Square Enix showed off a huge amount of awesome new Final Fantasy VII Remake stuff for the Tokyo game show. Including a new boss fight, new trailer, more gameplay and footage of summons. Still very little on the Watchmen of Fate though, all we got is theories.

Luckily an amazing reddit user named CryofthePlanet  (nice) has gotten all that lovely Final Fantasy Vii Remake  information for us in one easy to read  area, check that out below or on reddit.

But before that, check out the footage for context, and the TGS trailer here –

EDIT: Translation for all new abilities shown are below!

First of many posts about it, I’m sure, but let’s check off a few things:

• No new trailer, they played the one from the other day again at the end

• Live demo shown, basically the same thing we have already seen except with a little different materia setup; additional new area at the very beginning that is basically just the area down the stairs right before you get to the actual reactor core. The sole enemy (Sweeper) serves as a stagger tutorial.

• Menu was shown, pics already on this subreddit

• There is a “Classic Mode,” which sets the active character to act through AI and allows the player to simply sit and wait for their ATB gauge to fill like the original, allowing you to play the game without having to actively dodge/guard/attack/etc

• The cutscene right before the Guard Scorpion/Scorpion Sentinel fight is shown in its entirety. When Cloud takes the bomb from Barret and after his little moment, Cloud says he’s fine and asks what he should set the timer at. There is a new choice here, and you can either set it at 20 minutes or 30. Once the choice is made, Cloud starts to set the bomb and right before he hits the start button, he hears the scorpion and it goes to the stuff we’ve seen.

• Immediately after the fight, the game does its seamless transition back into gameplay with Cloud saying you have to get moving, and the timer starts up. This was the end of the demo showing.

• Squat minigame was shown along with the tutorial message beforehand. Four button prompts instead of 3, seemed to go in the same order over and over. Also means that Cloud has four “positions” for this instead of three. Looks like a mix of the original game’s squats with Crisis Core’s squat timing kind of deal.

• As you follow the visual aid for the button presses, the speed increases. After a point the display seems to go away while Cloud gets faster.

• If you mess up, Cloud stumbles backward and has to get back on his feet. If this happens, the visual aid comes back and speed resets.

• Last section was the Aps boss fight. Full showing of the (very) short scene we saw in the E3 trailer.

• Plenty of Tifa fighting shown – she’s fast and she’s deadly.

• Tifa seems to have a stacking buff as her mechanic – she is seen using an ATB ability that causes her gloves to glow a yellowish hue. She uses it a second time later and they change to red. This could be increased damage and/or allow more combos or speed.

• Also noticed that Tifa’s attacks seemed faster later on and more intricate, including combos where she launched herself in the air and followed up with a spike kick. Based on the short footage, she seems to gain a lot more speed as she attacks compared to Cloud’s “rotation” of slashes

• Cloud has the Hardedge on in this fight, and three Limits are seen (Healing Wind, Somersault, and Cross-Slash)

• Aerith also has battle footage, but it seems more in line with what we’ve seen in the TGS trailer. Might be more to dissect

• Aps has moments where he jumps back and hangs by the pipes out of reach like the Guard Scorpion (keep in mind Barret isn’t here, but Aerith looks to have long-range standard attacks). He uses his iconic sewer attacks here and they come out of the pipes, which you have to move away from so you’re not hit.

• Aps also has different phases and during one portion, both of his horns are lit up. Each horn becomes a target in and of itself, like the Scorpion Sentinel’s Left Leg and Right Leg.

• More materia confirmed as well. Tifa had on Raise and Poisona. These are the Japanese names, mind you.

• Steal confirmed, it’s equipped on Cloud.

• The Cure on Aerith has a little sign next to it that looks like something between the symbol for male (circle with the arrow in the top right) and a clock. Not sure what this means.

This is surely a list that will continue to grow as more people watch (and rewatch) the footage. I didn’t really focus on translating, but I’m sure it will come soon.

EDIT: Okay, so in addition to the above, I also translated all of the text that we can see and analyzed the attacks, and I found some interesting stuff.

Abilities and Summons

Note: all the names below are based on the Japanese text. The localization should be different, and for the attacks I recognized I noted this.

