Final Fantasy XIII has already been released in Japan and it has received its fare share of criticism. One of those criticisms was that the game-play is too linear. In an interview with Ultimania magazine, Motomu Toriyama (Director) and Yoshinori Kitase (Producer) discuss the reasons behind developing a game with such linearity.
 

One of the reasons behind the linearity was a design decision and as such it was essential for delivering non-stop action that the developers were aiming for. When confronted about the comparative lack of towns in FF XIII, Toriyama explains that with the advent of HD graphics, creating art for a game has become a far more time consuming process. Within a specific time constraint, developers (and the gamers) have to be content with less.

Kitase went on to cite the same reason for not considering release of HD version of Final Fantasy VII. He said that it has become “… very hard to make games for the PlayStation 3” as opposed to developing games during FFVII days. The sheer amount of time it will take to upscale graphics to contemporary standards appears to be the main deterrent for Square Enix to consider a remake; despite of insistent requests from the game’s fan-base. 

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