Square Enix: “Interested” in FF7 Remake, “No FF13 DLC!”

Final Fantasy XIII’s producer has expressed his interest in a Final Fantasy VII remake, and has explicitly denied there will be any DLC for Final Fantasy XIII.

Yoshinori Kitase, a Square Enix game producer and head of one of its development units, commented to the the effect that he had “a great interest” in an “HD” remake of Final Fantasy VII, saying that such a project would take the form of a “perfect” realisation.

Previously another top figure in Square Enix, Tetsuya Nomura, had scotched the notion of such a remake, so where this leaves the hypothetical project is not clear.

He (as producer of Final Fantasy XIII, together with director Motomu Toriyama) also carefully touches upon the criticism the game has attracted in Japan in a tame interview situation with Sony’s minions:

What do you say to those who say the game might be too linear? Does the accusation bother you?

The earlier part of the game was intentionally created to be a linear experience because we wanted to make the experience similar to a movie or drama where players really get to know the characters and what is behind their actions.

And also, since this is a brand new system for FFXIII, we wanted to take the correct steps to make sure players can control that system at will.

So it is a surprise that so many people are commenting that the game is linear, but once you get into the area of Pulse in the game , it’s much more of a free world and the battle system really comes to life.

And once you have a good idea of how to control it, you can go full force and it should be a completely different experience.

Do you think that the idea of RPGs from the 80s and 90s being wide open is a dated stereotype?

There’s sort of a template to the RPG system, traditionally, where players would go to the town and find out information through text, leave town to fight monsters and then come back to town and buy health and items, etc.

FFXIII didn’t really look for some sort of template to follow, but we tried to go out and create and set a new trend for RPGs. So there isn’t really a thought to stick to tradition.

Developer comments published in Japan tell a different story:

The game’s linearity was just because depicting towns and so on like we did before was impossible to do on an “HD” console – it was too much work

Presumably such comments are not suitable for release until after the game has had a chance to sell internationally for a while.

Finally, he categorically denies there being any DLC for the game:

I heard there was content removed from the original game? Could it possibly resurface as DLC?

Regarding the DLC content, we feel that the final product is 100% enjoyable… it’s the complete package.

So we’re not planning any DLC at this time.

In regard to the rumored cut content, we feel it was taken out of context. There are a lot of ideas that are brought to the table, and then the team takes the best ideas out of those, and the final product is polished that way.

There was content that were “ideas” that didn’t make the final content, but the team isn’t looking to release that as downloadable content.

With DLC functionality advertised on the international version’s box, and the earlier developer comments that “the game was designed with DLC in mind but we don’t actually have any planned,” just what the developers were doing all these years is an interesting question.