Square Enix Doesn't Know How Many Games Final Fantasy 7 Remake Will Span

Final Fantasy VII Remake has a release date--March 3, 2020--but that game won't be the complete story of Cloud, Tifa, Barrett, Aerith, and Sephiroth. Square Enix confirmed during E3 2019 that what releases in 2020 will only cover the first part of the 1997 original's tale, with more episodes coming later.

That messaging got a bit confused when Square Enix also announced that Final Fantasy VII Remake will cover two Blu-ray discs. Remake producer Yoshinori Kitase, who directed the original game, explained that there's so much content in this first episode, it'll cover those two discs. And he doesn't know how many episodes it'll take to complete the story.

"We can't reveal that many details about this, but just to give you a bit of background on it, before we actually started working on this, we knew obviously it was going to be a large amount of content," Kitase said through a translator during a preview session with journalists. "To do the whole story was going to be huge. And then when we actually did start planning out the plot for the first game, it hit us again that this is going to be a huge amount of content.

"At that point, we decided we're going to focus this game on Midgar and what happened in Midgar," he continued. "And unfortunately, we can't say anything more about the future games after that, because we don't know ourselves, really. We really are still fleshing out that process and fleshing out what we're going to do for the second game in the project, and what kind of story is going to be in that, so we really can't tell you."

Kitase also said he wasn't sure how much the work already done on the game would speed up development of future Final Fantasy VII episodes. While a lot of work with characters and the underlying technology of the game is complete, future episodes will take place in settings beyond Midgar, which are going to take a lot of time to create in their own right.

All of that suggests that while fans have been waiting a long time for the Final Fantasy VII Remake, they won't be finished waiting when March 3 rolls around. The question of how huge and sprawling Square Enix's return to Final Fantasy VII will eventually be is one that likely won't be answered for some time either.

More E3 news:

• Zelda: Breath of the Wild 2 teased
• New Xbox console, Scarlett, revealed
• Xbox Scarlett details: 8K, 120 FPS, SSD
• Elden Ring is From Software and George RR Martin's new game
• Cyberpunk 2077 release date announced
• Final Fantasy VII Remake release date announced
• Marvel's Avengers revealed