Remakes should appeal to original fans as much as capture new ones, especially in the case of a titan like Final Fantasy 7, and according to the original game's director, remakes have given fans so much ownership over the game. like the developers themselves.
In an interview in Edge issue 405, FF7 director and remake producer Yoshinori Kitase spoke about the need to balance changes to the original with respect for its longtime fans. “I thought: If we just play the original game without changes, it will feel nostalgic but not exciting.” he explains. “Fans of the original who know everything to come will soon get bored.”
He points out that many fans are equally or more attached to the characters than to the developers. “Essentially half of Final Fantasy 7, or maybe even more, is now owned by the fans. It belongs to them as much as it belongs to us, specifically in terms of their attachment to the characters. I realized we had to be careful of not whipping those characters into different types of people.
This was one of the reasons for the Whispers' inclusion in the game, with Kitase describing them as “a kind of unspoken message to the fans.” He notes that they represent that while some things change, others stay the same, and declares that this type of relationship between a creator and his audience “is only possible in a new version like this.”
Take a look at how the remakes compare on our list of best final fantasy games.