Square Enix confirm CRISIS CORE remake this year, FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE sequel next year

Square Enix have been celebrating the 25th anniversary of Final Fantasy VII, arguably the most important and popular game in their long-running RPG series. As part of the news they confirmed both a remake of their 2007 mobile action RPG Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII and released a teaser for the sequel to Final Fantasy VII Remake, confirming that the remake will span three games in total.

Crisis Core is a prequel to Final Fantasy VII and focuses on the character Zack Fair. The story follows Zack as he is assigned to look for a missing military officer, Genesis Rhapsodos, and intersects with the backstory to Final Fantasy VII, where protagonist Cloud Strife knew Zack and took up aspects of his personality and backstory as the result of a mental breakdown. Crisis Core was well-received, but had a limited audience due to only being available on the PlayStation Portable.

The remake, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII Reunion, will be available on PlayStation, PC and Xbox later this year.

Square have also confirmed that the Final Fantasy VII Remake project will now span three games, plus possible expansions. Final Fantasy VII Remake was released in 2020, followed by Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade in 2021 (including an expansion focused on the character of Yuffie). The second part, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, will be released in late 2023 and will focus on the adventures of Cloud and his team after they leave the city of Midgar.

An as-yet untitled third part will follow and wrap up the project, presumably around 2026. The next mainline game in the series, Final Fantasy XVI, is due for release in summer 2023.

Wertzone Classics: Final Fantasy VII

Cloud Strife, mercenary for hire, is contacted by his childhood friend Tifa to help out an ecological resistance group she's part of, AVALANCHE, which is resisting the despoiling of the planet by the Shinra Company. Cloud joins up for the money, not the cause, but almost against his will he's drawn into their struggle, especially when his old superior officer turned enemy Sephiroth shows up. As a three-way battle for the fate of the planet takes shape, Cloud must overcome his own demons and devastating losses to preserve the planet.

Two years ago, Square Enix released Final Fantasy VII Remake, the first part of a series of games updating their classic 1997 roleplaying game to modern standards. The game was pretty good (some quibbles aside), but it only adapt the first part of the game. The second part still doesn't have a release date and any further parts (if needed) will be years after even that. Of course, one cunning way to get around this is to just replay the original game.

Final Fantasy VII is regarded as one of the most important video games ever made. A huge unit-shifter for the original Sony PlayStation console, it demonstrated the console's graphical capabilities (through enormously impressive CGI cutscenes) whilst retaining the depth of gameplay and customisation that the series had previously become famous for on the NES and SNES. The game's story, characters and shock plot twists became iconic, and the game arguably did more for popularising Japanese RPGs outside of Japan then any game before or since. Its anime stylings also helped the burgeoning popularity of manga and anime in other countries.

The game could also be famously obtuse: it was one of the biggest-selling video games on the original PlayStation but it was also one of the most heavily-resold, with as many players bouncing off its confusing storyline and poorly-translated characters as those who loved and embraced it. A lot of players in 1997 (and 1998, when it first hit PC) really got into FF7 because there were not too many exciting alternatives around, whilst that is definitely not true in 2022, where even its own sequels are more approachable (Final Fantasy IX, which uses the same engine, has many of FF7's strengths and fewer of its weaknesses, for example).

That said, Final Fantasy VII still has a lot to offer and as a classic of the genre, it's definitely worth a look. Whether players will stick with it is another matter.

FF7 sees you controlling a party of three characters at any one time, drawn from a wider pool that can grow to nine characters (two of whom are optional and can be missed if you're not careful). Each character has their own distinct personality and specialisations, but a key selling point of FF7 is its deep customisability: you can rename every character and you can tailor characters' growth how you want. Tifa may be presented as a melee specialist, but if you want to pour magic upgrades into her and turn her into a formidable spellcaster, there's nothing stopping you. Compared to the class systems from prior Final Fantasy games (and most other fantasy CRPGs), this is tremendously freeing. Most characters also work as solid jack-of-all-trades, with great combat and magic skills.

The game's magic system remains superb. Magic is used in the form of crystals called materia. Materia can be assigned to weapons and armour, granting the wielder access to their associated spells but also giving them bonuses. There is a colossal amount of materia which can do everything from healing to hurling fire to learning enemy skills to granting support abilities, like your character will immediately automatically counter-attack enemy strikes, or when asked to use a spell once will instead cast it four times. Towards the end of the game, the type and applicability of materia can get completely crazy, in a pleasing, almost game-breaking kind of way. The materia system remains brilliant, and fun to play around with and experiment with different character builds. As you use materia, it also levels up, unlocking new spells or new tiers of existing spells. You can also level up materia and then give it to another character to use, or sell at a huge profit.

You also have weapon and armour upgrades, acquired at a steady pace through gameplay or bought at stores. Each weapon and armour has a different amount of materia slots, and these don't always scale linearly: the best weapons in the game don't permit any materia growth, so are best held back for the final battles in the game. Some formidable weapons don't allow you to use any materia at all but have massive damage bonuses, and so on. The weapon and armour system is less extensive than the materia one, but adds a nice amount of added depth to the game.

In terms of gameplay, the game runs in three different modes. For most of the game you control a party of three (usually led by Cloud) who run around on painted backdrops. In this mode the game controls like an old adventure game like Grim Fandango, or a faster-paced Resident Evil. You can search for treasure chests, talk to other characters, go into shops or just make your way to the next destination. The hand-painted backdrops are gorgeous but, in their original format, very low-res and somewhat confusing. Various mods have remastered the painted backdrops via AI with varying degrees of success, but have improved matters.

In the second mode, you have access to the world map, a 3D representation of the entire planet which you can run your party around on either on foot or by vehicle (buggy, a plane converted into a boat, a submarine and, later, an airship). You are mostly directed to the next destination required by the story, but later in the game you can travel across the map freely to carry out side-quests, find obscure loot and fight optional enemies.

In both modes (apart from when in cities or other "safe areas") you can get into combat at absolutely any moment. You can't see enemies before they attack, and it's a bit disconcerting by modern standards to be wandering around an empty screen and suddenly combat kicks in with its very jarring (but excellent) music. Combat is semi turn-based, with timers that rise for both sides before you can act. You can speed up these timers with certain hasting spells and abilities, whilst enemies can slow them down with magic. During combat you can attack with your default weapon, use magic or use an item. Combat can be satisfyingly tactical, with you having to strike a balance between attack, using defensive magic (to put up shields to reduce physical or magical damage from heavy-hitting enemies, for example) or using items to heal the party or wake up KOed allies. Just following the story will give you plenty of combat and opportunities to improve your skills, but you can also grind areas to level up faster.

