The problem of 'scale' in the FFVII Remake

[Tyson]

I, like most people on this forum, freaked out when the Remake announcement trailer played at Sony's E3 conference. FF VII is easily one of my favourite games of all time and in the back of my mind I’ve wanted a remake since that 2005 E3 concept trailer.


But after thinking about it logically from a development stand point….how the hell is this possible? People like to bring up the Honey Bee Inn, the cross dressing scene, Cloud bouncing off a dolphin. But those are literally some of the least significant hurdles this remake faces.


Scale is the one that really perplexes me. In the original after you leave Midgar and are on the world map Cloud is 10 stories tall and just runs across massive green fields to the next location before things return to normal. I have to imagine they’re going to want to keep the open world more like FF XV in the remake. Which means Nibelheim can’t just be a leisurely stroll away from Midgar, there has to be some distance, and if there’s distance you have to include other things to see on the way. Which means a lot of things will be added to the world map that were never in the original.


Also Midgar can’t be this tiny little disc you run up to. The only way I can see it working is if they make it more linear. For example you get to a road with Midgar in the distance and once you hit that checkpoint a loading screen appears and then you’re inside Midgar. From a development stand point they’re not going to be able to full render places like Junon, Fort Condor, Mt Nibel etc…. so you can walk around and come at them from 360 degrees.


It also creates issues for an airship in the game, FF XV’s airship was already scrapped as moving through the environment at that speed would just be too much for the hardware. (it has to work more like the GTA games where the textures turn to crap the higher you get) that would require major retooling of the luminous engine (if that’s what they’re going to use for the remake)


This would make the game more like FF X or Crisis Core which will send a lot of fans into a furor. I just can’t see any way of making the remake without making it linear.


What’s your opinion on this? Would you be okay with a more linear FF VII?

[Skyblade]

This would make the game more like FF X or Crisis Core which will send a lot of fans into a furor.

It's not as though the decisions they've already hinted at aren't doing that already.

To be fair, FFVII is fairly linear in terms of what you can actually do in it. I mean, once you leave Midgar, there's just nothing else to do but go to Kalm or randomly run around the world map.

But removing the world map would just be one more reason I would have to not pick up this game. Because that list wasn't long enough already.

Square, remaking all your favorite games and removing everything good about them. At least it's not a mobile release?

[Tyson]

This would make the game more like FF X or Crisis Core which will send a lot of fans into a furor.

It's not as though the decisions they've already hinted at aren't doing that already.

To be fair, FFVII is fairly linear in terms of what you can actually do in it. I mean, once you leave Midgar, there's just nothing else to do but go to Kalm or randomly run around the world map.

That's a good point, I mean they're going to make getting Yuffie and Vincent mandatory I'd imagine (not going to redo CGI and voice act/mocap characters you'll never see) so the game could pretty easily be turned into a linear path at that point.

Still tho, no world map? I can understand the logistics behind it but the moment you leave Midgar is probably the most impactful part of the original for me. I mean I'm definitely buying it day one, but I know alot of people are asking for a frame for frame remake and I don't think we're going to get anything close to that. It could just never work.

[Spawn of Sephiroth]

See Im ok with leaving it how it is in size of scale for the world map and then when you enter in a city resize to normal. Worked well on ps4 with type-0 hd so the overworld map scale size wouldnt bug me at all if it was the same as originally in 7.

[Mirage]

This would make the game more like FF X or Crisis Core which will send a lot of fans into a furor.

It's not as though the decisions they've already hinted at aren't doing that already.

To be fair, FFVII is fairly linear in terms of what you can actually do in it. I mean, once you leave Midgar, there's just nothing else to do but go to Kalm or randomly run around the world map.

That's a good point, I mean they're going to make getting Yuffie and Vincent mandatory I'd imagine (not going to redo CGI and voice act/mocap characters you'll never see) so the game could pretty easily be turned into a linear path at that point.

