Four years. That’s how long it’s been since the announcement of the Final Fantasy 7 Remake, shown off with a teaser trailer at E3 2015. Since then we’ve gotten enough information to fit into literally one paragraph and one other trailer, that’s it. Square Enix is becoming infamous for long development, but this is just ridiculous.
It’s high time we see something, and if the announcement of the first ever Final Fantasy 7-dedicated concert isn’t a sign of something to come, well then Square Enix is doing things entirely wrong.
Announced today via the official Final Fantasy Twitter, the Symphonic Reunion will take place on June 9 in Los Angeles at the Dolby Theater, just before the start of E3 2019. While there have been tons of Final Fantasy symphonies and concerts in the past, like Distant Worlds, this is the first ever that is entirely dedicated to the classic PlayStation JRPG:
Announcing FINAL FANTASY VII – A Symphonic Reunion, the first ever official concert dedicated to #FinalFantasy VII 🎵
📅 June 9, 2019
⏰ 6pm PDT
🌎 Dolby Theatre, Los AngelesPre-sale tickets available on April 20 from 12pm PDT at https://t.co/qaSpu88jhb
Prices start at $77.77 pic.twitter.com/f2QcIy237m
— FINAL FANTASY (@FinalFantasy) April 17, 2019
If you notice on the Tweet too, tickets start at $77.77; if that’s not a hint I don’t know what is. Strengthening that speculation is the fact that the last two years featured Kingdom Hearts concerts in LA before E3, and in both instances director Tetsuya Nomura showed up to drop a bit new trailer.
At this point, it seems likely we’ll at least get a trailer, but the real problem then becomes how much will we see?
The answer to that needs to be a lot.
Square Enix can’t keep announcing games and then going radio silent on them for years, we’ve seen it happen too many times, and frankly, it’s souring people’s opinions on them. It happened with Final Fantasy Versus XIII which then turned into XV, it happened with Kingdom Hearts 3, the Final Fantasy 7 Remake, and the Avenger’s Project (which we still know literally nothing about).
We keep getting drip-fed information on their big games, and I seriously hope that’s not something that’s going to happen again with the Final Fantasy 7 Remake.
If they’re showing it off at E3, which it seems like they are, they need to drop info on us. Tell us more about the split into three games, show us concrete gameplay, give us a release date or at least a release window.
It certainly doesn’t help that the Final Fantasy franchise seems to be in flux right now. Final Fantasy XIV is still going strong, but XV had its remaining DLC canceled, Dissidia NT was a flop, and there’s currently nothing else on the horizon outside of remasters and re-releases.
Fans need reassurance that their cherished franchise isn’t going anywhere; we need a vision of the future of Final Fantasy. E3 2019 is the time to do that, and if Square Enix doesn’t, well, they may have missed the best chance they’ll have.
