Square Enix You could be forgiven for thinking that the long-gestating Final Fantasy VII remake from Square Enix simply wasn’t happening anymore, given the amount we currently know about it.
The remake of the beloved PlayStation JRPG was first announced way back at E3 2015 to much excitement, but the last four years have seen precious little revealed about the game, apart from the fact that it’s had a pretty troubled development process.
Square EnixSquare Enix has been keen to stress at various points that the game is still very much in active development, while game director Tetsuya Nomura made it clear that he wanted to get Kingdom Hearts 3 out before focusing on Final Fantasy VII again. He even admitted that both JRPGs were probably announced too early.
Thankfully, it looks like our long and painful wait could nearly be at an end, as a new rumour suggests that Final Fantasy VII could be getting a “re-reveal” during PlayStation’s State of Play stream tomorrow (May 9).
This report comes from ResetEra administrator and professional industry analyst ZhugeEX (via VG247). They claim that, in addition to the already confirmed in-depth look at the MediEvil remake and an unannounced title, we’ll also be getting a “re-reveal of a third party game that was announced long ago.”
While we should take all rumours with a pinch of salt, ZhugeEX has previous form when it comes to accurately reporting leaks. Most recently, they told us not to expect any The Last Of Us 2 during PlayStation’s last State of Play, and they were absolutely right.
Square EnixIt’s important to note that ZhugeEX doesn’t call out Final Fantasy VII by name, and there are a few other games that could fit the bill of a third party game that was announced long ago, including Capcom’s Deep Down and Ubisoft’s Wild.
With that said, the smart money seems to be on this mystery re-reveal being FFVII. First of all, ZhugeEX dropped what could be seen as a cheeky little hint by sharing an image of Shinji Hashimoto, a producer at Square Enix with ties to Final Fantasy.
There’s also the fact that Kingdom Hearts III has been out for a few months now, so you’d hope the focus at Square has shifted back to Cloud Strife and friends, as was initially suggested.
Perhaps most interestingly of all though, Square Enix released its earnings for the third quarter of its fiscal year 2019 a few months back. Okay, so while that isn’t interesting in itself, there was a section in which the company noted it has great confidence in its 2020 fiscal year to deliver “record earnings” thanks to a release that it would talk about in the lead up to E3 2019.
Square EnixGiven E3 2019 is next month, I’d say tomorrow’s State of Play qualifies as a “lead up.” PlayStation’s stream kicks off at 11pm tomorrow, so we’ll find out for sure then.
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Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.