It’s been three years since Final Fantasy VII Remake was announced now, and usually, you’d expect a game to be nearing its final launch this long after its initial reveal. That, however, is not the case with this particular title, and it might be because the development isn’t going as well as one might hope it is.
This information is coming from one Dan Tsukasa, who doesn’t work with Square, but does claim to be a games developer based in Japan (his Twitter bio states he’s a Game Designer/3D Artist/Tech Artist, while apparently he also created indie startup studio called Team Ekko Games). In his responses to an interview with the game’s developers on Reddit (via ResetERA), Tsukasa left behind some comments that might have potentially revealed some pretty interesting information.
Apparently, while Final Fantasy VII Remake’s development began four years ago, Square Enix scrapped almost the entire project two years into development. They took the project away from CyberConnect2, the team that was working on it initially, and found their work so “useless” and “unusable” (in Tsukasa’s own words), that they deemed it best to just start from scratch and do the work themselves. In effect, then, the game has only been in development for two years now.
Tsukasa also stated in his comments that Tetsuya Nomura is only the game director for the upcoming remake in name. Apparently, Nomura is rarely ever physically present at the studio making the game, since he’s almost always in Osaka (which is also where he lives), and is busy working on the upcoming Kingdom Hearts 3.
It should be noted that this information should in no way be considered conclusive or official in any way. We can’t say for sure hor credible the source is, and it’s also worth noting that Tsukasa has since deleted his Reddit account. It does make some sense though, because we haven’t seen or even heard a whole lot about Final Fantasy 7 Remake in the last four years. Maybe the game’s farther away from launch than one might hope. Square, though, remain fully committed to making it the best game they possibly can- they say they want it to surpass the heights of the original, in fact.