Of course, you need a good reason to do all of this, and Final Fantasy VII delivers an excellent, if unoriginal, premise. It's basically Star Wars with the evil Shinra Corporation (the Empire) despoiling the planet and ruling with a tyrannical fist, and AVALANCHE (the Rebels) are out to stop them. There is a wild card in the form of a second enemy, Sephiroth, who looks amazing and has cool hair but ends up being a bit under-cooked as an enemy compared to the numerous faces of Shinra. The good guys are an iconic if archetypal bunch, from brooding soldier Cloud to sunny-optimistic Aerith to tough guy Barrett. The characters are great, but they are severely under-developed compared to modern game protagonists, with a relative lack of dialogue and background depth apart from Cloud, Tifa and Aerith. Still, they're fun if shallow.

Where the game does falter is how it tells its story to the player. The opening, with AVALANCHE mid-operation and the player joining in media res and having to quickly get up to speed, is rightfully iconic, showcasing the game's unusual steampunk-meets-fantasy-meets-modern-day world and throwing up some good action sequences. However, it doesn't take long for players to run into the game's famously iffy translation issues. The game was translated from Japanese into English quickly and a bit too cheaply, resulting in confused dialogue and head-scratching moments that don't make much sense. This is not entirely helped by the game undergoing some changes via different editions over the years and the dialogue not keeping up (Weapon is referred to as a single enemy, for example, whilst the international version of the game expands this enemy to five different entities). You always get the general gist of what's going on, but occasionally opening the game's wiki entry to find out what is actually going on can be quite helpful. Particularly irritating are a couple of moments mid-game when the very clear objectives you've had on what to do next dry up and the game leaves you to wander the world map until bumping into the next objective, which can take a long time without consulting a walkthrough. 

The game also has little truck with a lot of UI standbys that were becoming standard at the time, let alone now. There is no autosave, so you have to manually save every chance you get (something even its near-contemporary, Baldur's Gate, did for the player). This is not helped by the fact you can only save at certain points or on the world map, not everywhere, which can occasionally put you in difficulty spikes where you can die and then have to retrace the last ten minutes or so. FF7 is not a really hard game by any standards, especially the occasionally crippling standards of some JRPGs, but it can catch you out if you don't stay on top of upgrading your weapons and materia.

The game also has a lot of systems which it doesn't really explain to you, again leaving you consult online guides. Particularly undersold is how incredibly powerful the Enemy Skill materia is (allowing you to use enemy abilities once they've been used on you), and the game doesn't tell you which enemy skills can be learned and which cannot, again encouraging the use of outside help.

These negatives, jank and dated systems will no doubt be more aggravating for newer players than for seasoned veterans. But there is a lot to enjoy with the original Final Fantasy VII (****). Its relatively fast pace, especially compared to its drawn-out remake, is refreshing and keeps the game ticking over breezily for all of its 35-40 hour length (considerably more if you grind your characters to maximum level or try to fight some of the optional bosses). The iffy translation can mostly be overcome and the three-way fight between AVALANCHE, Shinra and Sephiroth becomes quite intriguing, with numerous betrayals and unexpected alliances. Enhanced with mods, the game can also still look quite amazing, considering it's now (screams) a quarter of a century old, whilst the soundtrack remains one of the best in gaming history. The combat depth is also still remarkable, and the magic system one of the best ever seen in a CRPG.

Final Fantasy VII is available on PlayStation, Android, Xbox and Nintendo systems, as well as on PC via GoG and Steam. For this replay I used the SYW Mod, which uses AI to upscale both the FMV video and painted backgrounds in the game, and is still being updated and supported. The results can be variable, but in most cases the background art was hugely improved and made clearer, although the FMV was more hit-and-miss and could occasionally get a little smeary. Other mods are available, such as Remako which is no longer supported but gives a better finish to the FMV and backgrounds but the 3D models and combat is not as enhanced.

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Square Enix offload DEUS EX and TOMB RAIDER studios and IPs

Square Enix has announced an intent to sell several of its highest-profile studios and IPs to the Embracer Group. Under the mooted deal, Embracer would buy the studios Crystal Dynamics, Eidos Montreal and Square Enix Montreal (totalling 1,100 employees), along with IPs including Deus Ex, Tomb Raider, Thief and Legacy of Kain. Currently in-development projects, like a new Tomb Raider game, will continue under the new owners.

Japanese company Square Enix bought Eidos and Crystal Dynamics in 2009 to shore up their overseas development portfolio. Initially the deal seemed to go well, with Crystal Dynamics releasing a Tomb Raider reboot trilogy (Tomb Raider, Rise of the Tomb Raider and Shadow of the Tomb Raider) and Eidos Montreal releasing the well-received and high-selling Deus Ex: Human Revolution. However, subsequent releases seem to have underperformed, at least according to Square Enix's expectations. A Thief reboot in 2014 sold poorly and got mediocre reviews, whilst Deus Ex: Mankind Divided sold poorly in 2016, after a controversial attempt to leverage microtransactions in a single-player game. The Crystal Dynamics-developed Marvel's Avengers also underperformed in 2020, which seemed to impact on sales of Guardians of the Galaxy in 2021 (despite stronger reviews).

However, the long tail on these releases is often quite significant, with the Deus Ex and Tomb Raider games continuing to sell well long after their release. This has led to memes as fans criticise Square for cancelling projects too quickly and in a kneejerk fashion, despite them eventually working out.

The Embracer Group is a Swedish video game holding company and publishes games under the names Nordic Games and THQ Nordic. Embracer recently acquired Gearbox Entertainment, creators of the Borderlands franchise, and board game company Asmodee as a way into the physical gaming market.

What is remarkable is the price: Embracer will get their hands on some of the most popular and beloved IPs in gaming for $300 million, which seems very cheap, and may reflect Square Enix's decision to get out of the overseas market to refocus on their core Japanese brands.

If approved by all the relevant parties, the deal should complete in mid-2023. It's likely the first game released under the new deal will be a new Tomb Raider game, whilst Deus Ex fans will be crossing their fingers for a new game in that franchise.

Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade

Mercenary Cloud Strife is hired by Avalanche, a band of freedom fighters, in their mission to bring down Shinra, a powerful corporation which it believes is irreparably harming the planet by building energy reactors tapping into the planet's very life force. As Avalanche knocks out the reactors powering the huge city of Midgar, a greater threat is discovered. The enigmatic war hero Sephiroth has returned, with his own agenda that conflicts with that of both Avalanche and Shinra. As the conflict rages, it becomes clear that something is trying to throw destiny off course, and destiny itself is fighting back...

Originally released in 1997, Final Fantasy VII remains the most iconic game in the venerable Japanese roleplaying series. Other games in the series individually have better graphics, more interesting characters, more advanced controls or a stronger story, but none have perhaps succeeded in hitting every criteria as well as the seventh entry. The steampunk-magitech world remains one of the most compelling in the series, the story of a band of rebels fighting the evil (corporate) empire may be overly familiar but it is executed extremely well, and the way the story evolves from a low-key ecological parable to a ferocious fight for the future of the world remains gripping. Final Fantasy VII's status as iconic has survived a quarter of a century of attempted revisionism and re-releases, mobile ports and spin-off media of wildly varying quality.

Final Fantasy VII Remake is, as the name subtly hints, a full-blown remake of the original game in a modern game engine, rather than a more modest remaster. This is an absurdly ambitious project, since it was possible to make games in 1997 in a fraction of the time of modern titles, even a cutting-edge (for the time) 2D/3D hybrid with many thousands of pieces of background artwork and advanced CG cutscenes. Translating that into a modern, real-time, fully-3D game running at 4K resolutions seemed impossibly expensive, but Square Enix have managed to achieve it by splitting the game into three parts and turning each part into a full game rivalling the original in total content and playtime. Part 1 focuses on the city of Midgar, where you spent around 5-7 hours in the original game, or maybe 15-20% of the total length of the game, now extended out to about 35 hours of new gameplay. This has resulted in some predictable complaints, but practically there was no other real way of doing this project at this level of ambition.

That doesn't mean it's an unqualified success, of course, and Final Fantasy VII Remake spends most of its time imparting conflict feelings in the player, especially veterans of the original game. On the one hand, walking around inside environments from the original game, now rendered in stunning full 3D, gives a nostalgia rush like no other video game remake before it. The fidelity to the original game and the attention to detail is at times absolutely mind-boggling. Key moments include going into the 7th Heaven Bar for the first time, or especially Aerith's church, where it feels like the designers have directly stepped back in time and translated the original, pixilated 2D location into a full environment you can walk around in and interact with. However, at other times it feels like that designers have struggled to maximise the use out of these (very expensive) assets in an organic way, resulting in significant chunks of the game being slowed down by filler and makework.

The game's story remains the same as the original game's opening section: we join the action with an Avalanche cell led by Barret Wallace attacking a Mako reactor in Midgar. Cloud Strife has joined the team to lend his considerable combat expertise. After taking out the reactor, the team prepare for a second attack, but this one goes considerably wrong. The crew are framed for Shinra's subsequent retaliatory strike, which causes a large number of civilian casualties, and one of their number is kidnapped. They launch an attack on Shinra Headquarters to rescue their comrade and discover a much bigger threat is at work. After escaping the building, they find their path leads them out of Midgar and into the wider world.

Avalanche side-members Jessie, Wedge and Biggs are the biggest beneficiaries of Remake, all gaining substantial amounts of backstory, characterisation and their own side-quests.

Remake fleshes out this story in several respects. It "zooms in" and provides much finer levels of detail of the characters and events. The first and most obvious beneficiaries of this approach are the secondary Avalanche members: Jessie, Wedge and Biggs. In the original game they got maybe a few lines of character development and were then shoved aside to focus on the main cast. In Remake they have a lot more detail attached to them. You can visit their homes and discover that Jessie used to be a professional dancer and has a father with a terminal disease, whilst Wedge looks after his neighbourhood's cats and Biggs helps out at an orphanage. They have their own storylines and quests attached to them, which fleshes them out as characters. Their quests also add texture to the worldbuilding, especially the somewhat under-developed relationship between Barret's Avalanche cell and the rest of the organisation at large. These are all examples of excellent ways in which Remake fleshes out the original game and adds finer detail which extends the game's length in a constructive, enjoyable way.

A more important change is that Aerith is given a lot more to do in Remake, including having more background story and larger parts of the game where she joins Cloud on his missions (in the original game you had more control over selecting who is in your party, which Remake has not truck with, at least in this first part). Aerith's personality is defined a lot more and the vague hints of a possible love triangle in the original game with Cloud and Tifa are here reset to be a much more equal friendship between the three of them. Whilst all the characters benefit from more scenes of characterisation and dialogue, Aerith is by far the most-improved. Cloud probably benefits the least, since his stoic demeanour, apparent motivation only by money and possible PTSD from his time in the SOLDIER organisation are all traits they had to carry over from the original game. Since you control Cloud for about 95% of the game (bar a couple of sequences where you control two parties simultaneously, switching over to Tifa, Aerith or Barret at key moments), this leaves the game's main protagonist as a bit of a blank cipher.

Though you can't ride or breed them (yet), chocobos are present and correct in Remake.

In terms of controls, the game is definitely improved over the original. Seeing everything in 3D instead of from overhead in blocky 2D allows you to plot your next move better, and you can now see enemies on the map before engaging in battle (the original game would have you ambushed out of nowhere on a fairly regular basis). Battles are now real-time/turn-based hybrids where you can engage in real-time combat, carrying out minor attacks and blocking, whilst a two-stage time-bar fills up. This can be sped up by attacking or slowed down by dodging. Once a time stage activates, you can carry out special attacks, use magic or use an item. All three characters in battle have their own bars and you can flip between them on the fly. This can be useful since if a wounded character is too slow in filling up their time bar to heal themselves, you can flip to another character and get them to use healing magic or a potion on the wounded character first. Some special attacks and abilities require you to fill up both bars before using them.

