Final Fantasy producer quashes remake rumours

It graces every top ten list, it made the silent hero cool for the first time since Eastwood, and it had the most epic soundtrack ever, but re-making Final Fantasy VII apparently wouldn’t be ‘as much fun’, according to FF XIII producer Yoshinori Kitase.

Speaking to the UK's Official Xbox Magazine, the producer - who directed games VI to VIII - says a straight HD clone of the 1997 bestseller, often lauded as the greatest RPG ever created, wouldn’t be as enjoyable to develop as a modified version.

"If I may speak as a game creator, if we were to produce a remake of VII, for example, I would be really tempted to delete things and add new elements, new systems or whatever because if we were to make exactly the same thing now, it’d be like a repeat.”

Rumours of a next-gen remake of VII have been optimistically flying around for years, as many got their first taste of gaming from Cloud Strife and his motley crew of allies, including foul-mouthed Barrett Wallace and mysterious Vincent Valentine.

And although the game has received critical acclaim and spawned merchandise, prequels and movie spin-offs, fans are yet to receive the re-make they so desperately desire – and Kitase seems to think that’s still a long way off.

"I’d be really interested in rearranging games or reshaping games into something slightly different even though it’s supposed to be the same game. But if we did that, the fans might be disappointed or ‘this is not what I was expecting’ so in that sense maybe some might say that it’s better to let memory be memory.”

The jury’s out on this one – if you were re-making FF VII, how would you go about it? What would you change?