The original Final Fantasy VII didn’t have much in the way of side missions. Sure there were the WEAPON boss fights and the endless hours of Chocobo breeding, but back in 1997 we never had the sheer level of side missions that gamers have become used to through games like Dragon Age, Mass Effect, God of War, Spider-Man, and others.
That’s changing with the upcoming release of Final Fantasy VII Remake, which drops on the PlayStation 4 next month.
Not only is this game going to feature a number of mini-games and side missions, but according to game director Tetsuya Nomura, they have been made with the same care and quality as the main storyline.
“The sub-quests have been made in exactly the same way as the main story quests,” Nomura said in a recent interview. He then continued on, stating that his team actually cut back on the number of side quests in order to ensure that the ones in the game had better quality.
Gamers have shown through games like The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and God of War that they will take a smaller number of high quality side missions over a great many lower quality quests any day of the week. The games mentioned above weave their side quests effortlessly into the main story, so they enhance the overall experience rather than distract from it.
When a game is bogged down with endless fetch quests that have no real relevance to the story, gamers get bored. Immersive story-driven gaming has dominated the scene for the last few years, and it’s a trend that is likely to continue well into the future.
Some translations of the original interview seem to have misinterpreted Nomura’s meaning. Many outlets are stating that the side quests put together are the same length as the main campaign. That’s not true. Nomura’s comments were more of a quality assessment, saying that the same care went into crafting those side missions as that of the main story which has stood the test of time for more than two decades.
It’s Nomura seeking to set the minds of players all over the world at ease. He’s also assuring the gaming community that Final Fantasy VII Remake is not a carbon copy of the original game. It is chock full or new content that was painstakingly put together by a team of creative individuals with care and respect.
Final Fantasy VII Remake releases worldwide on April 10, 2020 for the PlayStation 4.
