For better of for worse, the Final Fantasy VII Remake development team is finding inspiration in its divisive sibling series, Final Fantasy XIII. In May's issue of Game Informer (via IGN), whose cover story is dominated by Final Fantasy XV, Yoshinori Kitase addressed the scope of each "episode" for Final Fantasy VII Remake: "It will essentially be a full scale game for each part of the multi-part series [...] if we're just looking at each of these parts, one part should be on par with the scale of one Final Fantasy XIII game."

In the Kitase's defense, he didn't really push the comparison any further than that and added, "I, along with [Tetsuya] Nomura-san and [Kazushige] Nojima-san--who are involved with the remake--were also involved with the original Final Fantasy. We were the people who created it, so in that sense, we don't think anything is untouchable. That isn't to say we're changing everything!"

It seems that Kitase and company are trying to keep their heads on their shoulders about the project. And as weird as the Final Fantasy XIII games were, I quite liked Lightning Returns, they had fast development cycles (comparatively speaking) and the last two titles in the Lightning Saga were packed with fun and engaging content.

No word on Final Fantasy VII Remake's first episode release date but I would not personally expect it before 2018.