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Final Fantasy VIII Director Yoshinori Kitase Explains Why Remaster Was Announced Late
posted on by Kim Morrissy
Square Enix revealed during its E3 press conference in June that it will release Final Fantasy VIII Remastered, a remastered version of its Final Fantasy VIII game, on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, and PC via Steam this year. This announcement came roughly a year after Final Fantasy VII, IX, X/X-2 HD, and XII remasters were announced.
Speaking with Famitsu about Final Fantasy VIII Remastered, the game's director Yoshinori Kitase explained that the reason why the announcement was delayed was because the game underwent extensive graphical improvements for its 20th anniversary.
"At first, the original plan was to release the game on current-gen consoles with the graphics as they were before," Kitase said. "However, because of the game's 20th anniversary and the shift from SD to HD televisions, we decided that it was necessary to up the quality of the characters."
This decision, Kitase said, happened almost immediately before the game was supposed to be mastered, which necessitated a schedule adjustment.
Famitsu had asked whether Square Enix had lost any part of the data for Final Fantasy VIII, given that this had been an issue with other titles, but judging from Kitase's response, that does not appear to be the main reason why Final Fantasy VIII Remastered was delayed.
Kitase also mentioned that the remaster will not include the Chocobo World (Odekake Chocobo in Japanese) PocketStation game. The original mini-game offered exclusive collectible items that could be transferred to Final Fantasy VIII, but although Chocobo World will no longer exist, the items can be obtained through Rinoa's Angelo Search ability. Kitase said that it will be easier to obtain items compared to the original game.
Final Fantasy VIII shipped for the original PlayStation console and Windows computers in 1999 and 2000, respectively. The game follows the temperamental Squall and his love interest, Rinoa, as they try to stop an evil sorceress from the future.
Source: Famitsu
