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Have you ever gone to Distant Worlds and thought, "okay, this is pretty awesome, but what if they did it just for Final Fantasy VII? And used the new arrangements from the Remake?" Well, okay, they kinda did that last year, sure. But that one-off is now a real thing, and we have the first dozen-plus dates for it for 2020 and 2021. This concert series is going to include the new Remake arrangements, as well as the new theme song that debuted last week. It will also have visuals from the new game, and will be directed by Arnie Roth; this, of course, might mean that Distant Worlds will be back-burnered for a while, but worse things have happened, surely.

No tickets are on sale until a couple weeks from now, but here are the known show dates:

• June 14: Los Angeles
• July 4: Singapore
• July 9 and 10: San Francisco
• August 22: Fort Worth, Texas
• September 11: Atlanta
• September 25: Phoenix, Arizona
• October 3: New York City
• October 24: Chicago
• October 30: London
• November 7 and 8: Bangkok
• December 13: Paris
• December 19: Barcelona
• January 8 and 9, 2021: Denver
• January 13, 2021: Nashville
• January 31, 2021: Boston
• February 12 and 13, 2021: Tokyo

Source: Final Fantasy VII Remake Concerts Official Site

Is this to make up for the delayed release reported a couple weeks back? Who knows, but that new release date of April 10 makes an appearance (for the first time in a trailer) at the end of the new trailer released today. There's actually a great deal to unpack in the new trailer, including a new theme song called "Hollow," composed by Nobuo Uematsu and sung by Yosh.

That's just the start, though; among other things, you'll get to see young Tifa and Cloud, President Shinra, Reeve, Heidigger, Hojo, Scarlet, Palmer, a ton of the Honeybee Inn and its environs, and a debut for Red XIII, whose voice is just absolutely perfect.Thanks to Noxyfied in Discord for mentioning the new video before I had a chance to get online this morning and see it myself!

Also, if you've been on the fence about preordering, and this trailer just pushed you over the edge, you might want to consider doing a preorder direct from Square Enix. Any preorder done from their store, either before now or up to release, will get you the chance to win a Cloud- or Sephiroth-themed watch; both look pretty cool, truth be told, but the darker metal of the Sephiroth one gives it a little extra punch.

Source: Gematsu

While it's not really in our nature to post news about things that we found out about via naughty means, this little tidbit was just too good to pass up on this last day of the decade. Gematsu reports today that a user on Twitter was able to access Sony's server holding the demo for Final Fantasy VII Remake and not only download it but also install it and get it running. There was a video posted to YouTube, and while I'm sure it will get a takedown notice very soon, right now it's up: Again, I'm not really keen on how this was obtained, let me make that very clear, but hearing the music play over the full intro filled me with more than enough joy to get this posted!

Source: Gematsu

It's easy to fall behind this time of year, as we're all getting ready to move into 2020. But Square Enix is not taking a break, and starting with The Game Awards last week, the team has been rolling out more apertifs for the game releasing in March of next year. Below, see the newest trailer; it focuses on Cloud and his development from mercenary to hero. It's got a little bit more combat and also some good snippets from Barret's (literal) elevator pitch to Cloud in the prologue and Tifa and Cloud's reunion at 7th Heaven.

Gematsu also reported earlier this week on Squenix' publication of a lot of new images, including a couple iconic scenes, and some newly-written character descriptions. The first explanations of Aerith's abilities in-battle are detailed here, too, as well as a first look at stills of Shiva, the Train Graveyard and Shin-Ra Headquarters.

Squenix also set up some good marketing for us recently, with a load of wallpapers and avatars of Tifa, Cloud, and Barret, with Aerith apparently coming soon. Those can be grabbed from the offical site. Also on social media, there's a brief teaser of Cloud on the FF7R Twitter feed. They're showing a little more of the soundtrack with each video, too, which is pretty great. All in all, a nice little gift for fans awaiting the game's release in March.

There's a new trailer for Final Fantasy VII Remake that was just released at Tokyo Game Show today, unveiling a number of new scenes and characters. Well, let's put "new" in quotes, I guess, since it's hard to be all that new when you're remaking a twenty-year-old game, right? Anyway, Gematsu brings us the new trailer in both English and Japanese, and in it you'll get some looks at Reno, Rude and Tseng, as well as President Shinra. Naturally, Aerith appears quite a bit as well, including in battle, and we get our first look at the Shiva summon and the Crazy Motorcycle Chase too.

Oh, yeah, and let's not forget about the Honeybee Inn, because, yeah... that's teased there too.

Stay tuned for an endcap of Cloud, Barret, and Tifa looking out over what has to be Cosmo Canyon. It's gorgeous.

Square Enix just wrapped up their E3 presentation without major surprises, though a lot of what they had looked pretty solid. The team went bold by leading their show with Final Fantasy VII Remake, hot on the heels of the release date announcement and trailer we posted earlier today. Tonight, they had a lot more detail worth checking out, of course.

