Final Fantasy VIII is coming to the Nintendo Switch, but not in the way you may have expected. Square Enix has announced in their E3 2019 press conference that Final Fantasy VIII Remastered is coming to Playstation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch and PC later this year. An official trailer was released, so we’ve included it for you down below.
I was wondering why they skipped over this one.
They might talk about it today
Apparently they lost the source code
Well clearly they didn’t lose it
You can still rerelease games if you lose the source code but it requires rewriting it. They did the same thing for the original Kingdom Hearts for the PS3 release.
You’re unterestimating programming. If they really reprogrammed the game from scratch, they certainly wouldn’t bother making a remaster and would instead go all the way and make it a full remake. Everything else wouldn’t make any sense, since rewriting the code would take so much effort that it would be a waste to not make it a remake at that point.
Not saying they didn’t lose the source code, but if they really did, it’s more likely that they’re just running the game in an emulator of sorts with some enhanced textures.
Idk, I’ve always been told that releasing things to modern systems requires a lot of work if the source code is gone, but you do make a good point about running things through an emulator. I think most of the issue arises from having things at a higher resolution since I remember reading that some of the backgrounds in FF IX were lower quality because some of the source code for those were lost.
I have to agree with RPG Hacker. Why go through the trouble of rewriting the source code for the original when a full on “remake” would be more beneficial and less troublesome in the long run?
There seems to be confusion on whether it was the entire source code, or if it was just certain assets, but it wouldn’t be the first time they would need to recreate everything from the ground up if that was the case. I think the reason why they would rewrite the source code rather than making a full on remake would be because of “game preservation” and people who would enjoy the original experience but on newer systems?
Good point. If some people don’t like the remake, they’d at least be okay with the remake if they have the original to fall back on.
Even if you like the remake or not, it’s nice to see the original is like if you’ve never experienced it before. I’ve actually started going through the mainline titles for the first time, started with VII in october and currently going through IX now after playing X, X-2, and XII. When they announced VIII during the livestream I was ecstatic. Can’t wait for the Crystal Chronicles remaster since that was my very first FF title.
FFCC was my first Final Fantasy that I played extensively, so I got that connection with the original CC myself. A shame Crystal Bearers was pretty lackluster.
I remember wanting to get Crystal Bearers, but my brother persuaded me into not getting it for some reason, so the first Crystal Chronicles was the only one I ever experienced. I really regret not getting my life as a king or the ds ones.
You definitely should get those if you ever get the chance. And you didn’t miss anything with Crystal Bearers. The story was… okay but the overall game was disappointing.
@shinygold2: Oh, I see where your confusion is coming from. I think you’re confusing “source assets” with “source code”. Low texture quality usually isn’t the fault of the code, it’s just that the texture assets themselves are usually downsized during production to fit the specifications (mainly memory) of the system(s) the game is supposed to run on. However, this is usually an automated process and the higher-quality source assets (usually PSD files) are usually kept around. But yeah, those source assets getting lost is a thing that does happen to game developers occasionally. A lot of times it’s because while the source assets themselves are PSD files, the games read other texture formats (like TGA files or DDS files), so often developers only check in those output files and forget about checking in the PSD source files. I have worked on multiple projects in the past that had this problem. In cases like that, developers can’t use the original PSD files anymore, so if they want to have higher-quality textures in the remaster, they first have to rip the original textures from the game and then make a PSD file from scratch.
That being said, though: even for projects where the original PSD files are available, redrawing a lot of the textures is usually necessary for a remaster, anyways. Even the higher-quality PSD files of back then usually just aren’t high-quality enough for modern 4K displays, so developers still have to put in effort for a remaster. If a developer claims that high-quality textures weren’t possible because the source assets were lost, that kinda sounds like a lazy excuse. It’s like saying “we just didn’t want to redraw the textures”. If the actual source code of a game is lost, however, that’s a different story. Without the source code, doing actual big-scale changes to a game becomes difficult and you often have no choice but to go with emulation. If they did lose the actual source code of Final Fantasy IX, then yeah, I would understand why they didn’t include higher-quality textures.
Huh, that’s pretty interesting actually, and it makes me wonder if people just don’t mean the source assets instead when they’re talking about the source code. In terms of Kingdom Hearts it sounded like they lost the entire code because they lost ALL of it because they were going through copies of the games, while in things like FF IX the lost coding seemed to be more “selective”. Now this is making me wonder if FF VIII was a case of them losing the entire code and needing to rebuild like they needed to for the 1.5 Remix, or if it was just more selective like in IX’s case.
In terms of Kingdom Hearts it sounded like they rewrote the entire code because they lost ALL of it since they were going through copies of the games* this site really needs an edit button
Man, these FMVs are just so straight outta 90ies
I am very familiar with the FF series but this will be my first time playing this game I am excited.
Was the steam version really bad or just controls didn’t match up?