They're not gonna have to rely on pre-rendered videos as much now as they did in the past, which makes it easy to make scenes with any configuration of party members. Wasted dialogue isn't much of an issue I think. There are dozens of games with optional and missable voice acted scenes, plus, yuffie and vincent aren't the most talkative characters anyway. The game could suggest that you go to whereever you find them, but not force you there. That's gonna make most players get them the first time around.

[Elly]

it didn't/wouldn't bother me at all if they had a giant Cloud trampling all over Gaia... even in the original i understood that the over-world markers (towns, people, ect.) were not to scale, nor did/do i expect them to be... the giant Cloud i took as a "your party is in about this location" an animated icon to denote general location, honestly i wouln't be bothered if they took the giant Cloud out, left in the world map, and just gave us a little arrow pointing down with Cloud's picture on it to move about the map... but to be honest i'd prefer the old style world maps where things are not to scale, then scale properly when you enter a town, village, ect., to me the scaling difference on the over-world makes it feel so much bigger even if my character icon is 20 stories tall...

[escobert]

your party gets sucked into you eveytime you stop talking to people.... I don't think cloud being 10 stories tall on the worldmap is that big of an issue. If I want realism I'll go play DayZ where I actually have to eat drink and stuff.

[Mirage]

Why do you think your party would get sucked into you in the FF7 remake when they stopped doing that in FF8 and haven't done it since?

[Psychotic]

They did it in Final Fantasy Type-0 and it was fine.

[Mirage]

do you actually see the characters going into others there?

[Psychotic]

Oh, no, I was replying to the OP.

[Mirage]

Oh, right. Yeah, there's a world map in T0 but I didn't think it was problematic at all.

[escobert]

I just don't see why they need to completely change everything. I actually didn't like having my party follow me around in VIII and preferred them mysteriously combing with cloud in FFVII :p

[Mirage]

FF7 wasn't the first game to do that. Even some snes games had all party members visible.
what makes it look dumb in 8 is that they follow your exact path, instead of just following you naturally.

[fat_moogle]

See Im ok with leaving it how it is in size of scale for the world map and then when you enter in a city resize to normal. Worked well on ps4 with type-0 hd so the overworld map scale size wouldnt bug me at all if it was the same as originally in 7.
Yeah, this would be great!


I just don't see why they need to completely change everything. I actually didn't like having my party follow me around in VIII and preferred them mysteriously combing with cloud in FFVII :p
I liked how they did that in VII too, but I also liked that the characters followed Squalls exact movements as he ran around. I spent ages running in loops and watching the others follow suit xD

[Mirage]

I did that too!

[fat_moogle]

I did that too!
Squall: "If I jumped off the edge of a cliff, would you?"

Selphie: "I LOVE cliffs! I'd jump first!"

Squall: "Should have asked..."

Rest of party: "We would all jump!"

Squall: "..."

- GAME OVER -

[Fox]

It's funny, I agree entirely that the world map system is probably going to change for the reasons specified in the OP. But there is absolutely no reason for it to do so.

Game mechanics that worked in 1997 still work in 2015(ish). There seems to be this assumption from a lot of places (including I think sadly, from SE themselves) that you're going to have to change things because big Cloud/tiny towns would look silly. But we've already seen modern games utilise exactly this sort of scale change and nobody blinked an eye. In Mass Effect 2 and 3, you take control of a Normandy scaled to be larger than planets. You can fly around entire solar systems in seconds. Type-0 HD of course had a pretty typical (if barren) overworld. It's fine.

[Mirage]

mass effect is another good example. no one bats an eye at spaceships being bigger than entire planets. most people get that certain things are just not to scale because it's inconvenient.

[Ayen]

I think it'd be cool if they went the open-world route with it like a lot of modern day RPGs do now, but I don't want their reason for it to be because "Gamers don't like overworld maps now."

