Yoshinori Kitase of Japanese publisher Square Enix, who’s currently serving as producer on the hotly anticipated Final Fantasy VII Remake, recently went on record as saying that he’d “like to see” a Final Fantasy VIII Remake be developed in the future. The one caveat? He doesn’t necessarily want to be at the helm, rather he’s hoping that the younger generation which “inherits the genes” of the JRPG franchise can “step up” and do it justice.
The statement was made during a recent interview with Famitsu, which was then translated by Siliconera. Kitase proceeded to say that the in-development Final Fantasy VII Remake is a project that was born of his desire to reimagine the classic title “with today’s technology” while he still remains in service at Square Enix. He hopes that, in a similar fashion, the current “youth” of the company will feel the same way about modernizing Final Fantasy VIII in the future.
Yoshinori Kitase served as the director of FFVIII, being personally responsible for elements of the game’s narrative and systems design, so it’s interesting to see that he’d rather pass his baby over to the next generation than handle a potential remake himself. Currently aged 53 and with plenty of work remaining to do on FFVII Remake—all we currently know is that the first of an unspecified number of installments is due out March 3, 2020—perhaps Kitase is destined for retirement before he’d get a chance to work on the hypothetical project.
FFVIII Remake would presumably still be years away from an eventual release if it were to get the green light, though with the original having launched in 1999 for the PlayStation, the leap in overall fidelity between the two installments could be incredibly pronounced. Even more so than the already noteworthy difference seen in FFVII Remake, largely owing to the fact that it’d potentially arrive on the freshly detailed next-generation PS5 console.
