The idea of a Final Fantasy 6 remake is on the minds of many Square Enix employees, but such an undertaking would be no easy feat for the Japanese developer. Some senior company officials recently explained why that’s the case, just after Square Enix narrowed down the release window of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth at the 2023 Summer Game Fest.
Why a Final Fantasy 6 remake would be no easy feat
Speaking during a June 15 livestream commemorating the 35th anniversary of the franchise, Square Enix vice president Yoshinori Kitase revealed that the topic of a Final Fantasy 6 remake occasionally comes up in his conversations with employees. And while many are eager to tackle a reimagined version of the 1994 classic, remaking Final Fantasy 6 would be “quite complicated,” Kitase said, according to Noisy Pixel’s translation of the broadcast.
The series creator Hironobu Sakaguchi agreed with that sentiment, having labeled the notion of revisiting Final Fantasy 6 as a “daunting task” during the same livestream. According to him, some of the biggest challenges in remaking the game would stem from the requirements to change its story and recreate its pixel art world using modern graphics. Reading between the lines, his remark implies that Square Enix isn’t interested in making new pixel art Final Fantasy games.
That notwithstanding, the company remains happy to re-release its classic JRPGs. This was most recently underlined by Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster, a collection of the first six mainline installments in the franchise which hit the PlayStation Store in April.
Moving forward, Square Enix is primarily focused on completing its planned trio of Final Fantasy 7 remakes, with Kitase outright saying as much during the recent anniversary broadcast. The second game in the trilogy, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, is slated to launch for the PS5 in early 2024, around four years since Final Fantasy 7 Remake hit the market. Given that track record, it’s likely that the company won’t be done with its current remake roadmap for years to come.
And though this state of affairs implies Square Enix won’t be remaking Final Fantasy 6 anytime soon, the idea itself has been circulating the company for well over a decade. Following a successful Nintendo DS reimagining of Final Fantasy 4, the Japanese developer also considered extending the remake treatment to the next two mainline installments in the series. However, those endeavors were halted by technical issues specific to Nintendo’s portable console, as revealed by former Square Enix producer Shinji Hashimoto back in 2010.
