Despite a number of development stumbles in the nearly four years since being announced, Square Enix looks to stay committed to one day releasing the long-awaited Final Fantasy 7 Remake. While the reimaging of 1997’s Final Fantasy 7 will be a multi-part series, there is a new addition to the development team that hopefully will steer the game in the right direction as full-scale production on the project begins.
While April 1st is usually tied to fake gaming announcements and jokes, it also marks the beginning of game company Square Enix’s fiscal year. While the company has voiced its intentions of internal restructuring, news today revealed that Naoki Hamaguchi, who’s been working on Final Fantasy 7 as a development lead, has been promoted to co-director for the game, and will be working alongside Tetsuya Nomura as they lead their team into the game’s production stage.
Hamaguchi, while now tasked with a more prominent role for the project, appears to have been more aware in learning of his new role than Nomura was. Shortly after Final Fantasy 7 Remake was revealed at Sony’s 2015 E3 Press Conference, Nomura was surprised to learn he’d been appointed as the Final Fantasy 7 Remake director. Nomura’s directorial surprise turned out to be just one of many miscommunications between not just the team at Square Enix, but also third party developer CyberConnect2, who’d originally been contracted to aid in development.
With production timelines being stretched longer than expected and Square Enix overseeing full development two years ago, Nomura admitted Final Fantasy 7 Remake was revealed too early, thus setting unrealistic expectations for a company which, at the time, was still working to release two of its long-in-development projects: Final Fantasy 15 and Kingdom Hearts 3.
As recently as late 2018 however, Nomura had provided an update on Final Fantasy VII Remake’s development. He’d mentioned Kingdom Hearts 3 was the primary focus for the company with just months left before the game’s release. Now, with Kingdom Hearts 3 finally launching back in January, Square Enix is now full steam ahead on the remake’s development.
For anyone who can’t wait to jump back into the world of Final Fantasy 7, they’ll be happy to know the game has launched on a number of new platforms in the past few months. While the game was included on the PlayStation Classic library when it released in December 2018, the Nintendo Switch and Xbox One versions of Final Fantasy 7 are now available for purchase.
Final Fantasy 7 Remake currently has no release date, but is expected to launch first on PlayStation 4.
Source: Twinfinite, PlayStation Lifestyle
