In an attempt to make Dragon Quest 7 less bloated, remake producer Takeshi Ichikawa says the team has cut out some of the game's storylines entirely for Reimagined.
Dragon Quest 7 is a strange game in the canon of the series. It does have its fans, but it's very likely that it's the game in the series that most players have abandoned before finishing, because it's simply so long. HowLongToBeat reckons it'll take someone 78 hours to simply mainline the 3DS version, which is already longer than the "Main + Extra" for the second-longest to mainline: Dragon Quest 8. The original PS1 version is even longer, with an estimated 108-hour main story, and those figures don't scratch the surface for anyone who wants to complete everything the JRPG has to offer.
This is partly due to the game being a collection of storylines that take the party all over the world. Square Enix has already confirmed that the game will be getting new scenarios on top of that in the upcoming remake Dragon Quest 7 Reimagined, with the recent State of Play showing off new content starring Kiefer.
However it's also been confirmed that the game will be streamlined somewhat, with it being confirmed that "the amount of time it takes to get to the first battle in the game is much shorter." Speaking to GamesRadar+ in a new interview, producer Takeshi Ichikawa explains: "Some of the [stories] have now been made optional, so you can play them in any order you want." And while this cuts down on the critical path, making the average playthrough somewhat shorter.
But even with the choice to make some optional, that wasn't enough for the team, as Ichikawa explains "a few of the stories which weren't 100% relevant to the main storyline have just been cut entirely."
Obviously, the "Reimagined" subtitle gives away that this was never really intended to be a faithful remake to the original 2000 PS1 game, something which 2016's 3DS remake did provide. Ichikawa explains that back in 2000, "people were looking for one single game that they could spend a huge amount of time in… Now, people are looking for something a bit more compact."
