Quote Originally Posted by Pike View Post
...what do you do?

inb4 "Nothing".
Oh, I wouldn't do 'nothing.' I would cancel the project.

But seriously, if I had to remake FFVII?

Graphics: Barely update the graphics a little at a time until we come to a level that looks better but still maintains that charm from 1997. I'm assuming it would be somewhere around Crisis Core. Once that's set, have a large team of artists rendering the original 2d artwork into 3d environments, where you can rotate the camera to 4 viewpoints, similar to Xenogears. The camera movements during battles would also be redone from the ground up, taking a serious, thought-out approach to what makes great action camera usage. Particular battles throughout the game would also have unique angles and movements, such as the Rufus fight atop Shinra HQ to show helicopters swirling around the skyscraper, or the jenova fights, to fit the whole monster in the shots.

Music: Get Uematsu back in the studio to remaster it similar to Tactics Ogre's new arrangement on the PSP. I would want all the sound to be updated, but I would want them to find a way to still have that synthesizer "feel" to it. That'd probably be a pretty hard thing to pull off. Uematsu said he would only work on the project if they didn't change it from the ground up and I'm inclined to let him do that. Maybe add a little things here and there to flesh out the songs.

Sound: Sound effects can be completely redone, but I would like them to evoke the sounds of the original. Also this would be mastered for dts surround sound format. I would also have an option in the menu to have the original score play, a la FFIV on PSP.

Gameplay: the very first thing we would change is the scaling of the enemy difficulty throughout the game, so that as players progress through the story, the game doesn't get that breaking where it's easy for the rest of it at around the end of disc 1. Next I would probably add in more materia to incorporate abilities from other Final Fantasy's into the game, with a focus on Independent and Command materia so as to reinforce the fact that equipping materia doesn't mean you're making a spellcaster. This would all then be balanced so that the enemy encounters remain challenging throughout. Sapphire WEAPON would also be a new side boss, missing its head and everything, which would be incorporated into its back story as to why it's there. Might also add in some new armlets with little different abilities so as to add some variety to the player options. And you'd get to see the armlets more detailed too!

Story: There would be a disclaimer when you boot up the game, after the publisher screen but before the main menu: "Final Fantasy VII is a remake of the 1997 game of the same name, and contains no references or acknowledgments to the plots of "Compilation of FFVII" titles.

It is only canonical to the original."

Platforms: PS3 and Vita, with ability to transfer save files between the two and upload character and party configurations up to the game's own kind of social network with completion rates and little bars that show you how much of each character and materia a player has received xp for. A slightly reduced version of the game may be available on PSP.

The overall theme of the remake, though, would be to maintain looks, sound, and feel of the original.