Yoshinori Kitase says an FFVI Rmake would take 20 years to make

With all the hype surrounding FFVII Rebirth and the success of the Pixel Remasters in the last few years, we always inevitably get around to asking someone at SE if FFV or VI will ever see a proper remake.

YouTuber Julien Chièze, in an interview with Kitase about FFVII Rebirth, asked him about the prospects of seeing one anytime soon, and Kitase said such an undertaking would be massive due to the 14 playable characters, and would like take 20 years to do so. Though it's also revealed hat Kitase has been pushing for the idea. So who knows.

I call bull. It doesn't have to be an action game. You do not need to design a unique play style for all 14 characters. It could be an updated take on a turned based RPG, like a FFX-2. You can world map it like FFXVI to avoid designing a seamless gigantic world. You could even make the optional characters DLC to really go for the corporate money grab. This game lends itself well for a two game set, with very distinct first and second halves. Could even make part 2 a very mission based game given the open world nature of it. This is totally doable SE! Put me in charge.

My guess is that Kitase was thinking a FFVII Remake level style remake, when the reality is that I think most fans would be cool with a Trials of Mana style remake with more cartoony graphics.

We already have a perfect way to handle an FF VI Remake.

Get Aquire to handle the graphics and remake it with the 2D HD style of Octopath. Mechanics you wouldn't have to do much to, just fix some oddities and give us an accurate version of the script, and we are good to go.

No need to do some AAA budget.

Many characters in FF6, NPC and party member alike, have maybe a couple of paragraphs of dialogue and their character development frequently starts and concludes by going through a couple of dungeons. In order to get them to the same standard that they did in 7R, they’d need to write several hundred pages of dialogue to flesh them out, along with voicing them. I could see that taking a long time-maybe not 20 years, but something significant.

20 years seems excessive, because I don't think the game is that much longer in content than OG FF7 - according to howlongtobeat it's shorter. Yes, there are more characters, but they don't have to flesh every single one of them out to the equal extent as they did with FF7 Remake. Ensemble casts by default get less airtime, treat it like a group of singers - a three person group compared to a nine person group, for example. You don't make the songs three times longer for the nine person group, you just give them less lines per person.

The development time for mechanics doesn't need to be stupidly excessive, in the end it's simply "pick action from list, use 'currency' to cast or not, do action." Sure, there are some RNG aspects, but we already had that with Cait Sith, it's honestly not going to trigger an extra year of coding.

The world might be larger than OG, but again, treat it like the singers above - just don't go insane and you're fine.

You won't please everyone with 2D vs 3D and I'm sure that the devs will want to do FFVI in 3D to bring it to a modern audience, and I think that's understandable if it's achievable. Octopath would be a small time remake that can be done in the short term but the clamour for a 3D remake will inevitably continue. Absolutely can be done, though, and absolutely shouldn't need to take longer than FFVII Remake takes - unless working on next gen hardware beyond FFVII is increasing the time it takes to develop or something.

In the end, it should take as long as any game would take - you define a budget and then scope the game accordingly. To me, it sounds like Kitase just wants to scope it BIG which is fine by me but perhaps isn't realistic for potential sales, as VII Remake was for a far more popular/famous game so sales for a VI Remake may not be as high.