Harrow posted:

I dunno, I think people underestimate what Square-Enix can do when they actually buckle down and develop things. The really long development cycles tend to happen because things get stuck in preproduction hell for ages as they spin their wheels and try out tons of different approaches. That's why FF7R Part 1 took five years--the actual development of the part we got probably only took two and a half or three years at most because they ditched Cyberconnect2's version two years in. Same for FFXV, which spent about seven years in preproduction with concepts being developed and thrown out before Tabata came in. Then it took three years to develop the actual game we got.

Unless FF7R somehow tumbles into the "reconceptualize the entire project" stage, I think even an "open environments" version of part 2 wouldn't necessarily take a huge amount of time for them to develop. I wouldn't expect them to totally rewrite and restructure the story to make it a Witcher-style open world or anything, but I also don't think they'd necessarily have to take a hundred years to make bigger environments or even an FFXV-sized world. (Actually I wouldn't be surprised if "make areas with a lot more open space" is actually less work than making sure every area is a tightly-designed linear experience with unique puzzle mechanics and assets like FF7R part 1 often has. One reason open world games are as common as they are is that "just make more space the player has to move through" is one of the easiest ways to pad out a game's length.)