Image: Square Enix
Japanese video game publisher Square Enix already answered fans' prayers earlier this summer when it revealed, after years of prodding, that it would remake Final Fantasy VII, the wildly popular role-playing game that was first released for the original PlayStation in 1997.Today the publisher may have given a hint as to how that upcoming remake might fare, releasing a version of the game for iOS that does away with the random battles that players normally encountered in the PlayStation original.The game's director, Tetsuya Nomura, revealed in an interview last month that he was not afraid of making "dramatic changes" to the remake, but stressed that he wasn't about to turn the game "into a shooter or something like that."Removing the game's random battles addresses two concerns: one, the constant interruption of these battles are not exactly conducive to mobile gaming, and two, game mechanics have evolved since the original's release in 1997. It's hard to see random battles nowadays as anything other than an attempt to artificially pad the length of a game.The iOS remake, which follows Square Enix's recent history of re-releasing its past games for mobile devices (some have been better received than others), only supports newer devices (iPhone 5s and newer and iPad 3 and newer) and costs $19.99.