It seems that the long wait for Final Fantasy fans has finally paid off, as we now have a new look at the upcoming and highly anticipated Final Fantasy VII Remake.
The new trailer was revealed during Sony’s State of Play yesterday, and it features new gameplay footage, as well as the updated looks for Final Fantasy VII’s iconic characters.
The trailer begins with a statement saying, “The Return draws closer.” It then cuts to Aerith, one of the new characters to finally be revealed. We get to see her updated graphics and look, which now resembles Final Fantasy XV’s graphics very closely. The next scenes highlight the new combat mechanics for the game, as well as marking the first appearance of the updated Barret.
The combat was greatly overhauled and now slightly mirrors the one found in Kingdom Hearts II. For reference, the original Final Fantasy VII was a turn-based, role-playing game. While technically, Kingdom Hearts II was also an RPG, it has elements of hack-and-slash, in that you need to press different buttons to perform different functions. This resulted in a fully functional, on-the-fly combat system that is deeply engaging. Final Fantasy VII Remake functions the same, although here you can also manage how the rest of the team behaves and, in some cases, even switch to their perspectives.
The trailer showed both Barret and Aerith, plus the briefest tease of Sephiroth, the game’s major antagonist. It did not show Tifa Lockhart, one of the game’s main characters, although it is worth noting that her name along with her status effects and health points appear on the bottom right corner along with Cloud and the others, yet her model was not present. It seems that Square Enix is holding off on showing her, which they might finally do sometime in June; the trailer ended with a statement that there is more to come for Final Fantasy VII Remake next month.
All hype aside, it’s a bit worrying that all of the released footage for the game is set in the same place, which is Midgar. Square Enix has stated that Final Fantasy VII Remake will be episodic in nature, but that just begs the question of just far along this game still is in terms of development. Will we get to see its first episode before the decade is out? Or will it actually be released after Sony releases its next-gen consoles? Only time will tell, but for now, it looks like we have a lot to look forward to in June, most probably during E3, if certain rumors are to be believed.
