When Final Fantasy 8 released on Steam in 2013, the conversion was criticized for having lackluster music compared to the PlayStation original. Happily, it seems that this won’t be the case with the upcoming remaster. Dotemu has confirmed that the Final Fantasy 8 remaster music will be from the PlayStation version.
Final Fantasy games tend to be known for their stellar soundtracks, and Final Fantasy 8 was no exception. This was, after all, only the second game where famed composer Nobuo Uematsu was no longer limited to the synthesized sound libraries of 8-bit and 16-bit consoles.
However, when Final Fantasy 8 arrived on PC in 2000, it used slightly different MIDI compositions instead of the original soundtrack from the PlayStation. Most fans found these to be inferior to the music featured on Sony’s console. As such, they found it quite jarring when the 2013 Steam release also used the same soundtrack as the original PC release.
With this in mind, many fans were worried that the upcoming remaster would follow in the same footsteps as the two previous PC releases. In response to one such question on Twitter, Dotemu, who is working on the remaster with Square Enix, has confirmed that the developers are using the original PlayStation soundtrack.
Fans have been waiting for a proper high-definition remaster of Final Fantasy 8 for a long time now. The game hasn’t been re-released in the same manner as other games in the franchise for a number of reasons. As such, Square Enix and Dotemu seem to be making sure that this remaster gets as much care and attention and possible. They’ve already demonstrated this with the game’s updated graphics, as seen in its E3 2019 trailer, and it’s nice to hear that they’re doing the same for its soundtrack as well.
The Final Fantasy 8 remaster is set to arrive on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC sometime later this year.