As in the original game, there are a wide variety of enemy types. Some might be flying, making them difficult to hit with melee characters, which is where ranged characters come into their own. At certain points you trigger "limit breaks" (having taken x amount of damage or after a certain amount of time has passed) and can unleashed a massive, high-damage attack. You can also generate different types of attacks depending on elemental modifiers (electric, fire, cold etc), which is handy when you work out what weaknesses an enemy has. Finally, you can carry out "Summons" attacks, where you summon an otherworldly creature to fight for you. It has to be said that Summons are rather disappointing: the summoned character stays on the battlefield and carries out low-level attacks on the enemy before eventually disappearing in a big attack that does decent damage, but rarely outstanding. In the meantime you can use your time bars to trigger special attacks by the summoned entity, but half the time these do less damage then your own personal ability. You are also limited to one summons per battle, which feels limiting compared to the original game (where you could go crazy and unleash multiple summons in a row if you wanted to.

The new battle system is quite good, despite looking like a brainless button-mashing exercise on first glimpse, with deeper tactics and more innovative approaches emerging through experimentation. The game is helped by retaining the materia system from the original, where you can add magical abilities via the use of special crystals which are implanted in your weapons, armour or equipment. Each materia orb levels up on its own through use, unlocking more powerful abilities as it improves. Brand new to Remake is a system of upgrading your weapons over time, meaning your starting weapons can be kept relevant against high-level enemies rather than having to constantly swap them in or out. However, this system is somewhat flawed: in almost every case, keeping your starting weapon and improving it is preferable to picking up a brand new weapon. However, if you max out a weapon's upgrades, some of the weapon's abilities will be permanently added your arsenal even if you're not physically using the weapon at the time. This requires you to constantly be upgrading all your weapons for all four of the main characters through the game, which by the end becomes quite time-consuming (not helped by the unnecessary and time-consuming mini-animations accompanying the upgrades). Since it's unlikely you'll 100% upgrade a weapon in one playthrough (you'll probably need the New Game+ mode), it's also something you can completely ignore in favour of only upgrading your favoured weapon.

Cats play a surprisingly major role in the game, and there are absolutely tons of them.

So the graphics, controls and battles are improved and many side-characters and stories are improved by the game focusing more on them. The flaws do become more obvious over time. The game has added a stream of side-quests in hub areas. These correspond to the towns from the original game: the Sector 7 Slums (where Avalanche is based), the Sector 5 Slums (where Aerith lives) and Wall Market, a seedy town overseen by the extremely pervy and murderous Don Corneo. I was fully expecting the side-quests from these areas to be substantial storylines involving new characters, locations and stories in their own right. Unfortunately, I think I'd been spoiled by the likes of The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077, where side-quests are fleshed out be engrossing, gripping stories of their own. The comparative optional side-quests in Final Fantasy VII Remake are extremely brief, usually only calling on you to run around the local town picking up collectibles or fighting some enemies in a nearby area before running back.

Where, instead, the game gets its length from is by massively complicating the big story missions. So now the attack on Mako Reactor 5, which takes maybe 15 minutes in the original game, is now an absolutely massive rigmarole involving spending ages travelling through tunnels to get near the reactor, then ascending the underside of the reactor, then making your way across a huge area with moving bridges, switching mini-reactors on and off before you finally reach the reactor itself, which then incurs a massive series of battles and more running through corridors before the point of the story is reached. This is where the game almost kills its pacing stone dead, with throwing filler after filler at the player to try to maximise the game's length (and thus justify its fairly exorbitant cost). I very nearly stopped playing during such an interminable sequence.

Unexpectedly, Remake plays down the love triangle elements between Tifa, Cloud and Aerith from the original game, instead focusing more of Tifa and Aerith's friendship and Cloud's struggles to find acceptance.

Things do improve towards the end. Surprisingly, the attack on Shinra Headquarters, although similarly padded out immensely, works a lot better. The original game rushed through this plot-critical sequence and left some story and character beats feeling underdeveloped or vague, which is a problem that doesn't exist here. The internal political infighting between different branches of Shinra is spelled out better, the more interesting antagonists are fleshed out and you get to spend a lot more time working with Red XIII in this sequence then you did in the original game.

The story does go rogue at the very end. Throughout the game you have occasional encounters with weird ghostly figures, which, it turns out, are "Arbiters of Fate," trying to keep the timeline intact. At the end of the game there's a rather jarring and abrupt pivot to dealing with these characters, who did not exist in the original, and you realise that Final Fantasy VII Remake is also something of a sequel, as well as a retelling, of the original game. Given that OG FFVII doesn't exactly have the simplest or more straightforwards of stories, adding a new meta-narrative to the story doesn't really help it very much. As long as the whole thing is just a way of warning the player that things are not going to 100% unfold as they did in the original and the stakes are still valid, this is fine. If the sequels continue to disappear up their own posteriors in a Kingdom Hearts level of narrative confusion, that will be less interesting.

Both Cloud and Yuffie can use a VR simulator to hone their combat skills and gain access to powerful new Summons materia.

This edition of the game (Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade, and yes, that's its actual title) is enhanced by the addition of a new episode focusing on Yuffie. Probably the least-developed character in the original game, Yuffie here gets a dedicated, six-hour solo adventure as she arrives in Midgar, joins forces with a second Avalanche cell and raids Shinra HQ's Advanced Weapons division in search of a secret new form of materia. Much breezier and less "heavy" than the main game, with much fewer cutscenes and a better sense of pace, this episode is enjoyable and fun, with its irreverent tone coming as a relief after 30+ hours of Cloud brooding.

I should also make special mention of the game's soundtrack. Nobuo Uematsu's original soundtrack was already rightly considered a masterpiece, but the new edition's soundtrack elevates it to an even higher level. Old themes are reworked (often in multiple different ways), new themes are added and the resulting experience is maybe one of the very best video game soundtracks of all time. It's a genuine work of art.

As with the original, the Battle for the Sector 7 Pillar is one of Remake's setpiece highlights.

Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade (****) looks great, has fantastic music, a great battle system and much-improved controls compared to the original. Many of the storytelling and gameplay changes are improvements, resulting in better characterisation and storytelling. However, pacing is uneven, with well-judged new episodes and stories being let down by large chunks of padded, filler content that do nothing other than slow the story down. There's also an added new "metaplot" which is low-key in this part of the game, but threatens to go really weird and bizarre in the sequels. It's an odd choice that makes this remake in many ways a better experience for veterans of the original game rather than total newcomers. Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade is available now on PlayStation 5 and PC (Epic Store only), whilst the standard Remake edition is also available on PlayStation 4. Final Fantasy VII Remake Part II is currently in development, but it's unclear when it will be released.

