I have to say that I've been on a lot of YouTube channels' comments sections over the last few months trying to tell people that the FFIX Remake is not happening. From the beginning, it didn't make a lot of sense to start with given the "too good to be true" nature of it, knowing that we still had many years before the full FFVII Remake Series would be complete, and wondering who exactly would be working on it. Also, years have gone by without any evidence to back it up.
It's not the first time that reliable sources had announced things that came to pass, mixed with other things that had no evidence of ever existing. It's not unusual for internet personalities to lie about something in order to try to churn up fan-demand to pressure creators. The FFVII Remake is an example where SE more or less caved into fan-demand ever since that demo came out ages ago. Finally, I believe I recall someone associated with SE made a slip about a FFXII Remake at one point, though he retracted his statement and it was ultimately revealed to be The Zodiac Age, which was a remaster, not a remake, and I was anticipating the original FFIX leak to be along the same lines.
Something that a lot of people don't understand or talk about is that the English language and Japanese language are extremely difficult to properly translate between; Japanese is the single most difficult language for English speaking people to learn. So when we see a "leak" about a "Remake", we should be factoring language barriers into the equation. "Remake" might simply mean a "port"!
Now not to rain on anyone's parade, but unfortunately, I think the low sales of FFVII Rebirth have all but closed the doors on future Remakes - at least in regards to projects on the same scale as the FFVII Remake Trilogy.
All good points. Honestly this is why I personally don’t bring these sorts of leaks and rumors up often, until they’ve taken over the community discourse to some extent - too many variables, not enough solid fact to work with, and too much potential to spread disinformation. And like you say, it can be like playing the “Narrative Telephone” game on a much bigger scale in two different languages.
Square remakes, remasters, and ports older things so often, and on so many different scales, that I can see *some* kind of new release for either FFIX or Tactics being possible. Kitase’s reaction to the idea of remaking FFVI makes it pretty clear, though, that they probably aren’t thinking of another project on the scale of FFVII Remake because of the time, manpower, and resources it would require.
What a lot of online discourse ignores is that FFVIIR doesn’t have to be the way every remake is handled from now on. It’s such a massive reimagining, and if Square Enix had decided to start remaking FFVII today instead of in 2015, I doubt they would’ve been as ambitious as they were then.
If either of these things are real, then I hope they’re at least being handled with more care than FFVIII Remastered.
I have to say that I've been on a lot of YouTube channels' comments sections over the last few months trying to tell people that the FFIX Remake is not happening. From the beginning, it didn't make a lot of sense to start with given the "too good to be true" nature of it, knowing that we still had many years before the full FFVII Remake Series would be complete, and wondering who exactly would be working on it. Also, years have gone by without any evidence to back it up.
It's not the first time that reliable sources had announced things that came to pass, mixed with other things that had no evidence of ever existing. It's not unusual for internet personalities to lie about something in order to try to churn up fan-demand to pressure creators. The FFVII Remake is an example where SE more or less caved into fan-demand ever since that demo came out ages ago. Finally, I believe I recall someone associated with SE made a slip about a FFXII Remake at one point, though he retracted his statement and it was ultimately revealed to be The Zodiac Age, which was a remaster, not a remake, and I was anticipating the original FFIX leak to be along the same lines.
Something that a lot of people don't understand or talk about is that the English language and Japanese language are extremely difficult to properly translate between; Japanese is the single most difficult language for English speaking people to learn. So when we see a "leak" about a "Remake", we should be factoring language barriers into the equation. "Remake" might simply mean a "port"!
Now not to rain on anyone's parade, but unfortunately, I think the low sales of FFVII Rebirth have all but closed the doors on future Remakes - at least in regards to projects on the same scale as the FFVII Remake Trilogy.
All good points. Honestly this is why I personally don’t bring these sorts of leaks and rumors up often, until they’ve taken over the community discourse to some extent - too many variables, not enough solid fact to work with, and too much potential to spread disinformation. And like you say, it can be like playing the “Narrative Telephone” game on a much bigger scale in two different languages.
Square remakes, remasters, and ports older things so often, and on so many different scales, that I can see *some* kind of new release for either FFIX or Tactics being possible. Kitase’s reaction to the idea of remaking FFVI makes it pretty clear, though, that they probably aren’t thinking of another project on the scale of FFVII Remake because of the time, manpower, and resources it would require.
What a lot of online discourse ignores is that FFVIIR doesn’t have to be the way every remake is handled from now on. It’s such a massive reimagining, and if Square Enix had decided to start remaking FFVII today instead of in 2015, I doubt they would’ve been as ambitious as they were then.
If either of these things are real, then I hope they’re at least being handled with more care than FFVIII Remastered.
Thank you for your thoughts and for the article!