The Wait for the Remake May Be a Very Long One
The Final Fantasy VII remake may be farther away than fans anticipated, if a new interview with a Japanese developer holds any water. According to Reddit user Dan Tsusaka, a 3D artist working in Tokyo, Square Enix was forced to reboot development after arresting the property from CyberConnect 2.
Reports were spotted first on ResetEra, an interview in which Tsusaka gave insider knowledge on the state of FFVII development. By his account, Square Enix employed developer CyberConnect 2 for the Final Fantasy VII remake only long enough to regret it. Not only was Square Enix disappointed by the work, but, judging by the interview, it seems assets from the past two years were scrapped. Very little, if any, of CyberConnect 2’s work shall be reused following the shift to in-house development. Hence, a mid-development reboot fits the bill if the report rings true. Tsukasa said the following:
“[Square Enix] don’t have 4 years of work, they have 2. The announcement that square was taking the game away from Cyberconnect2, they didn’t take it away and continue it, they started it again because CyberConnect’s work was just so useless and not far enough along, but still far enough along that remaking it was faster than refactoring it… (it wasn’t in a good state at all).
“I’ll explain it this way. When has a company taking work away from another company ever been a positive sign of things? I know CyberConnects work was unusable, I’ve worked with them before, I know their level.
“And I know they outsourced to hell and back in order to get things to the point we saw them publicly, and it still wasn’t enough to save them
“I’m not speculating though. I’ve worked with these people and know people working still at both square and CC2, I’m explaining what happened from what I know.”
Of course, we encourage readers to take every word with a healthy grain of salt. While social media rumors often bear no weight, we took into account the fact that figures such as Swery and ex-FFXV Lead Designer Wan Hazmer follow the source on Twitter. Furthermore, before today, we heard prevalent whispers of development issues, especially after SE job postings searching for “core members” surfaced. Time will tell if there’s any truth to these reports. At the same time, if they are true, the wait will be very, very long.