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'Final Fantasy VII' Devs Explain Why They Changed The Combat For Remake

Sarah James

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'Final Fantasy VII' Devs Explain Why They Changed The Combat For Remake

Featured Image Credit: Square Enix

Final Fantasy VII Remake is just a week away from release and it still seems far too long to wait. If you've spent any time with the demo, you'll already have some idea of how it plays - and how the combat differs quite significantly from the original. If you're wondering how that came about during the development, the latest instalment of the Inside Final Fantasy VII Remake video series has been uploaded to Youtube and talks about just that. You can check it out in full below or go here for a direct link.

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Anyone that's played any of the earlier Final Fantasy games will be familiar with the menu-based combat and instanced battles which take you away from whatever you happened to be exploring at the time. And while it was clearly a formula that worked well in the late 90s and early 2000s it's hard to imagine how that could translate into a modern game with modern graphics. This is clearly something that the developers spent a lot of time thinking about too.


"It really is not the case that this system came from wanting to do an action-based battle system," says Naoki Hamaguchi, Final Fantasy VII Remake's co-director, "It emerged when we considered how Final Fantasy's classic ATB battle system would be if it was created in the modern era. For that, making everything seamless is better than having separate battles and exploration."

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Game director, Tetsuya Nomura also has quite a bit to say on the subject. "When I thought about the players who would be experiencing Final Fantasy VII for the first time, action is very much the mainstream style for games right now. On top of that, in order to make the world of Final Fantasy VII Remake as enjoyable as possible, and give it the atmosphere I wanted, I wanted to have all of the controls real-time. That was the first big challenge on the project."

Credit: Square Enix
Credit: Square Enix

"Looking at the whole Final Fantasy series, I felt you had to retain all the number stats and level gauges as well," continues Nomura, "They make Final Fantasy what it is! For Final Fantasy VII specifically, you have the ATB (Active Time Battle) system. I wanted to combine those definitive Final Fantasy and Final Fantasy VII elements with the modern style of real-time action games."

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We also recently learned that the sidequests in Final Fantasy VII Remake will be almost as big as the main story, so even though this first game will only cover the events in Midgar, you can rest assured that there will be plenty to do.

Final Fantasy VII Remake is set for release on April 10 on PlayStation 4.

Topics: Final Fantasy 7

Sarah James
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