Square Enix is slowly losing its ability to keep any information secret, maybe just the release date… but they haven’t even announced the remake yet!

Someone on Reddit has been talking about the remake in the Final Fantasy IX subreddit, and we’re not sure if any of what they’re saying is true. The person knows someone who works for a major company, but it’s not Square Enix directly, but there is inside information out there. They have seen and played an early build of Final Fantasy IX Remake. Originally, the publisher had planned to make the game a timed exclusive for the successor platform, Nintendo Switch, in order to attract an audience beyond younger gamers to the big N. They mentioned the anime series, and that the game could now be more multiplatform due to a new strategy within the company.

The game has been in various studios. It is not being developed by Square Enix, but only supervised. It was originally planned as a medium size title, but then it became an HD title (bigger) and might be split into two parts by the Japanese publisher. The end of the first part could be the fog disappearing from the continent and Dagger being crowned (at least that was the plan in this early version). There may be a lot of changes in the story. Salamandar and Eiko appear earlier, but not as team members. The cargo ship scene is different (all three Black Waltz appear in the boss, the second one might be female based on the voice acting). Salamandar and Lani first appear at the Lindblum Festival. There is no Outer Continent, the Iifa Tree is on a remote island on the Misty Continent. Ruby has a larger role and is involved in the raid. In Lindblum you can have big Eikon battles against Ramuh and Atromos, in Iifa-fa you can face Bahamut and Leviathan. Freya’s character design is quite different, but she is still a rat.

Support abilities and magic stones are linked to the lore, and somehow the mist plays a role. The story is much more focused on the fog than the original, Tetra Master uses a dice system for card battles, it’s not known how the trance works, and combat will be turn-based. The camera will zoom in dynamically, and the soundtrack is unchanged (probably just a placeholder). The graphics don’t look like the Memoria project. The lighting and rendering are more like the Final Fantasy VII Remake, but the character models and art direction follow the CG (computer graphics) scenes of the original.

This is all unofficial.

Source: Reddit