Nov 252024
Over the weekend, remasters of Ever 17: The Out of Infinity and Never 7: The End of Infinity were announced for Switch, PS4, and PC, and today Spike Chunsoft confirmed that they’ll be coming west.
If you’ve never heard of them, these are the first two visual novels in the Infinity series, written by none other than Kotaro Uchikoshi before he did Zero Escape.
According to the official website, Ever 17 is about a group of people trapped in an underwater theme park, while Never 7 follows a protagonist having premonitions of a girl’s tragic death.
(Never 7 is the first game in the series, but all the information about the remastered collection lists them in the order of Ever 17 and Never 7. I’m not sure why.)
The Ever 17 / Never 7 Double Pack will be available on March 6, 2025. Only a digital release has been announced so far, although it looks like the physical Asia release of the double pack will include English.
Now, here’s where things get a little trickier when it comes to fan reception to the news. In 2011, Ever 17 was remade with 3D models and a rewritten script. This remake was only ever released in Japan. The new remaster appears to be based on that remake but with the 2D sprites restored. That means it will have the remake’s script, which some fans say is inferior and gives away the twists too soon (along with some criticism for marketing it as an Uchikoshi game when he wasn’t involved with the rewritten script). So some fans are encouraging new players to play the original Ever 17 before this version.
(While the original Ever 17 was translated, the English version is no longer available, so you’d need to get a Japanese copy and patch it with a fan translation.)
This has caused some consternation around what is otherwise excellent news, which is unfortunate. I’ve been curious about these games for a long time, so I was excited to see the announcement. I don’t know if I’ll try to find a way to play the original first or just dive in with the remaster and hope for the best.
There is also a third game in the series called Remember 11, which isn’t included here, as well as a spin-off and a reboot. Whether we’ll see any of those games again remains to be seen.
Are you interested in the Ever 17 and Never 7 remasters? How do you feel about the script controversy?
Damn even when we get new translations there is controversy. Shame if it’s a script done without the original author’s involvement but I do like the idea of seeing what these earlier games were like!
Yes, it makes for quite a frustrating situation in that way, haha.