Final Fantasy 8 Finally Getting Remastered for PS4, Switch, Xbox One, and PC Later This Year

Square Enix announced a revamp and port of the oft-overlooked Final Fantasy 8 during its E3 2019 press conference this evening. The revamp is being handled by DotEmu, which also worked on the re-released version of Final Fantasy 7 for Nintendo Switch.

Like other recently-revamped Final Fantasy games, Final Fantasy 8 features cleaned-up graphics like upscaled polygon models and cleaned-up pre-rendered backgrounds. We can also assume that it will have all the other bells and whistles of the other versions as well, including the ability to speed up the gameplay.

This is exciting news for a couple of reasons. First, most of the modern Final Fantasy revamps to date are pretty great, especially after that aggravating Final Fantasy 7 music bug was fixed. Classic Final Fantasy games are consistently must-plays, but they can be a little slow sometimes. The revamped games' additional options and features help speed things along with the going gets tiring.

Second, Final Fantasy 8 is something of a prodigal child in the Final Fantasy universe. It's not a game that's easy to replay, because to date, Square Enix has hesitated to give it a widespread release on digital storefronts. Final Fantasy fans like to guess about why we haven't seen a revamped Final Fantasy 8 yet, and those reasons span the gamut from "It's just not popular enough" to "Someone lost the source code."

Either way, Kat insists Final Fantasy 8 is one of the best games in the series despite its status as a black chocobo, and we'll soon all get our chance to form our own opinions. Look for the Final Fantasy 8 remaster on PS4, Switch, Xbox One, and PC later this year. Don't forget to look over all our E3 2019 coverage, too!