FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE (Part I) gets release date

The first part of Final Fantasy VII Remake will be released worldwide on 3 March 2020.

Square Enix have spent the last five years or so working on an ambitious, ground-up remake of their classic 1997 RPG Final Fantasy VII. Rather than settling for a simple re-release with better graphics, they have instead completely rebuilt the game, as if they were making it for the first time in 2019.

This means a considerably longer game, with previously closed-off areas of the game now available to explore in an open-world fashion, with more side-quests, new enemies and new content in the game. This has also meant splitting the game into multiple parts for release. Part I is expected to include at least the opening part of the game, set in the city of Midgar. In the original game the Midgar episode took roughly 5-6 hours to complete, but the Remake version sounds like it may last for several times that amount.

More information will be released on the game in the next few days, including hopefully more information on the release schedule for the remaining parts.

UPDATE: Square Enix have released more information about the game, including a new cinematic which reveals the character of Tifa for the first time and a more extensive gameplay demo. They have also confirmed that the first part of the game will focus almost entirely on Midgar and will fill two Blu-Ray discs for the physical version of the game. At the moment they don't have a confirmed timescale for release of the other episodes, although in previous interviews they had compared their plans for Final Fantasy VII Remake to be similar to those for Final Fantasy XIII, which ultimately took four years to release all three of its parts.

The game will initially be released on PlayStation 4, with X-Box One and PC versions of the game likely to follow (based on Final Fantasy XV, probably within 18 months of the original release).