Wark Digest #191 - Ahead On Their Way

Welcome back to the Wark Digest, your weekly newsletter of new developments and historical insights from the Final Fantasy universe. I’m Chris, aka Hoogathy, and this week we check in on the development of the last Final Fantasy VII Remake chapter, shuffle up, and look to the future with the godfather.

This week’s newsletter is 2035 words, a 10-minute read.

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Remake Part 3 Is Cooking

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth has officially arrived on PC, and in the hubbub surrounding its launch, Yoshinori Kitase and Naoki Hamaguchi have been opening up about progress on part 3 in interviews with Famitsu and 4gamer. (Translations via Audrey, Genki, and Shinra Archaeology)

What’s going on:

• Rebirth launched on Steam yesterday (with a 30% discount, no less, until February 5) and shot to the top of Steam’s Top Sellers chart—with Remake Intergrade trailing not far behind, likely thanks to the double pack

• Hamaguchi reiterated that work on part 3 (“R3make” as I’ve been calling it in short) started almost immediately in March/April 2024, putting it 9 months into development already

  • He hopes 2025 will see them kick into high gear and make great strides, sticking to the schedule he envisioned

• Kitase also confirmed that Nomura’s script was finished at the end of 2024, building off the scenario outline Nojima had finished shortly after Rebirth’s launch

  • He claims to have given Nomura “homework”—to finish the Remake series in a way that honours the original, but provides a more satisfying conclusion

  • Kitase is “extremely satisfied” with the result and thinks we will be too

• The response to Aerith’s role in Rebirth’s ending was about what they expected, and they’re glad to see people are talking and theorizing about it

• Asked about people’s concerns that R3make could launch on a hypothetical PlayStation 6/next-gen console, Kitase was firm—”no, you can rest assured about the next one”

  • Hamaguchi took the opportunity to reiterate Square Enix’s policy of expanding platform options for their upcoming blockbusters

• As for the slap fight “minigame” between Tifa and Scarlet, Hamaguchi acknowledged the fan demand for the scene to remain, and promises to “draw up something really good, so please be excited!”

  • Overall there won’t be fewer minigames than Rebirth, per se, but they will likely be approached from a new angle somehow

What we thought:

• Initial impressions of the PC port seem pretty positive, suggesting this is one of the better PS5-to-PC ports to-date, let alone one of the better Square Enix PC ports (we all know those can be spotty)

  • User impressions are relatively positive as well, though like any PC port, there are users running into various technical hiccups (or just using the Steam reviews as a platform to scream their console war frustrations from)

  • Metacritic’s reviews are looking a lot like the PS5 version’s at launch, sitting at 89 as of this writing

• Given that Hamaguchi credited the high retention of staff between Remake and Rebirth for the quality of the second game, it’s not surprising that R3make’s development started immediately—hit the ground running, especially since they’re essentially one massive game in three parts

• Any comments regarding the platforms is sure to be a conversational molotov cocktail (just like any shipping comments), but to boil down Kitase’s remarks: R3make won’t launch on a new system (ie. “PS6”), but on the current/PS5 gen

  • Strange to say, but the PS5/XSX generation is no longer “next-gen”

  • It’s still likely that R3make will be exclusive to PlayStation at launch, as there are probably contractual obligations to uphold, but we might see the PC port take less than 11 months this time

  • Despite the multiplatform fervor, it’s important to remember that Hamaguchi and Kitase also credited single-platform development for the Rebirth’s quality after launch—Kitase even remarked “had it not been on a single platform, the world map would not be seamless, and game design may have had to regress significantly“

  • IF, and that’s a big if, the “PS6” is out within 6-12 months of R3make, it wouldn’t be shocking if it got a complete trilogy version with slight updates, but there are too many variables there to speculate further

• These comments touch on two of the biggest pressure points for the Remake project so far—the games’ endings and their minigames

  • It sounds as though they’ve collected plenty of feedback and done some self-reflection, and hopefully the road is paved for the best landing of the whole trilogy

What’s next? Elsewhere in the Rebirth sphere, Ever Crisis is hosting a “collaboration” next week focused on the LOVELESS sequence, including skins for Aerith, Yuffie, and Barret based on their stage costumes.

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FFTCG Heads Into Nightmare, Halves Box Sizes

The Final Fantasy Trading Card Game has announced another set for this August, Gunslinger In The Abyss. With Rebirth-Vincent as its poster character, this set features the 38 newly illustrated cards, the largest batch in the game’s history thus far, with beautiful new portraits from legends of Square Enix’s roster of artists. Among the new art revealed so far are Bartz by Toshiyuki Itahana (with a signature version), Amarant by Rubi Asani, Vrtra by Tetsu Tsukamoto, and Cid Raines by Toshitaka Matsuda.

