I think it's possible they could drag this out farther, I mean, we all treat Midgard like its a huge part of the first disc, but it's really like the first quarter of it at best and you can get out of there in under ten hours if you just try to speed through it. So just trying to stretch that out to thirty some extra hours tells me they are going to pad the hell out of it. If so, why not the rest? I mean Junon is actually a pretty fun excursion and I could see that being drawn out further especially if they do a sequences where you play as each character individually trying to get into the place and leaving.

More realistically, I wouldn't be surprised if SE chose to make the chapters shorter and cheaper, turning this into an annual event like Ubisoft with a new installment being every spring for like $29.95 for the next ten years followed by the inevitable collections and special editions of next gen. Course it's really going to come down to how the do Chapter 1 and 2. For instance, if part of the reason Chapter 1 is so long is because they plan on just putting the Nibelheim flashback early and skipping Kalm all together then that could easily explain why they are stretching this part out, and thus Chapter 2 can start somewhere else. The other issue at hand that this first chapter is going to avoid by sticking to Midgard is seeing how SE handles the world map. They could easily ignore it and have each chapter placed in a particular location. I mean I could totally see Episode 2 opening with Cloud and the crew riding down a highway as they pass Fort Condor with Barret and Red XIII exchanging the info about the place and then have the actual game portion start once the crew reach Junon and turn it into a multi-party segment where you move back and forth between Cloud's escapades we know about and watching the rest of the team do their own thing. Junon is a big sprawling city, would make level design easier and we can avoid doing any open world stuff. Likewise, Gold Saucer is pretty huge and largely goes into Barret's past, so I can see that also getting expanded on.

The one sequence I do expect some major changes to from the original will likely be the return to Nibelheim, which in addition to probably having Vincent's recruitment be mandatory and likely changed around a bit to be less... video gamey. I also imagine the idea of talking to the fake villagers and uncovering what's going on there will be changed to have more story basis to it with Barret making a bigger deal about Cloud's story, Cloud running off to discover the truth with Aerith running after him, and Tifa revealing more about her uncertainty of what really happened. That whole place could easily be turned into a large mystery section with more foreshadowing about Zack and what not and Sephiroth and his shadows playing mind games on Cloud.

Granted, it's too soon to say of course, so we'll have to wait until the first chapter gets released to get a better assessment of what episodes are going to be like, though I feel like Episode 2 is going to be the better baseline entry since that will be the point we reach content that can easily be cut from the game. I'm still feeling like "two blu-ray discs worth of content" isn't going to be as much as SE PR wants players to think it will be, and most of that space is going to be just fitting all these scaled vistas within Midgard and the graphics into a game because SE forgot how to cut corners. I wouldn't be surprised if the second disc was entirely the Shin-Ra Building and escaping Midgard. Nor would I be surprise if the game comes in under twenty hours of pure story content and the other thirty hours is just new quest like trout to kill time with.