For a long time, the Final Fantasy VII Remake seemed like a pipe dream. In part because a few years back it simply hadn’t been announced yet, but since its reveal the subject has been met with a significant amount of unease. How does a developer recapture the love and fanfare for the original and at the same time make the game marketable to newcomers to the series? Well, according to Square Enix CEO Yosuke Matsuda, it wasn’t without great difficulty.

In a recent interview with the folks over at GamesBeat, the Square Enix CEO discussed some of the challenges the developer came up against when working on the Final Fantasy VII Remake. “I’d say that what we’ve learned is that making remakes can be very challenging,” said Matsuda-san. “It’s as difficult or even more so than making an original title, a new title, in a different sense.”

What I mean is that when you’re making a remake, you can’t just chase nostalgia. That’s not going to work out. You have to make it the latest game, a game that’s current.”

“In making the Final Fantasy 7 Remake, we have to think about the fans of the original, who know Final Fantasy 7, but at the same time we want to expand beyond that to people who may not have had any experience with Final Fantasy 7, or even Final Fantasy altogether,” Matsuda-san continued.  “I don’t believe we can just be thinking about the fans of the past game when making this. Of course we value how much support they’ve given us, but at the same time we’d like to see new customers play this as well. We need to make a game that will satisfy both of those customer bases. That’s why I say it’s so challenging.”

Based on the latest footage from E3 2019, it appears that both Matsuda-san and the development team are off to a great start. Here’s hoping they hit a home run when the game releases next year.

Final Fantasy VII Remake launches exclusively for the PlayStation 4 on March 3, 2020.

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