At a recent Final Fantasy XIV fan festival in Berlin, director Naoki Yoshida came on stage with Final Fantasy VII Remake director Naoki Hamaguchi to talk about how the series has influenced not only their lives, but their creative passion for game development. When asked, specifically, which game had the biggest impact on his life, Yoshida said Final Fantasy VI. After saying that, he jokingly mentioned how every time he brings up the acclaimed SNES RPG, stories get written claiming he’s doing a remake.
“I’ve given this answer to a lot of media interviews… but Final Fantasy VI is the reason I wanted to work in games so that always has a special place in my heart,” Yoshida said via a translator. “But every time I give that answer to a journalist or someone, the next day there’s an article online saying ‘Hamaguchi will be remaking Final Fantasy 6’. So I also say ‘no, I am not.’”
While there is clearly desire from fans for such a project to happen, Yoshida lays out one reason why it is unlikely to come to fruition: it would require too many games to do justice to the story. “Look at Final Fantasy 6. It’s such an incredibly huge game,” Yoshida explains. “The scale is just immense, and the same applies for other titles like Final Fantasy 8, Final Fantasy 9… I do get that people would be asking for remakes of other titles, but if we did remake those other titles, we’d probably end up having to release them in four installments, or maybe even five installments.”
Another reason for Square Enix not tackling such an endeavor is that the sheer size of the project would make retaining team members next to impossible. The company has been blessed that most of the same team was involved with all three parts of the Final Fantasy VII Remake project, but if that were extended to four or five entries, it might result in too much divergence between releases. “In a way it’s a miracle that we were able to get these people willing to stick around and willing to keep up the motivation to work on so many of these standalone titles back to back,” Yoshida said.
This answer doesn’t completely rule out a possible Final Fantasy VI remake in the future, but it’s certainly not going to happen soon. I’m not convinced it would require four or five games, but I suppose if Square Enix wants to do justice to every little detail, it would wind up being a truly massive task.
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Written by Peter Glagowski
Peter has been a freelance gaming and film critic for over seven years. His passion for Nintendo is only matched by the size of his collection.
