There has been a lot of murmur about the Final Fantasy VII remake being episodic. I think this is more of a misunderstanding than some are making it out to be. Episodic, when it comes to gaming, means that the game is being released as it is being finished. Often each episode is more of a piece of the game, than a fully fleshed out game in itself. Instead, it is better to think of it as Square Enix releasing Final Fantasy VII as a series of games. When the announcement was first made, and met with the expected level of nerd rage, series veteran and Final Fantasy VII character designer Tetsuya Nomura had this to say.
If you did get it into a single release, there would be things we’d have to put into a shortened compilation. Since we thought there would be stuff we would probably have to pare down and supplemental things we probably couldn’t add, we decided to divide it up, concluding that we have to do a remake that’s fully packed with content.
As further reassurance, returning Final Fantasy VII director, Yoshinori Kitase added this, citing the insane detail and graphical quality of Sector 1 and Sector 8 that we've seen so far.
From the beginning, we thought a Final Fantasy VII remake would be bigger than a single release. If we took everything that’s in the original game and remade it at that quality, we couldn’t get it all on a single release.
So before we all get our collective undergarments all in a bunch, it sounds like Square Enix isn't trying to cheat us out of content by making it "episodic". Rather, it sounds like the original team that built the game nearly two decades ago just want to make sure we get the biggest, and best experience possible in our return to Midgar. I am very optimistic about the changes that are coming to Final Fantasy VII, including the new action-packed battle system. What are your thoughts on the changes? Let me know in the comments bellow. And if at the end of the day the changes are just too much for you, then at least you can buy the original Final Fantasy VII on pretty much every device PlayStation has ever released.
