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?