Naoki Hamaguchi had one “non-negotiable premise” when he began remaking Final Fantasy 7 as a three-part trilogy: each chapter had to feel like it’s own complete, individual experience, despite the fact they were all essentially one third of a larger story.
The Final Fantasy 7 Revelation director said as much in an interview with Edge magazine‘s 429 issue. “Even as a multi-part series, providing a complete experience in each individual game was a non-negotiable premise from the very beginning,” Hamaguchi explains. “The biggest thing to avoid in a multi-part series is having the creators think ‘there’s more to come, so it’s fine to stop here for now’.”
As such, each part ends during one of the original game’s most climatic scenes. 2020’s Final Fantasy 7 Remake finished with Cloud and his ragtag party escaping the city of Midgar, right before heading into a much larger, more colorful world. And 2024’s Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth closes right after one of gaming’s most famous and tragic scenes ever, leading quite dramatically into the finale.
But the developers took a few big liberties, too. In Rebirth, long-time fans might have noticed that a couple locations and towns from the original game were entirely absent, and there’s a very good reason for that – Rebirth was already far too big for many players.
“When we looked at the overall plot and gameplay experience of Rebirth, we determined that depicting those elements [Rocket Town and Wutai] at the same time would have made the game too dense with information, disrupting the story’s pacing and the focus of the second game,” Hamaguchi says.
The Remake trilogy lead also delved a bit into Cloud’s character arc in the upcoming third and final chapter. “In the footage we unveiled at SGF, people noted that the way Cloud speaks had become gentler than before. While I’d prefer not to go into detail, I can say that players will experience a side of Cloud that hasn’t been seen in previous titles,” he adds. “I hope players will pay attention not only to how [Cloud] confronts [the crisis in Revelations’ story], but also to his relationships with his companions and the answer he ultimately arrives at as an individual.”