The Final Fantasy 7 remake trilogy has been a tremendous success for Square Enix.
As noted by director Naoki Hamaguchi in a July interview with Automaton, the first two instalments are "performing even better than most people would probably imagine," in terms of sales.
That success, combined with the quality of the games themselves, has left fans clamouring for further remakes of other Final Fantasy titles.
In a recent interview with Hamaguchi, I asked his opinion on whether FF7R's success makes future remakes more likely, or whether its sheer scale makes them a task not worth undertaking.
"That's a pretty interesting framing you've got there," he laughed. "I think both are probably true.
"First of all, 7 Remake has been very successful, and it has contributed significantly to the company from a business perspective. So, from a business or a management perspective, I can well believe that people might look at that and say, 'Well, you know, it succeeded. Let's do the same again.'
"But personally, having worked on the series as well, I think that it's quite difficult to take something that was a single title and split it up, because if the reaction to the first instalment is not quite what you were hoping for, then you may be left with a difficult business decision about what to do with the second instalment, for example."
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He went on to recall his own time working on FF7R, and the issues that arise over such lengthy development cycles.
"The 12 years [of FF7R development] went by in a flash, but when you think about the proportion of a person's life that amounts to, it's actually a fairly significant chunk.
"I obviously have been extremely motivated to keep working on this project and have gone through the whole thing, but you could get people who, for example, are the director on the first in a series like this, and they say, 'That's enough. I think I've had my fill. The second instalment can be done by someone else.'
"And then you'd run into problems where maybe the overall atmosphere, the vision, things would change. Fans would be confused. So, planning for that kind of long-term stable development is also a bit of a risk from a business perspective.
"So, I do think it would be quite a tricky decision to make."
As for what he would love to see remade in the future, he reiterated his love of Final Fantasy 6: "That had a lot of inspiration for me, a lot of influence on me as a child."
But he also extolled his appreciation for The Witcher 3, with the recent remaster apparently not enough for a Witcher fanatic like him.
"If they did a full remake, I would be there. Although, thinking about it for a moment from the perspective of a developer, if I were told I had to do that, goosebumps. No, no, that would be too much, so I don't want to say anything too lightly."
Watch our full interview with Naoki Hamaguchi on the Radio Times Gaming YouTube channel.
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