“We leveraged the fact that many people know about the world and story of the original Final Fantasy VII when we designed the remakes,” Hamaguchi told me during the leadup to Rebirth’s release. “In this title, our general framework follows the original storyline, but at the same time we incorporated elements clearly not included in the original, such as the Whispers and Zack.” This creates a unique opportunity for a remake: uncertainty. “That sort of thrill is very important for this title as a piece of entertainment.”
We have a name for that, “reboot”. Or more cynically, “cash grab”
A cash grab is what they did with the sloppy re-release of Chrono Trigger, which is vastly inferior to the original game on original hardware - or running a ROM Hack with bug fixes (or even just the game as it released originally) in a cycle-accurate emulator.
Remaking a game from the ground up with AAA production values is a costly and complex endeavor - and a risky one too, even with a titles as popular as Final Fantasy VII, since there is no guarantee fans will enjoy it. Almost the same kind of high risks as with any other game production of this sort of scale apply here. And while I haven’t played these remakes, their reception seems to indicate that they are anything but cynical cash grabs.
