In interviews with Famitsu and 4Gamer, director Tetsuya Nomura has revealed that Square Enix had to cut much “side quest content” from Final Fantasy VII Remake.
Initially, the side quest content was expected “to be as big as the main story,” but that plan had to be rearranged to keep a high quality throughout the entire game.
“We made the side quest content to be as big as the main story,” Nomura told Japanese magazines.
“At the beginning, the development team readied even more content, but we wouldn’t have been able to do everything without cutting corners, so we prioritized quality,” he added.
“We wouldn’t have been able to finish the game otherwise,” Nomura mentioned about the timing of the game, which has been long-awaited after its original announcement in 2015. And yet, a second part is still in development and will be released in several years.
Fans of the incoming action-RPG have nothing to worry about, anyway, since “despite that, the game is quite big, there are many places you can visit, and you can even move around using vehicles at some points.”
The side content will include Mercenary Quests and Battle Report quests, as recently detailed by Square Enix in a blog post.
Mercenary Quests will see “citizens and merchants across Midgar (…) ask Cloud for help.” Those “could be anything from taking down some troublesome monsters to helping find lost cats.”
Battle Report quests will ask Cloud to use “Assess Materia a certain number of times, or defeating enemies in a specific way.” Upon completion, Battle Report quests will allow players to ask Chadley to craft new Materia and purchase them for a cost.
Final Fantasy VII Remake is releasing on April 10, 2020, for PlayStation 4, after the last-minute delay from its original launch date of March 3. A demo is now available on PlayStation Store.
The changes from the original game also include Red XIII not being a playable character, but only a guest in the later parts of the remake.
