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The Final Fantasy VII Remake broke the internet on Saturday, as well as blew through a large number of my monthly allotment of texts on my phone. Because of the highly-predictable hype, Yoshinori Kitase and Tetsuya Nomura did a fast-follow interview with Dengeki Online and Famitsu to discuss all of the things that have been warmly- and not-so-warmly-acknowledged by fans.

Here are some highlights (or lowlights, depending on your point of view):

• The title will in fact contain the word "Remake." Because nobody would know otherwise, right?
• Dev is being managed in-house but with some actual development work being done by third parties.
• All of the character models are new.
• The most recent video is virtually all in-engine.
• You can control multiple party members in battle, or just one, with up to three party members available just as in the original game.
• The battles do have an ATB gauge, but it's not like in the original game. How exactly it differs is not clear, but it appears that it is still tied to Limit Breaks.
• You can still put Cloud in a dress.
• There will be new locations to explore, possibly incorporating some areas fleshed out in Compilation games.
• Yes, the remake will be episodic.

That last point seems to be causing a lot of contention in the community, but for my money, I don't see a reason to not give it a wait and see. Given the expectations around this game, it seems to me that doing it episodically will give the developers at least a chance to maximize the quality of the game, and in theory it will give us as gamers a chance to bail on it with a lower cost if for some reason it's truly awful.

This seems like a good time to remind everyone of the podcast we did on these and other subjects around the remake, right?

Source: Gematsu

Shonen Jump, each December, puts on the Jump Festa expo for anime, manga and games. Japan, being fully futuristic as shown in most anime documentaries, naturally calls this year's iteration "Jump Festa 2016." This year, Square Enix will take the stage on December 19 and 20 for several presentations to be broadcast on YouTube. Here's the schedule, with all times listed as UTC and EST.

Day 1:

• December 19, 1:30AM UTC / December 18, 8:30PM EST: Star Ocean: Integrity & Faithlessness Stage interview with voice talent
• December 19, 3:30AM UTC / December 18, 10:30PM EST: Dragon Quest Builders Stage interview with the producers
• December 19, 5:30AM UTC / 12:30AM EST: Dragon Quest of the Stars Stage interview with the producers

Day 2:

• December 20, 4:00AM UTC / December 19, 11:00PM EST: Dragon Quest Monsters: Battle Scanner Stage introduction to a new Dragon Quest arcade game with the producers and voice talent
• December 20, 5:20AM UTC / 12:20AM EST: World of Final Fantasy Stage interview with the director and voice talent

The full list of games to be represented off the stage at Jump Festa are as follows:

• Dragon Quest Builders (Trailer, Playable Demo)
• Dragon Quest Monsters: Battle Scanner (Trailer)
• Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker 3 (Trailer, Playable Demo)
• Dragon Quest of the Stars (Stage Only)
• Final Fantasy: Brave Exvius (Trailer)
• The Sorrow of Sacrifice and Snow (Trailer)
• Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8: Final Chapter Prologue (Trailer)
• Star Ocean: Integrity & Faithlessness (Trailer)
• World of Final Fantasy (Trailer)

In related news, it was also announced today that the release date for the new Star Ocean has been pushed back to March 31 in Japan from its original date of February 25 to "increase the game's quality." Looking back on previous news here at CoN, one might imagine that graphics quality might be on that list.


Source: Gematsu

I've been utterly awful at keeping up with fanart this year - perhaps there's a volunteer opportunity for one of you readers out there - but thanks to a burst of energy, the CoNvent Calendar is returning for its second year! Every day from now until Christmas, we'll have a new fanart published to our calendar page. If you're a CoN member, you can visit each one and rate it; if you've rated all of the pieces by the end of the year, you'll get a limited-edition CoN award for your account! Start here, with the first day's art, from new CoN artist thirteenthangel.

To follow along, check the calendar page every day, watch the Fanart Commentary forum, or follow us on Facebook or Twitter! Happy Holidays!

