Fans have been begging for years for a remake of the classic Japanese role-playing game, Final Fantasy VII, and Square Enix Holdings Co Ltd finally announced at this year’s E3 that the game would is being rebuilt from the ground up for modern gaming systems.

While the original was one complete (and very long) game, Square Enix has decided to release the remake as a series of individual episodes, which has some fans worried about the quality of the game itself, but game producer Yoshinori Kitase said that a game of FF7’s scope could not be remade in any other way.

“The idea that a remake of Final Fantasy VII would not fit into a single release was there from the very beginning,” Kitase explained in a recent interview with Dengeki Online (translation via Gematsu). “… As you can see in the trailer, we showed Sector 1 and Sector 8, but in those areas alone, I think you can see a lot of density. When you’re remaking the entirety of the original version in that quality, it’s not possible to fit it all in one release.”

“If we dedicated our time to a single release, parts of it would become summarized,” added game director Tetsuya Nomura. “We’d have to cut some parts, and additional parts would come in few, so rather than remake the game as a full volume, we decided to do multiple parts.”

Remake or reboot?

Despite Kitase’s and Nomura’s assurances, fans are still skeptical about moving to an episodic format for a game that was originally a sprawling epic. Even more worrying is the fact that Square Enix is doing more than simply giving the original game a modern facelift.

For example, FF7’s combat system will be getting a complete overhaul that moves away from the old turn-based format. Instead, Kitase said the studio is “aiming for a seamless active battle,” and Nomura compared the combat style to Dissidia Final Fantasy, which is more of an action fighting game than a traditional RPG.

The developers also said that there may even be some changes to the game’s story.

“I don’t want the remake to end as something nostalgic,” Kitase said. “I want to get the fans of the original version excited.We’ll be making adjustments to the story with this feeling in mind.”

Such broad changes to the game raises the question of whether the new Final Fantasy VII can truly be called a remake, or if it will be something else entirely.

Screenshot via PlayStation | YouTube