I'm all for it. Square is never going to make everyone happy with the remake. As soon as they change the battle system, an animation, a dialog box or just about anything...some whiny twit will blow up the interwebz whining about it.
For me, the story can diverge and change as needed as long as it stays true to the original. That is, Cloud and company save the planet from Sephiroth. It's the characters that I love about the original the most.
I guess? It's silly to think that the remake won't differ much from the original that is nearing its 20th anniversary. It is a remake after all, if some folks can't handle major differences they should rather just go grab the HD retouch or revisit the original again.
It is one game I'm a bit emotional about and rightfully declared as a milestone for its time in my book. So naturally for me the bar is set pretty high. My hope is that it will turn out sort of like the transition from Super Metroid to Metroid Prime, a game that is vastly different from the original but the core feeling/atmosphere/ideas are still intact or at least comparable in quality while the gameplay as a whole got a clever major update that is still fun and immersive.
tbh I wouldn't actually describe me as a huge fan of the series as a whole. I have little to no interest after VII. So I actually don't really know what to expect. I'm sure the characters and story will stay mostly intact to cater to the canon aware fanbase but everything else is anyone's guess. I'm mostly afraid about the combat system, I'm sort of expecting something like Crisis Core which I played a little and could not get into at all.
I'm looking forward to this, but I'm still a bit in doubt if it will work out for me.
I wasn't the biggest fan in the early days. I played through the first a couple of times and really loved it. Never played the second on the SNES, but I played III (in reality, FFVI) and thought it was good. It wasn't until Final Fantasy VII that I fell in love with the series. The story, the setting, the characters, the...*sniff*sniff*...death of Aeris, the final battle with Sephiroth and to see Red XIII at the end with his cubs. Nature taking over and reclaiming the land...it left a lasting impression to say the least.
As a German I never got a good chance to play III/VI when it came out as I was too young/too broke to import the US one and understand how to get them to work on a PAL system. I dabbled a bit with Mystic Quest and Final Fantasy Legend on the Game Boy (which don't belong to the main series anyway) but VII was the one that seriously got me at a young age.
Later in the 90ies I found III/VI in a second hand store for like 5 bucks and it sat around a couple years until I finally found an adapter for this one to check out, so I had a different experience because I was much older and SNES was already long out of style, it wasn't "new" anymore so to say. But I can definately see why a lot of people think it's the best one as it also has some surprisingly intense scenes, especially for a 16 bit game, and the apocalyptic feel of the wastelands and the constant dread of Kefka in the latter half for example is conveyed really well.
I just feel that VII took it even further, because with the system and the then huge amount of available space on the CDs compared to cardridges, they were able to do that. I love all the gorgeous and otherworldly background art as well as the unique soundtrack - stuff like ascending Corel Mt. kind of made you feel like it is a world worth fighting for which was hardly there in the titles before. And say what you want about the popeye arms, stereotypes and horrible typos, they still managed to include some emotionally appealing, almost naturally sounding dialogue in there, like how the characters emphasize their feelings with little gestures, stuff like that...I think because of this, the death of Aeris managed to leave an such an impact to the gamers, because it was easy to bond with the likeable characters, their backstories and "personalities".
To give another much earlier example is Nei from Phantasy Star II, but everyone in this game felt flat as a white wall (which was admittedly typical for a late 80ies game), so her death was pretty much whatever to me since every playable character just sort of randomly dropped by at the hero's home, no reasons given, so why should I feel sad about a character that I never "got to know"?
FFVII didn't have first major character death in a video game but I think one of the first ones that actually was somewhat shocking for the viewer.
PS. I played VIII for some hours and absolutely hated the shit out of it. That's probably why I never invested myself in the series much after that anymore.
As long as the story isn't altered, the music is the same just remade with newer versions, and it's still a turn based RPG, I'll be happy. Heard they might alter the gameplay which would be a pretty bad idea. The combat shift in the FF series since 12 & 13 have been awful and it would really be a disservice to the game to awkwardly shove in that kind of combat over the classic style. I prefer action combat like in FFXV, but FF7 is a turn based combat game and should stay as such.
I don't think so because keeping really dated core game mechanics in a major title for the PS4 might be a bit too risky or questionable, especially if everything else is changed into state of the art stuff. The story and music I can see both remaining mostly close to the original as both are highly revered and still hold well up to this day. Obviously they'd at least orchestrate the MIDI based original music though.
Personally I'd be just as happy if they would just tweak the original combat system a bit and leave it at that. On the other hand, what's the use of a remake if it didn't have a different gaming experience after all?
I think it's fair to assume it basically is going to be a different game and to hope they make the best of it.
