Sunday, March 29th, 2020
Posted by CloudANDTidus at 12:06 PM EST
News roundup; Making of, voice cast, OST and new screenshots
Square Enix has released a new video series on the making of Final Fantasy VII Remake. The first two episodes are out now and feature interviews with Yoshinori Kitase (Producer), Tetsuya Nomura (Director & Concept Design), Kazushige Nojima (Story & Scenario), Naoki Hamaguchi (Co-Director – Game Design / Programming) and Motomu Toriyama (Co-Director – Scenario Design).
Next up Square has published a full list of the English voice cast. It includes Cody Christian (All American, Teen Wolf) as Cloud, John Eric Bentley (Hart of Dixie, Lab Rats, Fear of the Walking Dead) as Barret, Briana White (Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders, Occupants) as Aerith, Britt Baron (GLOW, The Thing About Harry, My Valentine) as Tifa and Max Mittelman (Persona 5, One-Punch Man) as Red XIII. Some fans had speculated that Don Corneo might be voiced by Mark Hamill, but he will actually be played by Fred Tatasciore, best known as Soldier 76 in Overwatch and Baird in Gears 5.
The original soundtrack for Final Fantasy VII Remake is also now available for pre-order. The album spans 7 CDs and retails for £67.77 in the UK, and $77.77 in the US.
A bunch of new screenshots were also recently released, showing some new characters and familiar locations. On social media Square has been slowly revealing the names of some of these characters, including Chocobo Sam (a chocobo handler in Wall Market, and the owner of Sam's Delivery), Madam M (proprietress of a hand-massage parlor in Wall Market), Leslie Kyle (Don Corneo's lackey) and Andrea Rhodea (owner of - and a dancer at - the Honeybee Inn). We also got a look at some kind of battle arena, Beginner's Hall, the Wall Market and most excitingly, a glimpse at the Enemy Skill materia.
Finally, due to the ongoing global health crisis, Square has warned that not everyone will get the game on release day, although they are working hard to ensure pre-orders from the Square Enix store are fulfilled on April 10th.
Sunday, March 15th, 2020
Posted by CloudANDTidus at 01:48 PM EST
Join the Final Fantasy VII Citadel Discord server!
As you may already know, a few months ago we lost our forums due to a forced upgrade by our hosting provider. Even before then they weren't the most active place anymore, with a lot of regulars no longer visiting. Rather than try to rebuild the forums, I've decided to embrace "the future" and create a Discord server for the Citadel as a place for fans to gather, chat and play together.
Please keep in mind the Discord server is designed to be family friendly, and spoilers (for both Remake and the original game) should be tagged as a spoiler or directed to the designated spoiler channel.
Final Fantasy VII Remake is out in just 26 days, so I hope you find this a great new place to hang out and rebuild our community.
Join our Discord server!
Sunday, March 8th, 2020
Posted by CloudANDTidus at 01:00 PM EST
Nomura interview and new footage of FFVII Remake
Following the release of the demo on Monday, Famitsu and 4Gamer have published interviews with Tetsuya Nomura, which have been translated by DualShockers. Part of the interview focuses on the contentious subject of the Remake being multiple games. According to Nomura, the game is "highly dense", but focuses on quality rather than quantity. On the PS4 it will come on 2 Blu-ray discs.
“I know many are worried since the Remake project is in multiple games, and the first game only depicts Midgar. Don’t worry. It’s a highly dense game, and it doesn’t end after a few hours like the Midgar part in the original. There are many new events in the main story. Like a scene where you end up visiting Jessie’s parents, eating dinner. Each member of Avalanche is much more detailed compared to the original game, with new events to boot. By the time players leave Midgar, I’m sure they’ll be satisfied.”
“We made the sidequest content to be as big as the main story. At the beginning, the development team readied even more content, but we wouldn’t have been able to do everything without cutting corners, so we prioritized quality. We wouldn’t have been able to finish the game otherwise. Despite that, the game is quite big, there are many places you can visit, and you can even move around using vehicles at some points.”
Regarding the voice dialogue in battle, Nomura thinks they might have overdid it. "We heavily focused on the game’s atmosphere and immersion during battles. Maybe we overdid it when it comes to dialogue during battles (laughs). Recording everything was pretty difficult. At peak period we had up to 9 recording sessions a week, dividing them between two or three different studios. It might be the game with the most voiced lines I’ve worked on. Overall, in over 20 years of game development, Final Fantasy VII Remake was probably the most grueling project I worked on (laughs)"
You can read the full interview over on DualShockers, where Nomura discusses the Japanese voice actors, character design and art style, and the scene where you infiltrate Shinra HQ by climbing the stairs.
Prior to the demos release several media outlets were also able to preview later sections of the game including the streets of Midgar following the explosion, AirBuster and Abzu boss battles and the Sector 5 mako reactor (and yes, the button timing mini-game is back and apparently hilarious). You can see some of this footage in these videos from PlayStation Access, PlayStation Japan and IGN.
Tuesday, March 3rd, 2020
Posted by CloudANDTidus at 04:08 PM EST
Final Fantasy VII Remake demo released
The rumoured demo for Final Fantasy VII Remake has been released on the PlayStation Store, along with coverage from various media outlets. The demo covers the opening sequence of the game, leading up to the Guard Scorpion boss battle and escape sequence.
PlayStation Japan has also released a video that shows some footage from the streets of Midgar following the reactor explosion.
