There are countless reaction videos out there that show just how pumped gamers were when the Final Fantasy VII Remake was revealed back in 2015. Fast-forward three years later, though, and folks looking forward to the remake have begun to wonder why Square Enix chose to make the announcement so early, despite there still being no release date – or barely any new footage – after all this time. Well, according to game director Tetsuya Nomura, there was in fact good reason to make the announcement so early.

“I am well aware of the fact that we announced it too early,” Nomura said in a recent interview with Italian website Multiplayer. “But even in the industry, word was beginning to spread that we were working on the game, so we just decided not to keep it more secret and officially reveal it.” That certainly explains why it was revealed back in 2015, though the long development period – something Square Enix is now notorious for – is due to an entirely different reason. As we have previously reported, the Japanese publisher outsourced much of the work to a third party developer, though when unsatisfactory levels of content began to pour in from said developer, Square Enix decided to dump the work and shift to internal development for the Final Fantasy VII Remake.

This is likely part of the reason why Kingdom Hearts 3 has been hit with delay after delay. Nomura recently revealed that KH3 and the FFVII Remake are being developed in parallel, with the director himself giving 100% to both projects at the same time. There was undoubtedly a lengthy adjustment period when the workload had to shift to take into account the Final Fantasy VII Remake, once the third party developer was dropped.

In regards to Kingdom Hearts 3, Nomura also agreed that the announcement that was made back at E3 2013 was also early, and a bit forced. “Deciding when to announce your game to the public is always difficult,” he said. “In our case, we receive pressure from the fans even when we do not announce anything. … People are waiting for new information regardless of whether the game has been announced or not.”

With Kingdom Hearts 3 officially releasing on January 29, 2019, hopefully we will see new content for the Final Fantasy VII Remake at E3 2019. If not, well, at least most of us will be content with hanging out with Sora & friends.

So, thoughts on the reasoning behind the early FF7 remake reveal? Let us know in the comments section below, and as always, stay tuned to Don’t Feed the Gamers for all the latest gaming and entertainment news! Don’t forget to follow DFTG on Twitter for our 24/7 news feed!