From last week’s Toyko Game Show, aside from reports of a giant dark cloud of Japanese sadness at another year of more cell phone games and fewer actual booths came the announcement that Square Enix is bringing out Final Fantasy 10 (or Final Fantasy X, however you please) for Sony’s PS Vita as well as the Playstation 3.
Great news, right? Kinda.
Sure, Final Fantasy X was a solid enough game, but let’s face it, the absolute single game that fans want remade is Final Fantasy VII. I mean, hell, every convention you go to will guaranteed have at least one Sephiroth and one Cloud cosplayer walking around, and the game was released back in 1997. I mean, this latest news from Toyko Game Show feels like Square Enix is the “champagne room” stripper and the Final Fantasy fan is the sad sack stuffing $20 bills down the girls g-string in hopes of getting a handjob that will never come.
And it wouldn’t be a big deal that Final Fantasy VII hasn’t been redone yet…except that Square Enix continues to strip mine every other Final Fantasy property for all they’re worth. The original Final Fantasy remastered for the DS? Check. Final Fantasy 13-2? Check. Dissidia: Final Fantasy, the Final Fantasy fighting game? Check. The original Final Fantasy VII brought in all its chunky glory to the Playstation Network for download? Check.
Back in 2009, Yoshinori Kitase, producer behind Final Fantasy: Crisis Core stated: “If we were to recreate Final Fantasy VII with the same level of graphical detail as you see in Final Fantasy XIII, we’d imagine that that would take as much as three or four times longer than the three and a half years it has taken to put this Final Fantasy together! So it’s looking pretty unrealistic.”
But then at the Final Fantasy XIII release party December 2009, Square Enix CEO Yoichi Wada claimed that they were “going to explore the possibility of a remake” for Final Fantasy VII.
Now, with the news of Final Fantasy X coming to the PS3 and PS Vita, it looks like we may be closer than ever to the day when we see a next generation Final Fantasy VII. But damn it, when? Square Enix, please stop screwing around with these other titles and spend those resources on the one game everyone wants you to make (if you’re not already)!