Final Fantasy 7 Remake devs not focused on whether it’s open-world or sandbox

Details on Final Fantasy 7 Remake have slowly been trickling out over the past few weeks. Last week, we learned that Square Enix knows how many parts of the game there would be, but wouldn't be sharing that information and that various areas of Midgar would be explorable.

A recent report from the Japanese blog Hachima Kikou (via DualShockers) has revealed more details on the Remake, including gameplay aspects. According to Hachima Kikou, Producer Toshinori Kitase and Director Tetsuya Nomura sat down with Dingeki PlayStation for an interview on Final Fantasy 7 Remake. The interview has not been published, but apparently Hachima Kikou got a look at it and pulled a bit of information out of it

In the interview, Kitase and Nomura revealed that the development team is not concerned with whether the game will be considered and open world or sandbox game. The focus for the world's development is on the environments and how the characters will affect them.

The developers went on to say that Final Fantasy 7 Remake fan-favorite minigames would be making a return to the game and that they are considering to include the smaller minigames as well. Date events will also be making a return to the game, but the developers will be implementing it "carefully" because the social situation today is different than when the game was originally launched.

As far as development goes, an idea of the game's battle system has been set in motion, but will take time to implement. Neither Kitase nor Nomura could share whether the game will release before January 31st, 2017, but there will be more information after both World of Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts II.8 HD release in 2016.