It comes as a great surprise to me that Square Enix has announced the far-off Final Fantasy VII remake will be released episodically. While any story-based game- and Role-playing games, especially- can have its narrative broken into smaller pieces, the pacing and amount of content per portion in Final Fantasy VII is questionable, and not necessarily clean-cut. Unless, I don't know, you break it up by the literal CD swaps from the original PS1 release. While many games have attempted episodic release schedules in the age of digital distribution, there are very few that seem justified in doing so. An episodic game needs to have a structure in which each installment tells a concise narrative, no matter how much cliff-hanging the writers wish to create in order to encourage a player to buy the next installment. What is stranger- to me, at least- is that there are specific franchises that feel primed to adopt an episodic release schedule yet have not done so.