The set will also see the number of packs per box halved from 36 to 18, which might help incentivize stores, players, and collectors alike by offering a cheaper buy-in position. Despite this change, the total number of cards in the set and in each booster pack remains the same—130 normal cards and 174 premium cards in the set, at 12 cards per booster.

Gunslinger in the Abyss is due for release on August 8.

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Still Driven To Create

Hironobu Sakaguchi spoke to EuroGamer recently about working with Square Enix again on Fantasian Neo Dimension, and about his plans for the rest of his career.

What they’re saying:

• “Having parted ways with Square Enix all that time ago, I think there was, over the years, this distance that was built between us—with the people who I created Final Fantasy with who were still at Square Enix. But, looking at the email interactions that we had over the course of producing Fantasian together, it almost felt that this distance grew smaller, and we reconnected on a certain level“

• He dispelled the notion that Fantasian’s two-part structure was inspired by FFVI:

  • FFVI’s world “just kind of shifts very suddenly, or transports you to another type of world, and then all of a sudden there's a sci-fi kind of element. It really pulls you into a different feeling or different emotion. That variety of elements, I think, is […] really fun, being tugged around”

  • “When I played FFVI again, it brought me back to an old version of myself, a very honest version of myself, and it's a similar feeling that is evoked in Fantasian. I wasn't necessarily trying to make the game more alike or bring it closer to Final Fantasy, as much as it was an honest expression”

• For him, Fantasian represents “much more of an old style experience [and] one interpretation of what an RPG can be,” opposed to games like Black Myth Wukong which chase the most cutting-edge graphics

  • It challenges the status quo by resisting the modern gaming industry’s desire for real time action

• Generally speaking, Sakaguchi is more interested in making new things than remaking or rehashing past releases: “if at all possible, I would like to continue giving birth to something new and bringing these different worlds to life as much as possible before I perish“

  • Yet he also acknowledges the need for preserving and visiting the past

  • "It “makes sense to look back and talk about this so-called history of what this industry has done [to take] ideas from the past and, in a way, interpret them so that modern audiences can feel closer to what emotions and experiences were evoked" previously

• One of the biggest challenges in modern game development is “the amount of time it takes to really prepare to make a game of a certain caliber […] before a game can take shape there is an immense amount of preparation work that needs to happen, and that has only increased as time has gone on”

  • He chose his next words delicately: “I think the use of AI to assist the prep work is something that could perhaps really improve the game industry and what we can express“—but reiterated that games are about human creation

What we thought:

• Most nods or allusions to FF in Fantasian certainly felt organic, almost subliminal; but intentional or not, it was still a treat to see some FF bleeding through

• Not only does Fantasian show a different side of RPGs to today’s audience, it’s vindicating for frustrated turn-based fans—though it may not be selling like mad, Fantasian is proof that there’s still fresh tricks up turn-based games’ sleeves

  • Oddly enough, sticking to a turn-based engine can almost be an act of defiance in our current age, resisting the same gravitational pull that saw Final Fantasy XVI go full action-RPG

• Sakaguchi’s never really been one to rehash previous games, as much as Square Enix has re-released his games in different forms over the years

• Again, it would be easy to misconstrue his last remarks on AI, but it’s clear that Sakaguchi is referring to more menial, computational parts of the process, to take the stress off devs somewhat and free their mental energies for bigger creative tasks—not unlike the more benevolent machine-learning features in things like the PS5 Pro’s upscaling

What’s next? Sakaguchi is hard at work bringing something new to life, though it will probably be sometime before Mistwalker reveals whatever he’s working on. Whatever it is, perhaps Square Enix could help with the publication and such again.

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Around the Union

Speaking of a SNES classic, did you know… “Final Fantasy VI Has Some Weird Secrets?” Check out our latest video to learn about the mechanics behind the fishing “minigame,” the Imp Squad, and more!

Over in the Kupo Chronicle, this week we examined the career and evolution of Amano’s style, and how it has shaped the very nature of Final Fantasy itself.

And lastly, our reader polls! Last week we opened a portal to the past to ask, did you ever use published strategy guides for Final Fantasy games?

68% - Yes, I bought guide(s) regularly
14% - I peeked in them once or twice
13% - No, I never used FF strategy guides
4% - Yes, I sought out guide magazines
2% - Yes, I borrowed guides regularly

Looks like a vast majority of us consulted those glorious tomes on the regular. As a follow-up, in the modern age it’s all too easy to look up a text guide or a video showing how to get past certain parts of a game when you’re stuck. In this way, the modern internet has essentially made these guides obsolete. But, if classic guides were to make a comeback, would you stick to the online guides that have become so popular, or would you go analog and use the traditional, paper method?

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