Following the pattern of the Active Time Event series for Final Fantasy XV, the producers of the Star Ocean series aired on Thursday. For those of us spoiled by the subtitled XV events, it's worth noting that Star Ocean did not follow suit and was fully in Japanese. That said, there might not be a lot of information that we can pull out for you directly, but here are some highlights:

• While the fifth game in the series, Integrity and Faithlessness is the fourth game in the Star Ocean universe timeline, falling about halfway between "The Second Story" and "Till the End of Time."
• The entire party, up to seven, travels together during exploration.
• Each piece of equipment has custom illustrations representing it in menus. It appears that some of these items may be purchasable via Japanese storefronts in the real world.
• With so many party members, the battles are frenetic to say the least. The player controls just one at a time in an action-RPG system, while the others work on autopilot.
• A special edition has already been announced for Japan with at least some of the standard pack-ins, like an art book with content from the entire series and figurines.
• The music comes from the same source as Valkyrie Profile, and the Ultimate Box includes also a five-disc set of music from the Star Ocean and Valkyrie games.
• The game still doesn't look nearly as visually impressive as I would expect a PS4 RPG to at this point in the console's lifecycle. It's possible that the company is showing mostly the PS3 version so that the upgraded version dazzles at launch.

The game releases on February 25 in Japan, and in the west later in 2016. Gematsu has the full broadcast.

Source: Gematsu

We had news just the other day about how - O! If only we mortals could try! - we could be seeing Moogles in Final Fantasy XV. And, now, just a few days later, it seems that the cries of humanity have seen response, and the darling little mascots will indeed appear in the final game. Apparently, as per Tabata, there won't be much of a role for them due to the late stage of the process, but in the game they shall be.

Why, one might think that this was their plan all along, and perhaps the call to action was merely an attempt to get a brief bump in social media virality for the upcoming flagship game. One might think that, indeed, or instead, one might simply decide that there is a higher power out there looking out for the enjoyment of all Final Fantasy gamers. Blessed deity, hear the pleas of we sinners who all too often overlooked thy blessings of Final Fantasy XIII, and deliver unto us our furry, antennae'd batcats.

Man. That was one strange newspost.


Source: Siliconera

Once again, five days later than expected, here's another load of news from Tokyo Game Show. I'l happily say it again, please feel free to put your name forward as a newswriter for CoN. Literacy optional. Anyway, as mentioned previously, TGS 2015 was the venue for which Square Enix loaded up their roster, and today we'll recap the 'second tier' of game franchises under the company's banner for those fans.

Starting with the Dragon Quest Universe, we've got two games to cover. The big new sub-IP for Dragon Quest is Builders, which is a building game similar to Minecraft. For TGS, Squenix debuted a new trailer and also some more details about how the game differs from the elephant in the room. There's a strong emphasis on the quest portion of the game, as well as some explanation of the crafting system and how one collects materials in the Dragon Quest world. Builders is coming to Japan in early 2016. The second game is a bit more of a blip, but while in Tokyo Squenix announced that another Dragon Quest game is being released for smartphones - this time Dragon Quest VII. It won't be long until the entire mainline series is covered at this rate!

The SaGa series, which started in the West as Final Fantasy Legend, is making a comeback. This series turned 25 last year, and announced a new game in tribute, but just now are we starting to see a first trailer and more details. The new game is titled SaGa: Scarlet Grace, and it's the first full title in the series for over a decade. It's going to be released for PlayStation Vita and will be out sometime in 2016. The trailer has a really cute baby unicorn.

Star Ocean is another franchise that has been dormant for a while, but from the Enix side of the house. Integrity and Faithlessness is landing in Japan on February 25, 2016, though, and as such it was all over TGS. The game was playable on the show floor, so there are new gameplay videos available as well as - of course - fancy new trailer. The game still looks a bit unfinished in its playable mode, and not quite current-gen, but there's still plenty of time for polish before going gold.

I would think that the largest franchise of these second-tier IPs would be Kingdom Hearts, and Kingdom Hearts also showed up pretty big at TGS 2015. The big news is Kingdom Hearts 2.8, the 'Final Chapter Prologue.' Gamespresso covers where that nutty name comes from, but in its simplest form, 2.8 is another collection for previous games in the series: Dream Drop Distance, Unchained 358/2 Days, and a new short story called 0.2 Birth By Sleep. This latter story will focus on a character named Aqua, and has been described as a lead-in to the events of the final chapter, the long-awaited Kingdom Hearts III.

Source: Siliconera, Polygon, Gematsu