Technical Note: I played this game on PC via the Epic Store-exclusive edition of the game. As has been widely reported elsewhere, this a bare-bones port of the original, very surprisingly given Square's comprehensive PC remasters and ports of other games including Final Fantasy XV. There are limited graphics adjustment options and the mouse/keyboard controls are more functional than instinctive to use, with particularly poor keybindings for using the map. However, for movement and combat the controls are fine. Technical performance on my aging 2060 graphics card was outstanding even on maximum detail (though without any ray tracing options, and only running at 1080p), though the game did keep defaulting to the wrong monitor and I kept having to drag it over at the start of every session. However, the game is phenomenally quick to start, going from being on the desktop to in-gameplay in less than 15 seconds. A more comprehensive port would be nice, but this gets the job done.

FINAL FANTASY XVI surprised announced by Square for 2021

Square have surprise-announced Final Fantasy XVI, the latest game in the long-running Japanese RPG series.

Square released Final Fantasy XV in 2016 to a mostly positive reception, so the fact they are making a new game shouldn't be too surprising. However, in the interim this year they released the first part of the Final Fantasy VII Remake project, leading some to believe that XVI wouldn't appear until after the entire release was complete. Instead, it appears that Square have leveraged their enormous manpower to get FFXVI in production at the same time.

Final Fantasy XVI looks like a back-to-basics approach, with a focus on magical crystals and a medieval world and setting rather than the blend of SF and fantasy, technology and magic that has informed the last several games in the series. The game is due for release in 2021 on PlayStation 5 and PC.

Square Eidos selling 53 great games (and DAIKATANA) for peanuts

In one of the best-value deals I've ever seen, Square are selling 54 games from their Eidos subsidiary at an unprecedented price (just £28 in the UK).

The list includes the following games:

• Tomb Raider, Tomb Raider II, Tomb Raider III
• Tomb Raider IV: The Last Revelation, Tomb Raider V: Chronicles
• Tomb Raider VI: The Angel of Darkness, Tomb Raider Anniversary, Tomb Raider Underworld
• Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light, Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris, Lara Croft GO
• Tomb Raider (2013), Rise of the Tomb Raider
• Just Cause, Just Cause 2, Just Cause 3
• Deus Ex, Deus Ex: Invisible War, Deus Ex: The Fall
• Deus Ex: Human Revolution Director's Cut, Deux Ex: Mankind Divided
• Thief, Thief II: The Metal Age, Thief: Deadly Shadows, Thief (2014)
• Life is Strange: The Complete Season
• Sleeping Dogs: The Definitive Edition
• Kane and Lynch: Dead Men, Kane and Lynch 2: Dog Days
• Battlestations: Pacific, Battlestations: Midway
• Dungeon Siege, Dungeon Siege II, Dungeon Siege III
• Conflict: Desert Storm, Conflict: Denied Ops
• Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver, Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 2
• Legacy of Kain: Defiance, Blood Omen 2: Legacy of Kain
• Anachronox
• Omikron: The Nomad Soul
• Daikatana
• Supreme Commander 2
• Project Snowblind, Mini Ninjas, Order of War, Flora's Fruit Farm, Pandemonium
• Pandemonium, Deathtrap Dungeon, Goetia, Hitman Go, The Turing Test

This list includes the entire Tomb Raider franchise from the 1996 original through 2015's Rise of the Tomb Raider (excepting only the most recent game, Shadow of the Tomb Raider); the entire Just Cause series apart from the recent Just Cause 4; the entire Deus Ex and Thief series (arguably the two greatest action-stealth-RPG cross-genre series in gaming history); the first season of the critically-acclaimed Life is Strange series; both Kane and Lynch games; the entire Dungeon Siege trilogy; most of the Legacy of Kain series (excepting only the original Blood Omen, for legal reasons); the two Battlestations games; the two Conflict games; and Supreme Commander 2 (not the far superior first game, which was published elsewhere).

The list contains some splendid curiosities. Project Snowblind was supposed to be Deus Ex shooter spin-off, but became its own thing. Omikron: The Nomad Soul is a 1999 adventure game noteworthy for its soundtrack, composed specifically for the game by Literally David Bowie, who also appears in the game (as does his wife, Iman). It was also David Cage's first video game, paving the way for his later work at Quantic Dream.

The unsung jewel of the collection is the 2001 RPG Anachronox, an offbeat, humour-filled SF epic whose story structure seems to have rather heavily "inspired" BioWare in the later creation of Knights of the Old Republic and Mass Effect. Anachronox, comfortably one of the funniest video games of all time, also has some of the most quotable dialogue and probably the single greatest RPG companion character (sort of) of all time. Plus your mouse pointer is a sentient robot who is also a member of the party. Barking mad, hugely influential, ugly as hell these days but a classic game.

The collection also contains the fascinating Daikatana, widely-regarded as the single most overhyped video game of all time (possibly excepting only Duke Nuke'Em Forever). Definitely not a good game, but an interesting historical artifact.

Proceeds from the sale are going into coronavirus research.

FINAL FANTASY TV series in development, based on FF14

Sony Pictures Television, Square Enix and Hivemind Productions have joined forces to bring the long-running Final Fantasy video game series to television.

The series will be loosely based on Final Fantasy XIV, a multiplayer online game with a strong narrative component. The story will focus on the realm of Eorzea, which is being invaded by the Garlean Empire. The heroes are Warriors of Light, great warriors and mages called to stand against the Empire.

Final Fantasy XIV was originally released in 2010 to a middling reception; it was later rebooted as Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn in 2013 and became a huge success, with over 16 million subscriptions sold. By some counts, it is currently the second-most-popular fantasy MMORPG in existence, behind only the veteran World of WarCraft.

The decision to focus on Final Fantasy XIV (with its fluid and by-design incomplete story) for an adaptation may surprise some people; Final Fantasy VII (1997) is the most well-known game in the series and is getting a huge boost of popularity next year, when the first part of a comprehensive remake of the game launches on PlayStation 4 in March 2020. However, FFXIV is the biggest-selling and by far the most profitable game in the history of the series, and many more current players will be familiar with its lore, story and characters.

