During the PlayStation Experience keynote address yesterday, Square Enix debuted a brand new trailer for the greatly anticipated Final Fantasy VII Remake first announced at E3 earlier this year. The footage gives us our first glimpse at combat, seemingly eschewing the classic Active Time Battle system in favour of more dynamic action-style fights, and even the new voices of Cloud Strife and a sunglasses-wearing Barret Wallace.
It’s not yet clear whether the voice actors from the sequel movie, Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, are reprising their roles in the remake, but it sounds a lot like Steve Burton and Beau Billingsly as Cloud and Barret, respectively.
After the trailer, Yoshinori Kitase, the game’s producer, spoke about some of the changes gamers can expect from the remake, including the combat system previewed in the video.
“The hardware itself has evolved since the release of Final Fantasy VII, and the games are more real, and real-time based,” Kitase said (translation courtesy of Nova Crystalis). “The previous Final Fantasy VII was a command-based RPG that utilized active-time-battle. Real-time and GMC are the trends these days.”
“I can’t say the new game is completely action-based, but it has more of that element and real-time than the previous game.”
“However, what makes Final Fantasy and RPG different from other games is that the players have the ability to choose weapons, capabilities and magic to be strategic minded, so while the new game has more real-time element, it will also maintain that strategy building element, balancing these two factors perfectly to enhance the gaming experience.”
“The game is still in development, and we have not fully grasped all the abilities of and upgrades made to PlayStation 4. The graphics are superb on PlayStation 4, and more polygon volume is available to make it better.”
“The way we harnessed the power of the PlayStation 4 was to maintain the graphic quality of characters like Cloud, Tifa, and [Aeris] in the movie called Advent Children in our game, and this was the starting point. So, what we’re aiming for with the Final Fantasy VII Remake is to have the same quality of these characters in real-time while playing the game, and this is only achievable with PlayStation 4.”
