FINAL FANTASY VII remake gameplay trailer unveiled

Sony and Square Enix have released a new trailer for their upcoming remake of Final Fantasy VII, the classic 1997 CRPG that achieved a major breakthrough in boosting the popularity of Japanese RPGs worldwide.

The trailer features both gameplay and cut scenes, most of them set in the opening part of the game set in the city of Midgar. The trailer confirms that Steve Burton will be returning from Advent Children and Kingdom Hearts to voice Cloud Strife, whilst Beau Billingslea returns from Advent Children to voice Barrett. There's some interesting art direction with Barrett now resembling Blade from the, er, Blade movies rather than original inspiration of Mr. T from The A-Team, and Cloud is notably less buff than he is in Advent Children.

As far as gameplay is concerned, the game now uses an all-3D engine rather than the painted backdrops of the original, the music appears to remixed and updated from the original score and the combat options for battles (either attacking with a weapon, summoning a monster, using materia or an item) seems to be the same. Slightly more controversially (knowing the internet), the game will use a time/phase-based combat system based on the Kingdom Hearts games rather than the turn-based system from the original Final Fantasy VII.

No release date has been given for the game, although the original fan hope - to get the game out FF7's 20th anniversary in January 2017 - may have proven optimistic.