Just last month, Square Enix finally unveiled the second chapter in the Final Fantasy VII remake trilogy with Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. While there’s no release date available yet, Square Enix has slowly been trickling info out regarding the game and its development.
Speaking to Japanese gaming site Dengeki Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth Executive Producer Yoshinori Kitase, Producer Mariko Sato, and Creatuve Director Tetsuya Nomura talked a bit about the game’s development, and even some gameplay-related details too. Kitase and Nomura confirmed that players shouldn’t expect to visit locations in the same order as in the original FF7 in Rebirth, though nothing has been omitted, but rather, just the order of when you’ll visit specific locations that were changed.
Kitase: I can’t reveal the specific scope of the story, but there are no major events from the original version that are missing from the entire story. However, in “FFVII REBIRTH” you will not necessarily visit the locations that appeared in the original version in the exact same order. Some locations are visited in a different order.
Nomura: It’s just that the order in which you visit the locations has changed, but don’t worry, it doesn’t mean that some locations have been lost entirely.
In the same interview, the devs mentioned that the actual development time on the game hasn’t taken three years, as the studio spent one year making Final Fantasy 7 Remake: Intergrade and the PC version of Remake. Speaking of which, the fact that FF7 Rebirth is coming only to PS5 was a good thing for the dev team, as Kitase notes taht shifting development to the PS5 environment made developing Rebirth easier.
Kitase: The fact that we produced “FFVII REMAKE INTERGRADE” after “FFVII REMAKE” also had an impact. Thanks to the shift to the PS5 environment there, development of “FFVII REBIRTH” went smoothly
Kitase: As I mentioned in my developer message, the development speed is truly astonishing for a title of this scale. After “FFVII REMAKE” was created, we spent about a year developing the PC version and “FFVII REMAKE INTERGRADE,” and then started work on “FFVII REBIRTH,” so the actual development period was less than three years.
Elsewhere in the interview, Nomura confirmed that the 3D models for the characters remain unchanged from FF7 Remake to Rebirth other than Yuffie’s, which was modified from Intergrade (though some characters were adjusted).
Finally, the studio confirmed that the closing chapter in the trilogy will also start with an “R,” so make your guesses now! I think it’ll be “Reborn” but that’s just a hunch.
There’s no WAY in hell this Rebirth game is going to do well. Most of the FFVII fans have already abandoned this game. And not just for the butchered story, either. They already left due to the fact that this is just a money grab and multi-part game. I have a feeling they lost at LEAST 50% of their sales with their terrible treatment of this game.
I haven’t heard Square release ANY sales announcements regarding this game since they announced it sold 5 million copies back in 2020. Why? Because this game TANKED! A game like this, so high budgeted and barely breaking 5 million copies??? I don’t care what anyone else thinks, this is a failure when you have games like Zelda selling 26 million copies in today’s modern world (hence the fact OoT was the previous best seller with 7 million copies) and God of War 2018 going from 5 million on PS2 to a whopping 23 million on PS4.
Times have changed and I feel Square really fucked this one up. Kinda sad too because the game is actually well done. As a game I think I may even enjoy it moreso than the original with its more hands on, tactical gameplay. It’s more hands on and tense, making you really think about every move – especially on hard mode. But that’s just not enough when one of the greatest stories in videogaming has been flushed down the toilet.