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Image credit: Square Enix
Final Fantasy 8 director, and series producer, Yoshinori Kitase has said he would change its combat system in a hypothetical remake.
The eighth game in the series is more experimental than others, in particular with its Junction system used to boost the stats of player characters.
Kitase told IGN he would “really rework the battle system”, mentioning the Junction system specifically.
“I think you may remember we had the Junction system in Final Fantasy 8,” he said. “And the thing about that system was the enemies levelled up in line with what the player’s level was. And obviously you had to then use the Junction system and how you customise that to overcome the challenge there. And I think it was a very difficult system for some people to get into. Depending on player skills, sometimes they just didn’t work out the best way of doing it.
“So I think I’d want to return to that and really rework the battle system on [Final Fantasy 8] and make it something where that level of difficulty and approachability for some fans was a lot better balanced. So I think that’s the thing I’d look at most if I was going to look at remaking it.”
Of course, this was just a fun comment about a hypothetical remake.
Speaking to Eurogamer, Kitase said he’s not deterred from more remakes in future but they do need to be carefully considered due to their size and the amount of work required.
“It hasn’t really put me off as such, but certainly we have realised that the amount of work involved – certainly for games from the Super Nintendo era and the PlayStation One era – and the actual amount of content that were in those games is a lot more than we remembered,” said Kitase.
“It did blow us away: the amount of time and effort and resources that we need to realise something like [a modern remake] was much more than we originally imagined it would be, so it has made us think quite carefully about starting up another project of that scale again, certainly.”
Still, he added that remakes don’t need to be in a “super realistic photo real art style” and other styles would be considered.
On the topic of a 2D-HD remake of the popular Final Fantasy 6, Kitase said: “I don’t have any particular plans but I think certainly if there is a developer within the company who wants to use that style – or even another style they feel that’s really the best approach for the game that they’re remaking and that’s the style the fans will want to see it in – I definitely think that’s a possibility and they could very much work with it. I’d be very happy to see that.”
Kitase also discussed with Eurogamer balancing side quests and story, plus the possibility of adding Tifa to Tekken 8.
For more on Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, check out my impressions of the card minigame Queen’s Blood.
Would you want a reworked version of Final Fantasy 8?
