Final Fantasy VIII Director Explains Why Square Enix remaster Took so Long

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One of the biggest surprises at E3 2019 was the release of the Final Fantasy VIII Remaster. While not a remake like Final Fantasy VII fans are breathing a sigh of relief that the beloved iconic series is finally available on PlayStation 4 and other platforms.

In an interview with Famitsu, Final Fantasy VIII director Yoshinori Kitase said the delay was due to a last-minute development shift. Initially, the team appeared to be planning to port Final Fantasy VIII to other PlayStation 3 versions. However, since 2019 marks its 20th anniversary (and television has changed a lot since 1999), it has decided to make some visual upgrades.

When asked why the Final Fantasy VIII has taken so long, director Yoshinori Kitase said the following (via Siliconera):

At first, the plan was to release it on current-generation hardware, with more or less the same graphics. However, the title recently celebrated its 20th anniversary, and since TVs evolved from SD CRTs to LCD HDTVs, we decided that it was necessary to improve on character quality. So then we continued its development until just before it went gold, then out of nowhere, we decided to work on refining the characters. For that reason, we found ourselves in a situation that needed a major schedule change, but thanks to the efforts from the original staff's Harada (battle programmer, Hiroshi Harada), character modeler Kayano (Tomohiro Kayano), and character designer Nomura (Tetsuya Nomura) we were able to revive it with wonderful quality. The troubles were there, but in the end it was the right call.

While it doesn't look like the backgrounds have been updated (a problem that also plagues the remasters of Final Fantasy VII and IX), at least the characters won't look like pixelated messes.

Final Fantasy VIII Remastered will release in 2019 on the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC. 

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