The Final Fantasy IX: Memoria Project isn’t playable, but the team of professional developers want to remind Square Enix that “it could be done”.

It’s worth discussing what precisely the Final Fantasy IX: Memoria Project is. The concept, which already has a website, is not playable. It was created by fans and is a passion project. It’s handled by several game developers and artists who want to translate the Final Fantasy IX world into modern graphics and have published the first video of their work. It’s called “Welcome to Alexandria.”

The Final Fantasy IX: Memoria Project began in January 2020. At the time, only two people were working on it. Things didn’t change much until March of this year when the team started to expand, and now, twenty-eight people are working on the Final Fantasy IX reimagining. The project is being led by Dan Eder, a senior 3D character artist on the newly announced MultiVersus (which we covered yesterday, but it has been rumoured before for some time).

Eder told Gematsu that Final Fantasy IX: Memoria Project is not playable. The idea is to show what the team’s dream project would be like for a current-generation, AAA-tier remake, and maybe get the attention of Square Enix (who would have little legal recourse, as it doesn’t seem like the Eder’s team would share their activities with us in a playable edition…).

Eder said that the Alexandria exploration gameplay is currently being used as a depth target for Final Fantasy IX: Memoria Project. Later, however, they plan to work on the cutscenes and then some combat sequences, so by that point, they’ll have reached vertical slice status. (Game development jargon: it’s an incomplete, playable version of what a game could be capable of if it gets the green light from a publisher/financier.)

The idea is not bad, and since non-hobby developers make it, you should set the bar accordingly.

Source: Gematsu