The latest edition of the Fine Bros.’s YouTubers React series asked the question “Why the hype for a remake of Final Fantasy VII?”
What do you think? The answers from the YouTubers mostly convened around the idea of nostalgia being the primary reason for so people being excited for it as so many people played it during their childhood. But a more interesting proposed answer is that Final Fantasy VII helped to define in some way what was possible on the original PlayStation and that garnered it a lot of respect that even people who haven’t played the game can understand and be invested in.
Another interesting question asked during the video is why videogame remakes tend to get people more excited than the announcement of a remake of a classic movie. Whether that statement is true or not can be debated, but none of the YouTubers had a decent answer to it, so maybe it’s worth thinking over.
To be fair, the question does have a point: have you seen the videos of people reacting to the Final Fantasy VII remake announcement during E3? There are a lot of emotions just in the snippet below (and there are hundreds of recorded reaction videos like this).
Perhaps this high level of excitement about remakes says a lot about videogame fandom itself. Videogames, perhaps more so than movies, strive for technological advancement with each new title, and so that surely factors into part of this hype – the idea that older videogames can be dragged through time with us by remaking them with modern graphics and refined ideas. We can bring parts of our past and childhood with us into the future as if an old friend.
Of course, also factoring into the hype around the Final Fantasy VII remake is that there were rumors nearly every year when E3 rolled around of it being announced that turned out to be false. It became a running joke and an idea that seemed too good to be true as hopes were built up and then crushed year after year.
All of this surely factors in to the excitement around the Final Fantasy VII remake but it seems likely that there are as many answers as there are fans of the game rather than a single answer to clear it all up.
