What do you want to see in Episode 2?

[Mr Gashtacular]

To be fair, they turned Hojo's lab from one screen to some massive dank area. I wouldn't be surprised if the Shinra Mansion now hides a lab of similar size. I would prefer a Mt Nibel final fight though, just for the opportunity of scale.

[JJ Strife]

Yeah but they're really gonna have to limit how much they expand the locations for the rest of the story, cos it'll end up taking like 6 games to finish it if they expand everything the same amount they did with Midgar.

There's almost no chance of that happening. Especially when you take into account the fact that it didn't destroy sales expectations as they probably hoped, I bet we're just looking at a 3-part story overall. Which means that almost none of the other locations will get expanded in the same way Midgar did.

[Lord Golbez]

Most locations would not be of sufficient interest to justify expanding them as much as Midgar. However, Nibelheim is a key location for the story. Some expansion may be justified.

[JJ Strife]

I'm interested in loads of them!! FF7 has one of the most interesting worlds they've ever made, imo.

That said, I don't want it to take 5 or 6 games to finish. And also, some areas wouldn't really benefit from expanding that much anyway. I mean Kalm is supposed to be a fairly small town because it's supposed to contrast directly with Midgar to show you how varied the world is. At least I assume that was part of the intention behind it.

[Lord Golbez]

WTF? How did I end up in the wrong thread when I was just responding ....

[JJ Strife]

This youtuber built a version of Kalm using Fallout 4 mods. Looks fairly good in 3D, although obviously not up to the graphical standard of Remake.

I think it nicely illustrates the idea that some locations look good if they're still quite small and quaint though. I'd definitely prefer this over the large sprawling town they did in Dirge of Cerberus.

[Mercen-X]

Don't know how many heard or youtubed... but it was either Final Fantasy Peasant or (more likely) Night Sky Prince that read a "leaked" synopsis for Pt2 though they continued to drop the line "grain of salt", a lot of what was said made sense but some other suggestions irked me.

A lot of people would probably be thrilled to hear they won't bring back Genesis, though the reasoning is ridiculous. SE's contract with Gackt is expired and so they can no longer use his likeness... um... redesign him then. Whatever...

However, trouble seems to come in the form of Pt2 being the final installment with the caveat being that neither Cid nor Vincent will be playable in the game (Vincent may not even make an appearance). W...T...F..?

Supposedly, the entire plot will take place on Midgar continent and all vital locations (i.e. Junon, Nibelheim, Gold Saucer, maybe Cosmo Canyon and the Crater) will be conflated into this one area...... w.t.f? Yuffie will be met almost immediately, Cait Sith will ride Nanaki and fill out his moves set, and... you know, ultimately, the very idea that Pt2 could be where it ends is just unsettling to me. Particularly with the way they're proposed to be handling it.

And I'm not ashamed to admit that seeing Zack made me hopeful of getting more Genesis. There, I said it.

[JJ Strife]

Yeah that was Night Sky Prince a week or so back. I seriously hope that isn't true.
The rumour said it was because the sales weren't high enough for Part 1, so they were just gonna cut it short and finish it in Part 2.

I dunno how much I buy that. Even though the sales have definitely not been as high as most of us hoped, it's still done fairly well. Probably hit 6 million on PS4 by the end of the year. Then PC and Xbox releases next year should knock it up to at least 8 million I'd imagine.

Then you have to take into account that future installments of a series nearly always sell less than the first entry. But at the same time, future installments also have a much smaller budget because they reuse so many assets. (FFX-2 and FFXIII-2 were both developed in about 2 years). And in the case of FF7 Remake, future installments will probably do relatively well because it's not just another random story they invented after the first one. It's a continuation of the main story that people will have a strong desire to see through.

If you look at the XIII series, the sales numbers were more or less FXIII- 8 million. FXIII-2- 4 million. LR- 2 million. It really did lose its audience quite rapidly. But that seems less likely to be true with FF7. I imagine it'll be more like Part 1- 8 million, Part 2- 7 million, Part 3- 6 million, which would surely be extremely profitable overall.

[Lord Golbez]

I'm sure much of the initial dropoff was because people hated FFXIII. I haven't heard much on FFVIIR in awhile but it seemed like the initial reception was mostly positive.

[Fynn]

lol nobody asked for the XIII sequels, while the VII remake was on everyone’s lips. I sincerely doubt they’d settle for two (though tbh I’m sure people’s wallets wouldn’t complain lol)

[Lord Golbez]

To be fair, while a TON of people asked for an FFVII remake, nobody asked for it to be released over multiple games. Sure once that was definitely happening and people were resigned to that, plenty of people laid out how many parts they were hoping for/expecting, but I doubt anyone asked for it to be multi-part in the first place.

[JJ Strife]

lol nobody asked for the XIII sequels

True, although I would say I ended up liking XIII-2 significantly more than X-2, even though I like X more than XIII. So I don't think it just automatically follows from the quality of the first game.

but I doubt anyone asked for it to be multi-part in the first place.

I certainly wasn't ASKING for it, but I did say ages ago (before they announced it) that I thought it would be inevitable they divided it into several games. Just based on realizing how huge the original game world would be if translated into modern 3D. You'd be looking at probably the biggest single player game ever made. Meaning a GTA 5 type budget. Which it seems very unlikely they'd be willing to spend given that it had very little chance of selling 50 million+ copies like GTA.