Final Fantasy VIII Remastered will offer a triple-speed mode, battle cheats, PC exclusive bonuses

by Adam Vitale and Kite Stenbuck on 22 June, 2019

Final Fantasy VIII Remastered, announced at E3 2019, is set to launch later this year for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC via Steam. Like other Final Fantasy re-releases, it will have some bonus cheats implemented into the game for those wanting a speedier playthrough. In an interview with Famitsu magazine, Producer Yoshinori Kitase details the following additions to the game:

Final Fantasy VIII Remastered Boost settings

Triple Speed: Speeds up the entire game 3 times (excluding movies)
Battle Enhancements: Max HP & ATB during battles, and always able to use special moves
No Encounter: Will no longer encounter enemies (excluding events)

Final Fantasy VIII Remastered PC Version Cheats

The PC version of Final Fantasy VIII Remastered will have even more cheats available exclusively to that version. It's not clear why this isn't uniform across all the releases, but these additional options are as follows as listed in Famitsu:

Obtain all items
Obtain all abilities
Maxed G.F. levels
Maxed Gil
Maxed magic
Obtain all special moves
Obtain all cards
And other detailed customizations in the system settings

Kitase also notes that the Chocobo World Pocketstation minigame mode won't return in this remaster. To compensate for that, unique reward items from this mode can be obtained from Rinoa's special move Angelo Search.

Additionally, Dotemu has confirmed their involvement in the development of Final Fantasy VIII Remastered via Twitter. Dotemu previously contributed to the PC versions of Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy IV, in addition to other ports like Ys Origin for consoles. While the extent of their participation isn't quite clear, they have confirmed that this new version will use the PlayStation version soundtrack, not the lower-quality audio of the current PC version.

Current PC Version Cheat Comparison

The current version of Final Fantasy VIII on PC already has some cheats built into it. For comparison with the upcoming remaster, these cheats in the current PC version of Final Fantasy VIII are:

A Magic Booster that can give the player free low-medium level spells (Cure, Cura, Curaga, Fire, Fira, Blizzard, Blizzara, Thunder, Thundara, Sleep, Blind, Silence, Berserk, Bio, Esuna, Aero, Confuse, Break, Zombie).
A high-speed mode that can fast-forward through everything, though fast-forward speed varies from gameplay to cutscene and can be unstable.
A toggle that makes HP, ATB, and Limit Break always full or available.
A toggle that makes any action deal 9999 damage.
A cheat to bring all acquired G.F. AP to the maximum level.
A cheat to max out acquired magic and gil.

The current PC version of Final Fantasy VIII also contains Chocobo World PocketStation minigame, which has been removed in Final Fantasy VIII Remastered.