Final Fantasy VII Remake won't run on the Luminous graphics engine

During an interview with the website NovaCrystallis.com at Gamescom 2015, Final Fantasy XV Director Hajime Tabata mentioned that the upcoming Final Fantasy VII Remake is not planned to be developed on the Luminous graphics engine, which currently powers FFXV.

[BLizardXD]

"Tabata replied: “Final Fantasy VII (Remake) is not planned to be made with that.”

Kingdom Hearts 3 was the last game, which dropped the Luminous Engine in favor of Unreal Engine 4 in 2014."

If they pick Unreal Engine 4 again it would make sense, the engine can go into beta testing in just a few months. the game would be able to finish quite soon actually.

[Snookies12]

I really don't see many obstacles standing in the way of this game's development. Assuming they stick mainly to the original in terms of locations and events, then they already have the groundwork laid out. If they use Unreal Engine 4 on top of that, which would almost assuredly be easier to develop with than their own in-house engine... For myself personally, I'm rather optimistic we might see this game late 2016 or sometime in 2017. They've already been working on the game for over a year (at least), after all.

Can't wait for more info on the game regardless!

[breakpad]

more and more Lazy Japanese devs keep dropping their own homemade engines (which are far superior) for U4...what they think?? ...i start thinking that the whole Kojima gate was because of his engine(FoX engine is one of the few engines that trumps U4 with ease) which was probably claimed by Konami to do whatever they want with it...

[LightofDarkness]

Far superior? UE4 is the standard for a reason. You can virtually do anything with it, quickly and without difficulty. As far as a pure development engine and associated tools go, UE4 is currently unbeatable. Luminous is fine but it clearly lacks optimization, and the worlds it creates are largely static. I've yet to see these so-called superior engines. MT Framework was fine but nothing to write home about, FOX Engine seems pretty good but we have no idea as to how easy it is to develop for or how well optimized it is because the only people who know anything about it are Konami. The only one of these engines that seems remotely scalable is MT Framework, which is gone now.

SE aren't lazy, creating a modern videogame development engine takes a HUGE amount of work, which is time and money that would be better spent actually creating a game. In fact, it's clear that through their abandonment of Luminous in favour of UE4 that it was cheaper and easier to achieve comparable, if not better results using UE4. That screams BETTER to me. The generic Unreal engine looking issue from last gen was a result of developers using the same colour schemes, assets and design choices, which is not a reflection on the engine, just a reflection of the times. Everyone was copying everyone else to get that AAA look.

[breakpad]

@LightofDarkness generally U4 seems to be very easy to code (even i have started to learn some things)and cheap as you say but that doesnt mean at all that is better.. lets be honest ...FoX engine's lightning , photorealism and other effects ( water etcetc) are far ahead from whatever we ve seen in U4 until now even in its best tech demos ...Kojima Team developed a masterpiece with this engine which is evolving even from MGS3 era....if MGS V was exclusive to PS4 or PC we would see its true glory...at the other side no matter how much they improve U4 it keeps looking generic and not very exceptional ..see all the current gen games arround you

[UltraNova]

@Lightofdark

"FOX Engine seems pretty good but we have no idea as to how easy it is to develop for or how well optimized it is because the only people who know anything about it are Konami"

Look I wont pretend to be an expert here but if this engine is able to produce a huge open-world game at that level of visual fidelity in 1080p/60fps on a console then I would say its quite optimized for sure. We don't need to know anything else except for the actual results, which are stunning to be honest.

[LightofDarkness]

MGS V looks quite nice, but let's not forget the game features very sterile indoor environments, while the vast expanse of the open world is pretty much empty desert. You can fairly guarantee that this was as much a technical decision as it was a design decision.

And as regards those other features, not even close. Photorealism/"other effects" are in the hands of the artists, not the engine. Both engines allow for the creation of complex shaders which would be presented almost identically on either one, as these have more to do with APIs than engines. The other "photoreal" parts such as textures, models and static meshes are in the hands of the 3D artists who create them; again, not the engine. And we have definitely seen more photorealistic UE4 demos:

http://www.digitaltrends.co...

Plus, UE4 now supports Nvidia's Voxel Global Illumination, which is the most advanced lighting engine currently possible in games.

Not to mention, MGSV's environment seems largely static and non-interactive. UE4 enables a much lager degree of dynamism in scenes with its powerful physics libraries.

[MWH]

@LightofDarkness

thanks for the good information LoD. unfortunately not many intellects here, mostly fanboys.

[ABizzel1]

@breakpad

I'm all for using your own engines for more game diversity, but UE is the industry standard and UE4 is a HUGE improvement over UE3 and has been designed for ease of use, affordability, and diversity (all things devs have asked for) so they can make games faster, cheaper, and actually look different and not a generic Gears clone.

http://www.vg247.com/2014/0...

That's 16 different games all using very difference art styles in the same engine. Your complaints are unjust with UE4.

[Magicite]

Is FF15 made on Luminous engine?

[Tornado]

Yes

[Haru]

@breakpad

Agreed Fox engine is superior to UE4 in every single way, but most developers choose to use UE4 because it's cheap flexible and easy to use anyways I hope Konami and other studios stick to their own engine, I'd hate to see every game using UE4..