The series - where each game consists of completely self-contained narratives, worlds, characters and ideas, but similar story structure and controls - began with Final Fantasy (1987), the success of which is widely credited with saving Squaresoft (as it was then) from going bust. Final Fantasy VII took the series to international success, using the-then state of the art PlayStation technology to create a much more immersive story whilst retaining the RPG customisation and battle features that had attracted players to the series. Final Fantasy X (2001) was the first game in the series to feature spoken dialogue, whilst Final Fantasy XIII (2009) was the first game to launch in HD. Final Fantasy XI (2002) was the first MMORPG in the series, running until its servers were finally shut down in 2016. The latest game in the series, Final Fantasy XV, was released in 2016.

The series previously flirted with dramatic adaptations in the form of the movie Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2000). The film was widely seen as a failure, bombing at the box office and getting a critically mediocre reception. A straight-to-DVD feature-length film, Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children (2005) was considerably more successful.

The Final Fantasy TV series will be co-written by Ben Lustig and Jake Thornton, who don't seem to have any credits of note between them. Sony are currently shopping the project to networks and streamers, although they face a tough market with many potential markets already developing epic fantasy projects of their own.

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).

Square release trailer for FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE

Square Enix have released a new trailer for Final Fantasy VII Remake, their upcoming remake of their classic 1997 RPG Final Fantasy VII (as indicated by the title).

Square have not yet confirmed a release date for the game, which has been in full development since 2015. They have revealed that more footage will be released next month. Square also confirmed some time ago that the game will have an episodic release, but not how many episodes or a release schedule for them. They have suggested that the release scope and schedule may be similar to the Final Fantasy XIII trilogy (which was released in 2009, 2011 and 2013 respectively).

Cities of Fantasy: Midgar

Gaia is a vast and exotic world, ranging from the freezing arctic north to the lush forests and burning deserts of the Western Continent. Many interesting races and people inhabit this world, and the greatest and most famous of its cities can be found on the Eastern Continent: Midgar, capital of the lands dominated by the Shinra Corporation.

Midgar as it will appear in the upcoming Final Fantasy VII Remake.

Location

Midgar is located near the north-western coast of the Eastern Continent, north of Junon and south-west of Kalm. It is located close to the Western Ocean, which is dominated by Shinra’s warships and cargo vessels, which constantly keep Midgar supplied from the mines on the Western Continent. Cost del Sol, a beautiful port city due west of Midgar across the ocean, is a popular getaway and retreat for senior Shinra officials.

Midgar as depicted in the original 1997 release of Final Fantasy VII.

Physical Description

Midgar was originally a network of villages and towns of wooden and stone buildings, linked together by roads and surrounding relatively fertile farmland. After Shinra ascended to power and rapidly developed high technology, by pursuing a mix of scientific research and magical exploitation of materia (magical crystals), they constructed a new city directly over the old towns. The “new” Midgar consists of a massive circular dish with many buildings built on top, suspected directly above the “old” city below (which is now left in perpetual gloom). The surface-dwelling inhabitants of Midgar disparagingly refer to the new city above them as a “pizza”.

The new city of Midgar is suspended by a single, massive pillar and other supports located around the edge of the dish. The dish is divided into nine sectors, with massive Mako Reactors located between each sector. The Reactors fuel the enormous, power-hungry city, but the area around Midgar has gradually become more barren and lifeless as a result. According to the freedom fighters known as AVALANCHE (dismissed as terrorists by Shinra), the Reactors are draining the life force of the very planet itself and will eventually turn all of Gaia into a desert, but Shinra dismisses this claim.

Sectors 1-8 run around the dish, whilst Sector 0 is located at the very centre. Shinra Headquarters, a massive skyscraper and Mako Reactor, is located in the middle of the dish.

The slums below the “pizza” are where poorer residents of the city live. Climbing from the slums to the main city is possible via the central pillar or the city’s train system, which carries workers from below the city to their work places on top. There is an elevated freeway which runs around the city and then descends to ground level outside.

A subterranean city, Deepground, is located in the bedrock below even the slums. Its existence is relatively little-known.

The total size of Midgar is unclear, but it appears to be several miles across.

Population

The population of Midgar, at least prior to the Meteor/Jenova incident and the downfall of the Shinra Corporation, appears to be comfortably in the tens of thousands and possibly hundreds of thousands. Midgar is the largest and most technologically-advanced city on the planet.

Midgar as depicted in Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children.

History

The Shinra Corporation evolved out of Shinra Manufacturing Works, a company specialising in weapons manufacturing. When Shinra discovered how to convent the planet’s Lifestream into Mako energy, they began building Mako Reactors all over the globe. This further propelled both their scientific research and technological advancement, resulting in the development of many powerful weapons, advanced vehicles and other wonders…and terrors.

The town of Wutai rejected Shinra’s proposal to build a Mako Reactor near their settlement, resulting in a nine-year war. During this time Midgar was constructed by Shinra over several pre-existing towns in a relatively defensible part of the eastern continent, becoming both Shinra’s capital and also its greatest achievement. The Wutai War ended in a Shinra victory, but survivors of the Wutai forces and other groups opposed to Shinra’s ultra-capitalist ideology – and horrified by the growing evidence that the Mako Reactors were sapping the Lifestream of the planet – joined forces to form AVALANCHE, a rebel organisation dedicated to destroying the Mako Reactors.

The first incarnation of AVALANCHE operated out in the countryside, hitting isolated reactors (such as the one at Corel). This group become more hardline and ruthless until one member, a scientist named Fuhito, considered the sacrifice of humanity itself to be a worthwhile consequence of destroying the Mako Reactors and saving the Planet. He tried to summon a powerful magical force named Zirconiade to wipe out Shinra forever, but was stopped and killed by the Turks, Shinra’s special operations combat team.

Barret Wallace, a native of Corel, worked with the Turks to defeat AVALANCHE, but was horrified when Shinra laid waste to Corel in retaliation, killing his wife and (apparently) his best friend. Swearing vengeance, Barret moved to Midgar and restarted AVALANCHE as a freedom-fighting organisation. This second version of the rebel group avoided civilian casualties where possible, but sometimes they were incurred. During this period Barret allied with a young, canny fighter named Tifa and her childhood friend, a former Shinra soldier named Cloud Strife.

