Square Enix have put up a job ad as they look to hire more people to join the development team at their Business Division 1 to work on the upcoming Final Fantasy VII Remake, and interestingly enough, the listing gives a lot of really interesting insight into not only what they expect from the game, but also what their development philosophy for this project has ben so far.
The most notable claim the Japanese publisher has made in the job ad is that they’re aiming to make Final Fantasy 7 Remake more than just a simple remake, and instead want to make a “new creation” that even “exceeds the original”. You don’t need us to tell you that that’s a very tall order for the upcoming RPG, given that the original Final Fantasy 7 is one of the most decorated and legendary games ever created- based on a lot of the other stuff they’ve said in this job listing though, they seem to be committed to doing something that radical.
In the ad, Square admits that doing something of this nature is in a way “more challenging than creating new games”, since it involves “creating a new worldview while protecting concepts familiar to the players”. The development team is looking to create something that is a truly modern recreation of the original classic rather than just a one-to-one remake, which is evidenced by how they describe the currently in-development title as “a new Final Fantasy with action elements added to traditional strategy”.
That specific bit, incidentally, is regarding their recruitment drive to work on things for the game such as boss design, enemy encounters, environment planning, and creating a combat system that combines both commands and action elements. Square is, in fact, constantly adding more and more people to the development team. “Staff members that worked on numbered Final Fantasy games have been joining the team one after the other,” the ad claims, saying that working on the upcoming remake is “an opportunity to create a new Final Fantasy that won’t end with just the remake”. This, of course, implies that anyone who gets the job will most likely also get the chance to work on entirely new Final Fantasy projects in the future as well.
The job ad also includes messages from the game’s Level Planners Yui Sawada and Yuri Hioki, who briefly talk about their work on the game, and how it is a passion project for the entire team. It must be said that the fact that Square are still looking to hire people for such vital roles in the team doesn’t sound too encouraging- it probably means that the game isn’t very far along in its development right now. Then again, development of massive AAA titles is never as straightforward as that, so you never know.
Final Fantasy VII Remake remains without a release date as yet, but we’re hoping we’ll be hearing more from Square in the near future. Stay tuned to GamingBolt for continued updates.