First up, some information about what to expect; the game has "two blu-rays of content" available, with the first disc apparently being all about Midgar. This was essentially the first bit of information of the presentation, and it bookended nicely with the announcement that preorders are now open and there are multiple special editions to be had, which is naturally completely unsurprising given the profile of this game and Squenix' normal business practices. Both of these things seem to be a bit odd given the previous news that the game would be episodic; if they have backed down from that now, the March 2020 release date seems very ambitious.

We could glean some detail of the battle system from the first trailer, but tonight's presentation walked through much more detail and left me with the impression that the game was going to play a lot like Lightning Returns (since most of you haven't played that, I consider that a good thing) with some mix of Crisis Core and Final Fantasy XV involved too. There is an ATB system, but it seems to be an ATB twist on Lightning Returns' charge meter, with abilities requiring at least one unit on the ATB meter to be full before they can be used. The ATB system appears to be used for magical attacks and item usage, and combined with the Limit gauge, used to access Limit Breaks as well. The ATB mode also runs in bullet time, to allow easier access to desired commands. The ATB fills as melee attacks, using the Square button, are successfully executed, with combos increasing the bar more.

Also like the Final Fantasy XIII series, a Stagger mode will be present to cripple enemies. Like those earlier games, it looks like depending on the enemy Stagger can be built up by combo attacks or weak point attacks. The party will remain at maximum three, with two characters run by the game while players control the third. However, Squenix promised to be able to switch between active party in battle with a single button press. Speaking of buttons, attacks can also be mapped to buttons for quick access, as in other recent Final Fantasy games.

The character reveals are what drove the crowd crazy tonight, though. We saw a bit of Aerith in last night's video, but in this longer one she shows up a bit more, including in battle. Tifa's character design was finally revealed as well, and we see her with Marlene, conversing with Cloud in Seventh Heaven, and also in battle. We even got a little Sephiroth towards the end, which appears to be in a flashback to Nibelheim.

Square have made the game available for playing on the show floor, though they did not make any mention of what parts of the game would be playable. I assume until we hear otherwise that it's the game's opening mission on the reactor. If you missed it earlier, they're selling March 3, 2020 as the release date, which still seems pretty ambitious to me if they are going to pack the entire game with as much as they have in the first mission.Here are some other games that showed up in the presentation tonight, which ran for about an hour and fifteen minutes.

• A longform trailer for Life is Strange 2's upcoming content
• Crystal Chronicles Remaster with online multiplayer for PS4, Switch, iOS, and Google Play; the video implied that cross-platform play might be an option. It's coming in December
• The Last Remnant Remaster, releasing tonight for Switch
• A new, long trailer for Dragon Quest Builders 2, releasing on July 12 with a PlayStation 4 demo on June 27
• A Fall release window for Dragon Quest XI S
• A couple upcoming Square Enix Collective games, including one called Circuit Superstars that looks like a modern, multiplayer version of RC Pro-Am
• A short trailer for Re+Mind, the first Kingdom Hearts III DLC
• A new trailer for the next Final Fantasy XIV expansion, "Shadowbringers," releasing on July 2
• A trailer for Dying Light 2, which made great use of an old Metric song
• An announcement for Western releases of Romancing SaGa 3 and SaGa Scarlet Grace
• An introduction to the next game in the Brave Exvius universe, called War of the Visions, which appears to be a turn- and grid-based tactical strategy game with five different warring factions

The presentation ended with one surprise (that had been leaked a little earlier today, if you were paying attention): a new remaster of Final Fantasy VIII. Honestly, though, it wasn't much of a showing; there was no announcement of a release date and apparently absolutely no content from the actual new version of the game. Everything I saw looked to be straight from the original PSX release, in 4:3 aspect ratio and all.

The other linchpin for Square Enix this year was obviously going to be Avengers, given how many times they've reminded us of the game on social media over the last week, and that's how they wrapped up the show. Frankly, it looks amazing. The entire video they showed claimed to be in-engine, and the transitions between non-interactive and interactive parts of the game were beyond seamless. The scale of the environments, illustrated by the setting of the Golden Gate Bridge for much of the trailer, were spectacular as well. It's also an original Avengers story, according to Marvel Gaming, outside the comic and cinematic universes.

The game is going to release on May 15 of 2020, and it appears that the playable heroes will start with Captain America, Black Widow, Hulk, Thor, and Iron Man. According to their very own version of a post-credits scene, it looks like Hank Pym is on deck for the future as well. Crystal Dynamics say that there will be no loot boxes, play to win, or even costs associated with downloading new missions or heroes as they're made available as DLC. It's coming for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC and Google Stadia, and it's another game playable on the show floor.

All that said, Square Enix look like they are going to be thin on the ground for really big titles in 2019, but the first half of 2020 is going to ship a lot of games for the juggernaut.

Source: Square Enix Twitch