You can't say you didn't see this one coming, just a little. First announced to great fanfare, Square Enix's minimising of expectation surrounding the full remake of their 1997 magnum opus has been threefold: First they came out and said they were altering the combat system to remove turn-based battles, then the iconic RPG was going to be releasing episodically, and now we've got producer Yoshinori Kitase commenting that 2016 will be a "year of preparations" for the project. The quote comes from an interview in the January issue of Famitsu, where Kitase states I believe that this year will still be a year of preparations for Final Fantasy VII Remake, before then going on to justify it with some pretty spectacular PR hokum - Id like to create a new kind of value for the hardware that is the PlayStation 4 for our next announcement. Whatever that 'new kind of value' is, it'll forever pale in comparison to the fervent displays of table-flipping fandom we had when seeing the remake announcement in the first place. To that end, if you've followed along behind the scenes, you'll see that Sony only inked the deal to get it off the ground some weeks before E3, before Director Tetsuya Nomura wasn't aware he was even involved until he saw the trailer with his name on. Such things don't paint the best picture for FF VII, and it's high-time we admit Square and Sony have jumped the gun on this by a good few years, as factoring in a standard triple-A development time means you won't see the full game until at least 2019. What are your expectations for FF VII? Let us know in the comments if you still think the first episode will make it out before Christmas.