With Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth just around the corner, fans are already looking forward to the future of the franchise. While rumours of a Final Fantasy 9 recreation have been flown around, Square Enix wants fans to know that they are not working on the series’ middle entry. That’s right, no Final Fantasy 8 Remake.
The saddening news was revealed in an interview with IGN where Final Fantasy 6 Rebirth director Naoki Hamaguchi explained that he does not want to work on a full remake of the sprawling RPG. With the FF7 Remake trilogy already a huge undertaking for Square Enix, the director would instantly refuse the task of doing another.
In the interview, Final Fantasy 8 director Yoshinori Kitase even expressed a disinterest in remaking the PS1 original due to its sheer amount of content.
"If after we've finished the three games in the [FF7] trilogy, "Mr Kitase then comes to me and says, 'Right, we're going to be remaking another numbered Final Fantasy game and you are on the project,' I'll just turn around and go, 'No!'" Hamaguchi told the outlet.
“Trying to recreate that kind of volume of content you had in the RPGs back then in the modern day really is not something you can take up lightly," Kitase followed up, "It's such a massive investment of time and effort that we really have to think very hard about taking on any kind of project like that."
That doesn’t mean the team doesn’t want to see a Final Fantasy 8 Remake eventually. However, the large amount of content and unique combat system would require a lot of work to bring into the modern day. With a remake of Final Fantasy 6 reportedly predicted to take 20 years to make, it doesn’t seem that any other FF games will receive full-fledged remakes.
In the interview, Kitase explained that a Final Fantasy 8 Remake would need to re-do the game’s complex Junction System as well as other elements of the game’s combat.
"I think it was a very difficult system for some people to get into. Depending on player skills, sometimes they just didn't work out the best way of doing it," Kitase explained. "I think I'd want to return to that and really rework the battle system… and make it something where that level of difficulty and approachability for some fans was a lot better balanced."
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth launches exclusively on PlayStation 5 on February 29, 2024.