[Mirage]

I think it'd be cool if the game had an auto-generation engine for every area of the world map. Zoom out and you're on the "fast travel" world map mode where you can run from town to town in not very many seconds, zoom in and you get a full "field" of things to see, detailed forests, visible encounters, really pretty rivers and mountains. The game could automatically gradually zoom in as you approached a town, for a seamless transition from "world map" to inside a town. That'd be fresh.

[Big D]

I'm really hoping they'll preserve the open world-map exploration of the original. Maybe they can re-scale everything to more realistic proportions - imagine walking around a life-size Midgar and viewing it from ground level.

There are only two slight problems with FFVII's world map from this point of view, though: (1) the cableway from Corel to the Gold Saucer, and (2) the rope bridges in the mountains around Wutai. If you imagine that the world map is drawn to scale, then those structures would each be hundreds of kilometres long in real life, which is manifestly absurd. There'll need to be some re-scaling in order for things like that to make sense.

[Tyson]

See Im ok with leaving it how it is in size of scale for the world map and then when you enter in a city resize to normal. Worked well on ps4 with type-0 hd so the overworld map scale size wouldnt bug me at all if it was the same as originally in 7.

I also like the old way of doing the world map, there's no way SE/Nomura will do it that way in the remake tho. With all the technology developed for FF XV they're going to want to put it to use. I can't imagine Nomura is going to want to go backwards (in his mind atleast)


your party gets sucked into you eveytime you stop talking to people.... I don't think cloud being 10 stories tall on the worldmap is that big of an issue. If I want realism I'll go play DayZ where I actually have to eat drink and stuff.

Same goes with this, with all the work they've put into getting the party system to work in XV animations, A.I etc.... are they really going to have the party disappear? I mean the whole lot won't be on the map at once but I have to imagine the 3 you currently have equipped will all be on screen running around same as XV. To have just Cloud would seem very backwards after XV.

I'm not saying this is how it 'should' be. But it seems the most logical direction to take the remake from a development stand point.

[Aulayna]

I'm sure we can all worry about this in 2026 when it will actually be released, in time for the 30th Anniversary. Possibly a launch title for the PlayStation 6.

[Saber]

I'm sure we can all worry about this in 2026 when it will actually be released, in time for the 30th Anniversary. Possibly a launch title for the PlayStation 6.

In this trailer it says play it first on PS4


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZj0eemFkVQ

[Tyson]

I'm sure we can all worry about this in 2026 when it will actually be released, in time for the 30th Anniversary. Possibly a launch title for the PlayStation 6.

In this trailer it says play it first on PS4


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZj0eemFkVQ

The first few Versus trailers ended with 'coming exclusively to PS3' :P so you can never trust SE haha

I definitly think we're going to get a much quicker turnaround then XV tho. The engine is already done which is a big part of development. Unless it changes engines like XV or KH 3 :S

[Sephex]

I think most of the characters are at a healthy weight considering their general build.

[Alive-Cat]

they need to do it with three discs again, possibly four, and have the world map roughly the size of gta

[Mirage]

no more multi-discs :(

[krissy]

but the 'insert disc 2' screen should pop up haha
this game cannot take itself seriously if they want to go thru with it and not bomb
so a 're-imagining' is kind of worrying
i mean gold saucer?
ghosts in the mansion?
who is gonna cpr
ride that dolphin
oh god
scale is a miniscule problem compared to the preservation of hojo sunbathin in his labcoat

[McLovin']

who is gonna cpr
ride that dolphin
oh god
scale is a miniscule problem compared to the preservation of hojo sunbathin in his labcoat

this

[Mirage]

but the 'insert disc 2' screen should pop up haha
this game cannot take itself seriously if they want to go thru with it and not bomb
so a 're-imagining' is kind of worrying
i mean gold saucer?
ghosts in the mansion?
who is gonna cpr
ride that dolphin
oh god
scale is a miniscule problem compared to the preservation of hojo sunbathin in his labcoat

i definitely want an insert disc 2 screen to pop up, just as a joke