, too; it more or less teaches you the life lesson that, after you've fucked up some much in life (in the case of Chloe), you're permanently fucked, and there's no going back, so the best thing you can do is DIE. That's just the darkest, most depressing thing you can probably ever tell someone: "You're fucked, and there's nothing you can do about it."

Never have I come across such a game that felt like it wanted to punish me for playing it! It's like Dontnod was taking it out on everybody because Remember Me didn't sell very well - which I didn't understand. It was a sci-fi action game with combat mechanics, and climbing mechanics rather similar to Uncharted. How did it not end up being so popular, but then toss everyone a rather basic, unimaginative high school story, and everyone makes it the most popular thing ever!

There are very few games in the world that I revile like Life Is Strange. Most crappy games, or games that I hate, I can simply ignore, but Life Is Strange is a game that HURT me, more so than even some British, surreal, avant-garde horror film.

Yes, but someone ended up mentioning Life Is Strange, because it was published by Square-Enix. P.S. I had originally thought this was the indie game thread; having enough tabs open at one time, I'm bound to get confused enough.

Fact is, I probably wouldn't have even found out about Life Is Strange if it didn't have the Square-Enix label on it. Probably wouldn't have discovered Remember Me if it weren't for the Capcom label on it, either. I mean, who is Dontnod Entertainment anyway, right? (Some obscure French developer).

(Phew). I think I'm done whining about Life Is Strange now, though. I finally got all that out there. Now that I'm done with the game, I can finally move on to something more enjoyable and carefree. Whining about life and focusing on the negative is the kind of thing I did when I was teenager; now that I'm older, I just wanna enjoy life.

With what was recently said about this game (multiple games; each from a different perspective; full price each time) I'm glad I'm not interested in this.

And comparing what they want to do with it release wise to the XIII trilogy? Bad juju man, bad juju.

Also might want to avoid the phrase "anything is up for grabs" when it comes to what you might be changing.

Did they actually comment on the price? I just saw a comment on the size.

I don't think they did, but considering they're saying each game is going to be a full-sized RPG (like the XIII series), I think it would be safe to assume they're going to be $60 each, and probably more in Japan.

our ps3 has seen a grand total of TWO games over its lifetime,, i can't see myself forking out money for another console even for a new FF7

I bought my PS4 specifically for this remake and FFXV!  In fact, I've bought my last 2 consoles specifically for one game (PS3 --> FFXIII, then Ni no Kuni, WiiU --> Hyrule Warriors).  I'm perfectly fine with everything about it. People will find anything to complain about these days.

God, so much fail in here. Must resist touching the poo...

If you're going to criticize someone or something then please put some substance behind it. This passive-aggressive business is a waste of everyone else's time.

Hey, if you want to defend that trash I won't stop you from wasting your time.

Are you somehow implying that people aren't complaining about every aspect of this game and every little piece of information announced? As noted above, no one even knows what episodic means yet. I, for one, am excited and thrilled that SQEX is investing more into these games than just dumping out a 1:1 remake with updated graphics. THAT would be worthy of the cash grab eveeryone is so quick to title this with. I really sympathize with game companies who have to wade through this ocean of negative feedback and try and actually make informed business or game decisions, it has to be the worst job ever.

This internet culture of complaining about everything and the loudest voice in the conversation drowning out and marginalizing every other opinion is really dumb. It's fanboy culture with the anonymity of the Internet and it's only getting worse. I mean, I can't even say I'm perfect because I tend to hyperbolize things (this game f---ing sucks, etc) but it's a far cry from the twitch chat, memelord, change.org, political stuff

This.  So much this.  I participate less and less in conversations on the internet about ANYTHING these days because every one is so, so negative.  This place is still okay, but I have to admit I'm sad every time I log in and the only thing with new posts is the humans-are-dumb thread or whatever.  One post before this someone literally called someone else's positive comment being excited about a new game to be "trash" after STC's owner asked for civility.  Sigh.

On topic, remaking ANYTHING, especially something as beloved as FF7 is going to be tricky business.  How often is a remake of a film more beloved than the original?  Rarely, but it does happen.  Same with games.  I'd say it seems evenly split as well between good remakes that are different than the original vs. good remakes that are totally faithful to the original.  With FF7 I was hoping for something like the Resident Evil remake for Gamecube Capcom did years ago.  The things about THIS game that don't hold up are all technical - I think the actual gameplay of FF7 holds up tremendously well.  So why change it?  If you want to do something new, do something new.  This is the same company that greenlit a remake of Lufia II, one of my favorite RPGs of all time, and stripped everything about the GAME that I liked out of it.  It makes me nervous for their handling of another of my favorite RPGs.

All that said, I'll still have the original (and it just got released in what seems to be a definitive edition on PS4?).  If they DO manage to pull off something great (which current Square just might - they've been producing MUCH better material lately than they have for a long time), I'm all for it.  Genuinely curious about how it turns out!

I think the change in gameplay and the idea of making the content come in multiple parts is very fair game for criticism...I take issue with saying its "bitching for the sake of bitching". Especially since it reflects growing trends (and struggles) in the market nowadays, which are controversial to some people. The online gags about Aeris revival DLC would be absurd if they were not a possibility.

I will just say this...I am absolutely struggling to find reasons to purchase a PS4 or even to care about next/current gen gaming. A $60 game that pays homage to the original would have been an easy feather in the cap for Sony. A multi-part remake that fundamentally alters how the original is played and I am okay with just watching a lets-play in my spare time to see how certain parts get handled.

This.
Look, I love video games, always have and always will, but the entire culture and community around it can go to hell for all I care. It doesn't matter what you do as a video game company, people will always find reasons to complain. And it doesn't matter if you have a perfectly valid and logical explanation for you actions either, because people won't listen and most gamers don't know how development works anyway.

For you and a lot of other people maybe, but not for thousands of others who would have been every bit as vocal about it if it had been a simple $60 game. How do you think they could've squeezed the entirety of FF7 into one $60 game using state-of-the-art technology? Just polish up the pre-rendered backgrounds and character models and keep it exactly the same? It would flop because it would be "outdated."
Making it full 3D was probably the only real option (for all of the clamor for an FFVII remake over the years, I think very few people have ever had a clear idea of what it should look like), and if you're going to make a mammoth game like FFVII fully 3D with modern graphics, it's going to be hard to make a profit if you only charge $60.

One of the main problems with the industry is that people keep expecting more bang for their buck, while prices remain exactly the same, but dev costs keep going up. It's just not sustainable for a lot of companies, which is why you see so much DLC, micro-transactions and Season Passes nowadays.
This would be easily remedied by spending less exorbitant amounts of money on development, but woe is the company that dares release a AAA game that isn't 1080p and 60fps nowadays!

I think the only reason they're even bothering is because they're reusing the engine and probably a lot of systems and assets from FFXV.

I completely agree.  I think if it was a feasible venture before this they would have already invested in something besides 2 simple ports.  My guess is it just wasn't worth it until now.