The conflict between Shinra and AVALANCHE became quite intense, to the point where Shinra destroyed the Sector 7 pillar and dropped the entire sector onto the slums below, including the districts where AVALANCHE’s headquarters were located. Most of AVALANCHE was wiped out in this attack and AVALANCHE were blamed for the cataclysm, which caused thousands of casualties. Barret, Cloud and others launched a retaliatory strike on Shinra Headquarters. During these events AVALANCHE learned of a much more sinister series of experiments going on behind the scenes, involving the Ancients, the mysterious progenitor race who nearly destroyed the world two thousand years earlier. Sephiroth, the former Shinra military commander (and Cloud’s mentor), liberates the team after they are captured and kills President Shinra before escaping with the remnants of one of the Ancients, Jenova. 

Eventually it was revealed that Sephiroth (sometimes possessed by Jenova, sometimes acting on his own) planned to use the fabled Black Materia to summon a massive Meteor to devastate Gaia. The planet’s Lifestream would respond to heal the wound and Sephiroth would seize the resulting flow of power for himself. Working together, the former members of AVALANCHE (helped, if unwittingly by Shinra) defeated Sephiroth and destroyed the Meteor; unfortunately, in the final battle Midgar was partially destroyed.

After the final battle, Midgar was repopulated. The overhanging main plate had mostly been obliterated, opening the city up to the sky once again. The governance of the city was disputed between the surviving remnants of Shinra and other factions, but eventually the World Regenesis Organisation was formed by several groups to take over governance (in a fairer, more democratic form and help the planet heal from the immense damage wreaked upon it).

Hengsha in Deus Ex: Human Revolution

Origins and Influences
The city of Midgar first appeared in the iconic, classic video game Final Fantasy VII (1997). During the writing and planning of the game, the team at Squaresoft briefly considered setting the game in the real world, with New York City being the main city. This was a significant shift from the previous six games, which were each set in a new, original fantasy world. Ultimately, the team decided to continue in this vein and created a new planet, Gaia, for the game, although some of the original ideas for a New York game did resurface in Parasite Eve.

However, the team did like the idea of starting the game in a large metropolis, not dissimilar to modern-day cities. This would continue upping the technological level of the series (which had previously moved from a traditional, medieval setting to steampunk) and give fans something new to experience. As the first game designed for the original PlayStation, it had a much more ambitious design than the previous games, with lots of complex, dazzling CGI cut scenes.

Art director Yuusuke Naora was given the task of design Midgar and early on moved it away from the New York concept. He hit on the idea of making the city look like a “pizza” early on and this went down well with the rest of the creative team. Nods to this inspiration can be found throughout the game, with Mayor “Domino” and his deputy Hart (Hut) being named after pizza chains.

Final Fantasy VII was an enormous success on its first release, selling millions of copies. Midgar was the main setting for the entire first quarter or so of the game, with several return visits later on. This made Midgar a highly iconic location. Originally, Midgar was destroyed at the end of the game and this is seemingly confirmed by a cut scene showing the city completely in ruins and given back over to nature. The prequel games Before Crisis: Final Fantasy VII (2004) and Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII (2007) are both partially set in Midgar before the events of FF7 itself, whilst the sequel film Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children (2005) and action game Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII (2006) both show the city recovering from the events of FF7 and inhabited once more.

Some fans interpret this to mean that Advent Children and Dirge of Cerberus take place before the final abandonment of Midgar (hence the last FF7 cut scene); others suggest that the ending of FF7 itself has simply been retconned out of existence.

Although these are the only canonical appearances of Midgar, various other games feature “cameos” from the city, such as the FF7-themed battle arenas in the various Super Smash Bros. games.

In 2018 or (more likely) 2019, Midgar will return in Final Fantasy VII Remake, an ambitious, modern remake of the original game with all-new graphics, gameplay and technology.

Midgar is important as a fantasy city that eschews many traditional fantasy elements altogether, instead appearing primarily as a modern city of skyscrapers and towers (albeit suspended in the air above more traditional, medieval fantasy structures), with characters driving cars, taking trains and riding bikes into battle. This moves on even from “steampunk” into a more contemporary form of fantasy, little-explored by fantasy novelists. Square would go on to explore this theme of “contemporary fantasy” even further in Final Fantasy XIII and XV.

In terms of cities most directly influenced by Midgar, the most obvious is Hengsha in Deus Ex: Human Revolution. In this game – created by Western studio Eidos Montreal but published by Squaresoft’s successor company, Square Enix – the Chinese have built an entire utopian sky city above Hengsha Island (just off the coast around Shanghai), suspended over the city below by immense towers. The undercity has become a place of crime, squalor and corruption, whilst the city above is far more beautiful and seemingly perfect.

Midgar is an idea ahead of its time, a city of literal and geographic divisions and levels which reflect the ideological and political divisions riven through its society and through the story. It remains, twenty years on, one of the most iconic video game fantasy cities ever created.

Thank you for reading The Wertzone. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods, which will also get you exclusive content weeks before it goes live on my blogs. The Cities of Fantasy series is debuting on my Patreon feed and you can read it there one month before being published on the Wertzone.

Just Cause 3

Rico Rodriguez has returned to his home island of Medici to remove the brutal dictator Di Ravello. He finds a nascent rebel army that is hamstrung by a lack of leadership and bold tactical ability, so, aided by his childhood friend Mario and the technical genius Dimah, he sets about building them into a more effective fighting force.

In 1999 the epic roleplaying game Planescape: Torment asked, "What can change the nature of a man?" Many answers were offered, such as love, idealism or religion. But, in an unfortunate lack of vision, the game never answered "Standing upside down under an enemy helicopter simultaneously firing two Uzis and then rappelling onto a nearby building and grappling the helicopter to a fuel tank, with predictable results." Doing that sort of thing certainly changes the nature of a man.

Just Cause 3 defies convention by being the third game in the Just Cause series, which is what happens when crazed Swedish video game designers decide to merge the Far Cry and Grand Theft Auto games and see what mayhem results. Like the Far Cry series, Just Cause 3 is set in an exotic location where you have to bring down a charismatic dictator by allying with rebel groups and leading them into battle. Like Grand Theft Auto, the action takes place in an enormous open world with a vast number of vehicles, from motorbikes to jet fighters, to steal ("liberate for the resistance") and utilise in battle.

Expanding on the use of the grappling hook in Just Cause 2, Just Cause 3 also gives Rico a tremendous amount of personal freedom of movement. As previously he has access to an infinite number of parachutes, but also now has a wingsuit that allows him to fly around like a lunatic bat if he so wishes. These can be combined with the grapple to allow him to paraglide up the side of mountains or be towed along at speed by passing trains. A tremendous and satisfying number of giggles can be had by just throwing Rico around the environment and finding out just what he can do with his increasingly bizarre equipment set (which is more impressive than Batman's by this point).

