E3 Final Fantasy VIII Is Getting A Remaster

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This, I never did like FF VIII much. I'd prefer having yet another remaster of Final Fantasy IV.
 
Though this comic goes both ways, I think the character is excited to be the main 8 character again.

The whatever hero strikes again! lol
 
Some highlights from famitsu interview with Kazushige Nojima, writer of ff8, translated by siliconera:
  • (Before working on Final Fantasy VIII’s story) “I used my bonus to purchase a PC and started using the Internet. I got my expectations up a bit while checking the message boards on the Internet to see what they were saying about the games I worked on… only to have my heart torn to pieces. [laughs]”
  • (What they said about Final Fantasy VII) “That it was the lowest of its kind for using that tragedy to try making them cry, that it relied too much on flashbacks, and so forth.”
  • “That reflected in Final Fantasy VIII as well since I went with a story that didn’t kill off any of the main characters. We also didn’t go all-out with the flashbacks.”
  • “Actually, for Laguna’s part, we first thought Laguna’s side would cover the first half of the entire story.”
  • “It ended up being smaller due to various reasons and we had a map made just for it that we didn’t get to use much. I still feel too embarrassed to look at the faces of the original staff…”
  • “We completely focused on what the male staff thought was ‘cute’ for Rinoa. Meanwhile, the female staff gave us an earful about how there was no way that a girl wearing a miniskirt could move like that. Didn’t think I’d get scolded that much [laughs].”
  • “When it comes to love, we should’ve had more female staff in the mix instead of just men.”
  • Final Fantasy is a major series but it is indie at heart. I believe Nomura-san (Tetsuya Nomura) should feel the same.”
  • Final Fantasy VIII is fine as it was. I didn’t start thinking that until recently.”
  • “If we were add a new episode, I’d want it to be about Laguna’s life.”

And Kitase commented on ff 8 remake:

Famitsu: What about Final Fantasy VIII Remake?
Yoshinori Kitase: “If the youth that inherits the genes of Final Fantasy can step up and do it, then I’d like to see it made. For Final Fantasy VII Remake, the project started from my desire to make Final Fantasy VII with today’s technology while I’m still here at Square Enix. So I’d like to see it [Final Fantasy VIII Remake] done by the youth of Square Enix.”
 
Wouldn't take much to remake it, story is there, got to pad it in places, fix some confusing parts and the like.

and probably reduce the lovey dovey thing a bit lol.
 
More on Nojima, the writer, translated by dualshockers:

Final Fantasy VIII followed the worldwide successful Final Fantasy VII also greatly influenced him:

Kazushige Nojima: Final Fantasy VII was a huge success outside Japan. So right from the start of Final Fantasy VIII’s development, one of our main objectives was making something that would be popular overseas. We didn’t have this in mind at all when making FFVII. So I changed my way of writing. For example, in Japanese, you can make a character speak without revealing their gender. You can use that, and make a reveal later about how that character was actually a woman. This isn’t possible in English as the translation will always use either “He” or “She”. Another example would be jokes. Until then, I only thought about Japanese players, so puns were not a problem. But I heard the translators had a lot of trouble with that when translating FFVII. So we tried our best to write FFVIII‘s scenario in a way that would be easier to translate.

Nojima also shared how he was helping with the overseas version of FFVII when FFVIII was in early development. So he doesn’t remember being on the team yet when Square decided FFVIII would have “Love” and “Academy School” as its themes. He also remembers how himself, Yoshinari Kitase, and the advertising producer on the game, had no idea what “love” as a theme actually means. So they chatted a lot about it.

As for the reason why Square went with “love” as a theme, they wanted a fitting theme to depict a realistic story and characters. For this goal, they also aimed to make the characters’ expression more realistic, but they couldn’t do much without going over their budget. There’s also how each character uses a high amount of polygons, meaning they couldn’t display more than a certain number of characters at the same time. This is something that affects screenplay and thus the story.

At the same time, Final Fantasy VIII was according to Nojima the first step which made himself and the staff realize “this is how we’ll make games from now”, slowly getting closer to the expressiveness and realism they wished. And then they reached Final Fantasy X, where characters were fully voiced fo the first time, allowing for even more expressiveness. Nojima is also happy overall with how they managed to properly show Squall’s growth and how he gradually becomes more expressive, until CD3 where he openly shows he loves Rinoa.

Kazushige Nojima: With the bonus I got with FFVII, I bought a PC and started browsing the net. I was curious about what players thought of Square’s games so I started reading FFVII bulletin boards. The negative remarks which came back the most where “there’s too many flashbacks” and “the story is too sad”. Taking this into account, I decided to write for FFVIII a story where none of the main characters would die. And I really like using flashbacks, giving puzzle pieces to the players. And then make the players realize what really happened later on. Trying to have less falshbacks is how I thought about the story trick with Laguna’s parts. These scenes makes you believe they’re happening at the same time, but you only realize later on they’re actually flashbacks.

Following that, Nojima was asked which FFVIII character’s lines were the most difficult to write. He cited Quistis and Squall. Squall was the hardest because making him silent would just make him Cloud. But they also needed to take into consideration players who like dialogue choices, to influence Squall’s behavior. This is how Squall ended up being a character who doesn’t say his opinion much but speaks a lot in his mind. And Squall is the complete opposite of Laguna, who says everything he thinks.

Nojima mentioned there’s also a contrast with their comrades. Rinoa at some points says she can’t understand Squall unless he says what he’s thinking, meanwhile Kiros and Wald always understand Laguna before he even says anything. All these elements are ways to reflect the “love” theme of FFVIII.

Kazushige Nojima: I don’t know what is a Final Fantasy-like game is either (laughs). But what I know though is when something doesn’t feel like a Final Fantasy game. It’s like instinct. I think while it’s a major series, we work on Final Fantasy like independant developers would. I think Nomura would say the same thing. We never go for a straightfoward route. Or sometimes we make it seem so, but we actually do huge changes. If you can feel this when playing a Final Fantasy game, it means it’s a Final Fantasy-like Final Fantasy game. It’s also possible one day we’ll do a “classic” Final Fantasy game that will definitly be accepted by everyone, with no changes. Maybe we’d need to force ourselves to do it though (laughs). Because we always strongly feel we need to do something new.

Nojima believes the worldwide love for Final Fantasy is explained with how Square Enix always challenges themselves and make each game different, creating heated debate among fans on which game is their favorite. Nojima also mentioned that when attending overseas events, fans often tell him FFVIII is their favorite. He’s quite happy about it and he believes it was worth it back then to think so hard about what overseas fans would like.
Ending the interview, Nojima shared this message for both old-time fans and those discovering Final Fantasy VIII with the remastered version:

Kazushige Nojima: Until FFVII, it kinda felt as if we were students making games. FFVII‘s success made us realize we’re developing awesome games, making FFVIII the first time we really wanted to challenge ourselves. FFVIII is obviously a huge part of the FF series history, but I believe it’s also one of the most important games of that era as a whole. So I hope people will be able to feel that era when playing the game today.
 
FF8 Remastered Developer Diary Video:
 
Saw latest preview pics of Mcindus' real HD textures mod for the remaster, looking good unlike the blurry and lazy remaster's background textures:
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Saw more pics on the HD texture mod for the remaster by McIndus:
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Indeed waaaay better than the vanilla version of the remaster.
 
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