FF7R was… a thing. It was good – really good – but the sheer degree to which the game was stretched out makes me worried about the game’s future. This first game has been in development since at least 2015, but realistically could have been in some form of pre-development going back to 2005. so 5-15 years to get this first iteration out.

And now look at the future state. We’ve got new consoles out in 6 months. It’ll inevitably be out on PC too. So you’ve got an endless parade of ports over the next year. So the team spends the next year getting it ported everywhere. Fine. Then they have to work on part 2. I mean, a lot can be reused, but still there’s so much game left.

In the original Midgar wasn’t even the whole first disc. It was maybe the first 2/3rds of the first disc. It was a first glimpse of a world, with high stakes, a fleshed out world, characters, plot hooks for the rest of the game, and then you escape Midgar and find oh shit there’s a whole world here. You get real character development right after you escape Midgar and make it to Kalm, and that’s all after the game ends.

So ok, fine, what’s next? What happens in game 2? Obviously plot-wise you’re going to Nibelheim, you’re learning about the false story of what happened there, you’re meeting the rest of the cast, you’re going around the world, you’re breeding an assload of chocobos, and of course Aerith dies. Right after Aerith dies is a pretty logical place to break, or maybe right after that, so the game is bookended by flashbacks to Nibelheim, and finally with Sephiroth’s victory taking the Black Materia.

But like, damn that’s a ton of story. Do they cut stuff? Do they cut Gold Saucer? Do they cut the Weird Submarine Adventure? In Part 1 they didn’t cut anything and if anything they added stuff like Jessie’s Magical Side-Plot. Doing the rest of FF7 at the same grandiose scale as Part 1 is just . . not physically possible. Part 1 was a 40 hour game, more if you went completely overboard 100%‘ing it all. Parts 2 through n would be hundreds of hours to get through just the straight up plot.

And what about mechanics? How the do they even start Part 2 from a mechanical standpoint? It’s conceivable that you finish Part 1 with multiple limit breaks for 4 characters, a huge array of mastered materia, an assload of upgraded 6-socket weapons, HP in the 5-6k range. So what do they do with part 2? Resume your save? Everything is already maxed! Give people a limited semi-upgraded save? What happened to my gear?!!? And if they try to do a save carry-over, how the hell do they bring it over? Sony is TERRIBLE at that!

The PS4 is going to be long-since done-and-dusted by the time Part 2 is out. And what about Parts 3-n? Will those even be out for the PS5?

I just don’t know how they finish this all before the heat-death of the universe. That makes me sad. This section of the original was some of the weakest source material they had to pull from, and they turned it into a jawdropping fantastic game. I want them to do that to the actual good part of the game, and get the same or at least similar returns. But I just don’t know how they’ll do it.