The game's storyline is enjoyable nonsense, although enlivened by much better writing and voice acting than previously. Dimah, the slightly mad scientist of the resistance, is hilarious and there's a growing narrative element as Rico discovers the extent to which his entire life has been manipulated by the CIA. This storyline remains unresolved at the end of the game, and is a pretty big clue that the team are preparing a Just Cause 4 to continue this thread. There's also a lot more story missions (about four times as many as Just Cause 2), with scripted set-pieces to help break up the open-world mayhem.

The game expands on the territorial mechanics of Just Cause 2, with you now having to liberate both civilian towns and military bases to secure control of a region. This is a fine idea in theory but in practice it falters a little bit. Going in and blowing up a base full of bad soldiers and mercs is one thing, but unleashing destruction inside towns without much regard for civilian casualties feels a little out of keeping with the game's storyline (in which Rico is a folk hero and man of the people). It would have been more interesting to have introduced a way of subtly undermining towns, recruiting locals to help sabotage infrastructure and so on, but nope, the only way of freeing towns is to go in and blow away every soldier in sight, topple statues and knock over propaganda speakers.

The game is definitely a step up from Just Cause 2 in how much it hand-crafts each town and base. Although a lot of the previous game's bases were identical in appearance and construction, this third game has a much larger number of assets it puts together in more interesting configurations. Enemy bases are also now defended by SAM sites, making the old tactic of simply raking a base with rockets from a helicopter to destroy it a lot more hazardous and forcing you to engage in much more close-up action.

There's a satisfyingly large array of guns and military vehicles to employ, and more opportunities to call in your rebel friends and fight alongside them, making the war feel more of a genuine, large-scale conflict rather than it just being Rico running around doing everything. As you paint the map blue you can see the front lines shifting and see the rebels gaining access to better equipment. The game sells the idea of a major conflict going on far better than its predecessor or the Far Cry series.

The story is enjoyable, the action is much stronger than in Just Cause 2 and, obviously, it's a more impressive game graphically. On the negative side of things, Just Cause 3 can get repetitive, especially if you choose to focus on the base missions and storyline. Some of the numerous side-missions (like stunt flying or taking part in street races) help break up the monotony of constant combat, even if they themselves can get quite repetitive after a while. There's also the feeling that the main villain, Di Ravello, is a very uninteresting antagonist, especially compared to the likes of Far Cry's Pagan Min and Vaas.

Otherwise, Just Cause 3 (****½) offers an inventive and vast amount of ways of let of steam, blow things up and have fun. It's the brainless action game genre at its very best. It is available now on PC, X-Box One (UK, USA) and PlayStation 4 (UK, USA).

New DEUS EX games "on hold" after "disappointing" sales

Square Enix have put the Deus Ex video game series on indefinite hold following disappointing sales of the latest game in the series, Mankind Divided.

The official reason is that Square has signed a massive, multi-million dollar deal with Marvel to develop a series of new games based on their superheroes, with a major new Avengers game being the first out of the gate. Square has moved the Crystal Dynamics team (responsible for the latest Tomb Raider games) over to The Avengers and reassigned Eidos Montreal from the next Deus Ex game to pick up the next Tomb Raider title, provisionally entitled Shadows of the Tomb Raider, instead.

This move has attracted controversy. Unlike the previous Deus Ex game, Human Revolution, Mankind Divided was supposed to be the opening title in either a two or three-game series that would have completed the story of Adam Jensen and the rise of the world seen in the original Deus Ex games. Although the primary storyline of Mankind Divided is resolved in that game, there some dangling plot threads that were due to be picked up in the next game. Indeed, Eidos Montreal were several months into the development of the next game when Mankind Divided was released, suggesting the millions of dollars of work may have now been abandoned already.

However, Eidos Montreal does have two teams; their second team was working on the Thief reboot whilst the first was working on Mankind Divided. The possibility that one of these teams could continue working on Mankind Divided II has unfortunately been shot down: the second team is now working on a Guardians of the Galaxy game, part of the same Marvel deal.

Given the titanic money involved in the Marvel deal and the disappointing sales of Mankind Divided, it seems unlikely that we are going to see a new Deus Ex game in the near future. This is disappointing, but nothing new to fans of the franchise, which previously had an eight-year hiatus between Invisible War and Human Revolution. The game universe and fiction is compelling enough that, even if Adam Jensen's story is over, we will likely see it return at some distant point in the future.

It's also unclear if Mankind Divided's sales were disappointing, in that Eidos and Square lost money, or didn't meet unrealistic sales expectations. Apparently Square felt that the performance of the 2013 Tomb Raider reboot game was disappointing despite selling over a million copies in its first months on sale, which by any sane metric is actually very impressive. Mankind Divided's sales have been described as a bit less than Human Revolution's in a comparable time period, but harder figures have not been released.

In the meantime, dystopian SF RPG fans are holding out hope for CD Projekt Red's epic Cyberpunk 2077, although that is not expected for a couple more years.

Polygon on the making of FINAL FANTASY VII

Polygon has published an absolutely massive article about the making of Final Fantasy VII.

Released on 31 January 1997 by Squaresoft, Final Fantasy VII was a vast, sprawling 3D roleplaying game which has been credited with helping to drive the success of the original Sony PlayStation console. It also popularised the use of advanced CG cut scenes in video games and drove an explosion in the success of Japanese video games in the West. It was also the first Japanese RPG to also be a best-seller on PC, helping drive the current success of the genre on PC and mobile platforms.

Polygon's article is remarkably thorough in talking to those responsible for the game's creation, prototyping, publishing and marketing. It brings together several of the creative forces involved in the game for group discussions of its creation, as well as one-on-one interviews with other personnel. The game also touches on Squaresoft's decision to terminate its relationship with Nintendo to work with Sony (some cite Square's move as helping drive the nail in the coffin of the N64 console) and the difficulties faced in marketing Japanese titles in the US and European markets.

A fine piece of video games journalism and well worth a read.

Square is currently working on a high-tech remake of Final Fantasy VII for modern consoles (and probably PC). The game is not expected to be released until 2018 or 2019. Final Fantasy XV was recently released on PlayStation 4 and X-Box One, with a PC version rumoured for later this year or next.