Cloud

Triangle Attack: Switch between Punisher Mode (Brave Mode in JP) and Operator Mode (Assault Mode in JP)

Braver

Burst Slash: 1 ATB (Should be Focused Thrust in Eng)

Rapid Chain: 1 ATB (Should be Triple Slash in Eng)

Infinite End: 2/All ATB (the big powerful new attack where Cloud spins and jumps up, then slams the blade down for over 3k damage)

• Infinite End seems very powerful and has a really cool wind-up animation with it

Tifa

Triangle Attack: Strong Hit (might be Omnipunch in Eng)

OR

Eight Extremities Fist (yellow charge, think this is separate from Bash)

OR

Beat Rush (red charge)

Unleash Secret Technique: 1 ATB

Heel Drop: 1 ATB

Gather Strength/Concentrate Fighting Spirit: 1 ATB <- not 100%

Chakra (1 ATB)

• Unleash Secret Technique seems to be the ability to use that will stack Tifa’s charges. One use makes her gloves shine yellow, a second use makes them turn red.

• The above charge system seems to be the basis of how Tifa works. I think she deals more damage and has access to more powerful abilities (EEF, Beat Rush) with these stacks, but they go away when these higher abilities are used. This decay is down one level, as you can see her use Beat Rush at one point, then her gloves turn from red to yellow, and then she uses Eight Extremities Fist, then the glow disappears. The charges also seem to have a time limit as the new abilities have a color scheme that looks like the option decays over time. Again, I don’t think either of these are Bash seen in the E3 trailer, but I could be wrong.

• Gather Strength is literally the kanji for “fighting spirit” along with the kanji for “concentration” or “gathering” (assuming I translated it correctly). Gather Strength isn’t super accurate but it works in the context. This ability seems to allow Tifa to either a) do a very powerful flurry of attacks, or b) allow her to use her charge abilities without breaking her stack. I think the latter is the case, and it’s the clip that somebody else posted. She uses a flurry of hits (which could be Beat Rush) and then is seen following it up with Heel Drop (which is the launch-into-the-air-and-dive ability) but her stack doesn’t decay to yellow.

• Chakra did not seem to be used, but it’s probably a healing ability.

Aerith

Triangle attack: Tempest (hold down)

MP Drain (lit. MP Absorption): 1 ATB

Sacred Circle (lit. Sacred Summoning Circle): 1 ATB

Gaia’s Wrath: 1 ATB <- Does not seem to be Titan’s summon, but it is the exact same name (大地の怒り – lit. Anger of the Land, or Wrath of the Earth)

• Little arrow notation on Tempest is due to a charge effect (Triangle needs to be held down for a set amount of time, as shown in the footage)

• Tempest seems to have an AoE effect as the spell lingers after it hits the target (maybe a draw-in effect?) before exploding for multiple hits

Summons

• Summon gauge is present and I think the “certain battles” thing discussed recently is gonna be boss battles or something of the sort.

• Cloud summons Ifrit and everything pauses, ATB gauges stop filling up, and the summon animation plays. Summons fight alongside your party and they will fight with the full number of allies. This is slightly different from their role in FFXII, which is kind of similar (in XII, everyone but the summoner left). In this case Ifrit is seen fighting alongside Cloud, Tifa, and Aerith in real-time.

• The summon gauge appears to gradually fill up as the player attacks the boss. When it completely fills, summoning is enabled; when a summon is called forth, the bar gradually decreases.

• Summons are controlled by the AI and deal standard attacks of their own, but they also have ATB abilities that are used through Tactical Mode for more damage. These abilities show up in a new submenu – Summon Abilities. This appears during the summon time in a similar way to how Limit only shows up when the limit gauge is full.

• When the summon bar depletes, the summon uses their signature attack and is dismissed.

• The option to select “Summon” appears when the gauge is full in the same place and fashion as “Limit”

** SUMMON TUTORIAL MESSAGE: “Summons will participate in battle until the SUMMON gauge reaches zero. Summons will fight of their own accord but by consuming ATB charges, they are able to use abilities.” **

Ifrit

Flare Burst: 2/All ATB

Crimson Dive: 1 ATB

Hellfire: Final attack

Final Fantasy vii remake is coming out March 3rd 2020.