The Final Fantasy VII Remake is only a week away now, with pre-loading already going to become available by tomorrow. Square Enix previously shocked gamers when they confirmed that the upcoming game would be more than 100GB in size, despite being only the first part or episode of multiple instalments.

In an interview with USGamer, Square Enix co-director Naoki Hamaguchi clarified that the size of Final Fantasy VII Remake is so big because they used substantially more assets in order to recreate Midgard in much higher detail than the original game.

He said:

“Rather than thinking about repurposing standard assets for individual locations, like the Slums or the Shinra Building, we decided to build each location using unique assets to achieve the quality desired for [Final Fantasy 7 Remake].

As such, we designed assets like the backgrounds, [background music] and characters per location, which allowed for a unique gameplay experience in each area, even from a game design perspective.”

The development team wanted to make Midgard more realistic, in terms of the city’s space, size and density, as well as the depiction of the lives of its many citizens. This explains how the file size could be so massive, since players probably won’t see any of the assets re-used in other parts of the game.

In addition, the physical edition of the Final Fantasy VII Remake will also be coming in two discs, which is rare for a current-gen game. Even similarly-large games like Assassin’s Creed Odyssey came with only one disc.

Final Fantasy VII Remake is slated to release for the PS4 on 10 April 2020. In the meantime, you can check out the demo to tide you over until the game’s full release.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IrheLf0Ki0&w=560&h=315]