Cue the victory fanfare. Final Fantasy VII Remake will release on March 3, 2020. Finally.
First announced at E3 2015, this fully reimagined version of one of the greatest video games of all time has long felt more like a delirious fantasy for diehard fans. On Sunday night during a special orchestral concert celebrating the music of Final Fantasy VII, Square Enix unveiled a brand new trailer for the long-simmering Final Fantasy VII Remake in advance of their keynote address on Monday evening. Showcasing a mixture of cinematic cutscenes and live gameplay largely taken from the game’s first mission to infiltrate and destroy a power plant in the bowels of the dystopian megalopolis of Midgar, the trailer ended with the sweetest sequence of numbers since Lost: 03/03/2020.
Now that Final Fantasy VII Remake is actually going to be a reality and not a cruel Truman Show-esque prank targeting me personally, one can expect to get a lot more information about the title at Square Enix’s press conference on Monday evening at 6PM PT. On Twitter, director Tetsuya Nomura said, “We will be making further announcements tomorrow, but for now, please have a look at the short version of the trailer we revealed today.” The trailer, which runs for a minute and change, reveals that the game’s original turn-based combat has been replace by a more modern, active style of combat that looks more in line with Final Fantasy XV‘s combat system. With stunning graphics, especially compared to the original’s notoriously goofy models, and fluid animation, Final Fantasy VII Remake is looking more and more like it was worth the wait. Barrett’s voice is still whack, though, but honestly we should have expected that given his dialogue in the 1997 original.
Not even Ruby Weapon could keep me away from this game. Stay tuned for even more details–as well as all the latest updates from this year’s E3–all week long, right here on Nerdist. In the meantime, I’m going to light a bunch of candles and start my summoning circle to will Final Fantasy Tactics Remake into existence.