One small sentence in a recent press release that Square Enix released for Final Fantasy 7 Remake has caused fans all over to panic. The sentence hinted the game will be released episodically.
The exact words in the press release were that the game will be
“told across a multi-part series, each entry providing its own unique experience“.
This obviously caused many fans to go crazy. Huge open-world RPGs are never released episodically. Episodic games are usually reserved for games like TellTales Games’ story driven titles. Those games are fun, but they’re not long open-world RPGs.
A lot of fans are coming to the conclusion that the Final Fantasy 7 Remake is not the great game they assumed it would be. There are multiple threads created on NeoGAF and comments online assuming the worst.
This is because games released episodically are usually story driven and small scale. Will you be able to roam around the breed chocobos in your own time? Will the game allow you to find secret bosses in the world map? These things are what makes RPGS so fun to play. You are not tied to the narrative all the time as there are lots of side-quests that you can do.
On the flipside of this, many people are seeing the episode route as a good thing. This is because there is a chance fans can play the game earlier than expected. Sure it will take a long time for all episodes to come out, but fans can get to play the first episode sooner rather than later.
Let us not forget that it took Final Fantasy XV 10 years to develop. That game is a huge open-world RPG with lots of things for you to do. The original Final Fantasy 7 is big, so rendering everything in he new game engine will take years and years to develop.
The best thing we can do right now is wait for Square Enix to clarify how they are going to distribute the game. It’s possible each part is bigger than the average episodic game. Like aforementioned, no big scale RPG has ever been released in this fashion.
The only game to come close to this is the new Hitman game. This is an action game with separate missions to take. Final Fantasy 7’s experience might suffer if they cut the exploration and open world aspect in favor of just focusing on the main story elements.
Hopefully Square Enix knows that they’re doing and can make the Final Fantasy 7 Remake the game that everyone truly wants. If the game ends up being a linear experience, fans will obviously be disappointed.
For now, let’s not jump to conclusions and assume the worst. Square Enix is probably being flooded with tweets and emails as we speak. A statement to further explain the game’s multiple part series release should be coming anytime now. It better be good news or fans will never forgive them for trolling them again…
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