[Kumomeme]

@breakpad
lazy?lol
building an engine from sratch no easy feat especially trying to make an engine that easy to develop...thats why lot of devs struggled with it which is what frequently happened to japanese devs one of the proof

we dont know much about fox engine,but supposedly it should be opposite compared to luminous and phanta rhei...the development of mgsv proceed smoothly and even had another game(pes 2016) using it..so it safe to say the engine might better than we expect

about luminous and phanta rhei..nothing concrete come out of the company itself but all those due to speculation regarding condition of the game being developed(ffxv,kh3 drop the engine,deepdown)...

for ffvii it would be great if it could actually use luminous but if not,UE4 was great choice..great engine,user friendly,easy to develop,very good support to japanese devs(which is not for UE3) and the game can start be develop fast even after planning from what i'm hear..even devs able to modified or added they own tech like lightning or shader....for now we dont know the length of tabata knowledge about the project or what he actually permitted to say,or we dont know actually how far ffvii remake development proceed although nomura claim it had been year in development..i would suprise if the game been delay due to changing engine like happened with ffxv (ebony) or stuff..just wait...i just hope rather that focus solelly on technical prowess,it been more wise to focuse on the game's gameplay aspect..nomura is kind of artistic style i believe it will turn out great..just hope the development proceed smoothly this time

[DevilOgreFish]

This is actually really big news and out of nowhere too. I didn't think the luminous engine would be this difficult to work with. two out of three titles are switching game engines. UE4 is currently the most versatile engine, and outsourced developers can easily adapt to it's structure. It's probably the most feasible engine in their case, dealing with a balancing act of 4 IPs in development.

[spacedelete]

urgh unreal engine needs to die. so many last gen games used unreal 3 and all of them literally looked the same with the same problems. its better to have a in house engine just look at Frostbite engine very impressive and it would save them money as they won't pay royalties to those cretins at Epic.

[pivotplease]

Like everything was shiny and horrible loading pop-in.

[Kumomeme]

UE4 mileage different than UE3 dude...

[DonkeyDoner]

"I didn't think the luminous engine would be this difficult to work with." ff15 development nearly 10 years and im glad they dont use it, we dont want to wait ff7 for another 10 years

[Kumomeme]

ffxv actually been developed about more 2 years...they revamped the development anew and started ported to the engine several month after E3 2013 if i not mistaken...from before it was running on ebony....

well we dont know much about the engine,UE4 was good choice especially if they want to make it easy for outsourced team to develop,ex cyberconect who is familiar with the engine

[MrSwankSinatra]

It's quick to note that they never implied they were using UE4, nor did they say they wouldn't make FFVII in the luminous engine, they said it just wasn't planned at the moment. I think it's fair to say that FFVII hasn't started development yet so the exact layout for how they are going to make the game hasn't been decided. Obviously it won't start development until FFXV and KH3 are released.

[eyeDEVOUR]

Naw it'll start sooner than that man...The teams/people that do all the early ground work on kh3 and ff15 can atleast start creating assets for 7 while the polish is being added to the other games..

[remixx116]

They said ff7 remake was in development even before the ff7 ps4 PC port was announced.

[Kumomeme]

well,ffxv was develop on ebony first before ported to luminous.....same goes with first footage of kh3 before which is unknown to what engine it running(it was target render) before jumping to luminous(supposedly) and to UE4...i would suprise even though the game claimed being far in development in a year,but new footage we gonna see will be something like target render or something .

[DevilOgreFish]

Be it luminous or UE4 both are great choices. I think though if SE decides to make the switch UE4 would be the best choice. A lot of developers are becoming well acquainted with it's tools, and SE could easily find any studio to help take on the job. The engine is widely accepted.

[paul-p1988]

I wonder if they will keep the W-Item glitch in the game... that glitch made me a millionaire lol

[ScorpianusNoir]

@MrSwank Sinatra and eyeDevour,

Work on Final Fantasy VII remake was begun before the announcement that the updated version, originally released on the PC, was coming to PS4, so the game has already been in some form of production for nearly a year.

http://www.eurogamer.net/ar...

"When we announced the HD port, the PC port on the PS4, we weren't sure when we wanted to announce the remake," Nomura said elsewhere in the interview. "The production was underway then, so there's no real connection between the timing of the two FF7s coming to PS4. We've announced several different titles coming to the PlayStation 4 like World of Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts 3."

[pivotplease]

Hardly in full production though. Just in planning.

[ScorpianusNoir]

A quote from Nomura "The production was underway then"

I can take his word, I guess, or I can take your word.

[WalterWJR]

Have they confirmed voice actors will be in the remake, I would prefer old school text I think.

[Greyfoxdbz]

not likely we will get old school text for a modern game. The text had it's own charm but this remake will need to add voice work to compliment the graphics overhaul and to help flesh out the characters more. We will probably get something similar to the likes of Advent Children. While the movie had problems in terms of story and stuff it was gorgeous visually and stylistically and the fight scenes were heavily choreographed. I think i read that they will draw upon the movie for inspiration though it will probably look much better considering the movie is quite old.

[Revengeance]

Nah this is the only thing I don't want to be in the remake. I want this game to be as close to the original as possible, but putting in voice acting wouldn't change the core of the game. This is actually something I have no problem with them changing.

They should bring back the voice actors from Advent Children.

[Haru]

If you want to play the exactly same game but with better graphics then get the PS4 or PC version

[Revengeance]

Or they can remake it and keep it like the original at its core but improve on it. This is happening because the FANS wished it to happen.

[Tzuno]

It will run on Unreal engine a engine that is easy to port between platforms especially PC.

[thepatientgamer]

Why the hell did they even make the damn engine then!?

[Damien1801]

Because Square-Enix is fucking retarded.