Square Enix's custom-built Luminous Engine, which powers the upcoming Final Fantasy XV, reportedly won't be used in developing Tetsuya Nomura's remake of Final Fantasy VII.
Final Fantasy XV director Hajime Tabata confirmed this somewhat surprising news in an interview with Nova Crystallis last week at gamescom. "Final Fantasy VII (Remake) is not planned to be made with that," Tabata told the outlet bluntly.
This is a bit puzzling, as Square Enix has undoubtedly poured a hefty chunk of change in the creation of the Luminous Engine. You'd think the developer would want to make use of it with more than just one game. That said, it stands to reason that Luminous may not be all that easy and intuitive to work with, as powerful as it may be. Sure, Final Fantasy XV may look gorgeous, but it has taken Square an insanely long time to develop the forthcoming JRPG.
I'm sure the studio doesn't want Final Fantasy VII Remake to take forever to get out the door, so I suspect they'll be developing the title using Unreal Engine 4. After all, Square announced just last year that Kingdom Hearts iII was dropping Luminous in favor of Epic's new engine.
Final Fantasy VII Remake was announced back at E3 during Sony's press conference for PlayStation 4. There's no confirmed release window, so we may be waiting for quite a while before this one hits store shelves.
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