Final Fantasy 8 would need reworked battle system in hypothetical remake, says series producer

eurogamer.net:

Final Fantasy 8 director, and series producer, Yoshinori Kitase has said he would change its combat system in a hypothetical remake.

The eighth game in the series is more experimental than others, in particular with its Junction system used to boost the stats of player characters.

Kitase told IGN he would «really rework the battle system», mentioning the Junction system specifically.

«I think you may remember we had the Junction system in Final Fantasy 8,» he said. «And the thing about that system was the enemies levelled up in line with what the player's level was. And obviously you had to then use the Junction system and how you customise that to overcome the challenge there. And I think it was a very difficult system for some people to get into. Depending on player skills, sometimes they just didn't work out the best way of doing it.

»So I think I'd want to return to that and really rework the battle system on [Final Fantasy 8] and make it something where that level of difficulty and approachability for some fans was a lot better balanced. So I think that's the thing I'd look at most if I was going to look at remaking it."

Of course, this was just a fun comment about a hypothetical remake.

Speaking to Eurogamer, Kitase said he's not deterred from more remakes in future but they do need to be carefully considered due to their size and the amount of work required.

«It hasn't really put me off as such, but certainly we have realised that the amount of work involved — certainly for games from the Super Nintendo era and the PlayStation One era — and the actual amount of content that were in those games is a lot more than we remembered,» said Kitase.

«It did blow us away: the amount of time and effort and resources that we need to realise something like [a modern remake]