As No Doubt once sang, don't speak

Final Fantasy VII Remake will ditch the text boxes of the original game, opting for fully-voiced presentation instead, Square Enix has announced. The publisher was chatting with Dengeki PlayStation magazine, and revealed a few more details about the hotly anticipated re-imagining, which will spawn its own series consisting of several full games all based upon the PSone original.

"Basically, it will be fully voiced. We still haven't decided the voices of the characters that weren't in Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children," director Tetsuya Nomura explained. For the love of Midgar, we hope that the publisher employs some proper writers and decent voice talent. Alternatively, just keep the Japanese voice tracks on the Blu-ray – we're not sitting through 60 hours of embarrassing Final Fantasy XIII-esque dialogue again.

To be fair, producer Yoshinori Kitase does appear to appreciate that times have changed since the original game released. Touching upon whether the dating segments would be voiced, he said: "It would be impossible not to. However, since it's different from that time and social situation, we need to implement the reproduction of original events carefully."

As for how the world map will work, Kitase wouldn't be drawn into using industry buzzwords. "We can't say anything yet, but we don't plan on fussing about whether it's a so-called open-world or sandbox," he declared. "But since Nomura is more focused on the creation of the scenery, we want to express an environment where character actions affect the scenery."

The duo also touched upon the title's infamous minigames, explaining that it wants to incorporate those that "remain favourable among fans". As such, snowboarding can get in the sea as far as we're concerned. Otherwise, it sounds like the project is still incredibly early. "We're at the stage where we can say we're finally getting started," Kitase concluded. "We have ideas regarding battles, too, but it will take time to drop them into the actual game."

[source gamestalk.net, via gematsu.com, eurogamer.net]