Game of the Year 2020
Honorable Mention: Final Fantasy VII Remake
Editor-in-Chief Ed McGlone: So much could have gone wrong for Final Fantasy VII Remake, but it just didn’t. In fact, not only did it live up to the sky-high expectations of many fans that wanted something familiar to the classic PS1 JRPG, Square Enix found room to implement some clever new twists as well.
The developers made development decisions that if you told me about them when Final Fantasy VII Remake was first announced I would have said that this project would be doomed from the start.
That’s because you obviously can’t take a game cherished for its turn-based JRPG gameplay and turn it into a modern action-RPG, especially after the lukewarm reception to Final Fantasy XV’s gameplay.
You also can’t split the game into multiple parts. Fans want a complete experience just like the original was.
And, perhaps most importantly, you cannot under any circumstances make any changes to the game’s story. That’s the one thing, if nothing else, that completely untouchable.
Yet all three of those features, which I would classify as pillars of the original game, were messed with; and yet, Final Fantasy VII Remake still stood and stood strong.
The developers found a way to successfully fuse together action-RPG gameplay with elements of the ATB battle system beloved from the original
Final Fantasy VII Remake was jam-packed with so many new cutscenes, dialog, side quests, and story beats that it turned the entire Midgard section of the original into a full-length game; eliminating many concerns that the original was being split into multiple games to milk fans of their money.
And finally, the developers dauntlessly changed the story, quite dramatically in fact. The jury is still out on this move, though, as we’ll need to see how it plays out across all of the parts. Still, the changes are intriguing and certainly didn’t blow up in Square Enix’s face, at least not yet.
At the end of the day, the developers accomplished their goal of remaking Final Fantasy VII their way, which is to say doing more than releasing a simple graphical update. And by most measures that I can see, they were able to pull that off while still pleasing the majority of their passionate fan base.
