Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is a massive game, perhaps the biggest mainline game in the entire Final Fantasy series, outside of the MMOs. It adopts the cornucopia approach to open-world design, bursting with side quests, minigames, recreational activities, and more for you to partake in—all while Cloud and company are supposed to be saving the world. Some players enjoyed the ability to lose dozens of hours to these distractions, but for others, it was all a bit much, with this content sometimes pulling the focus away from the stuff they cared about. Nevertheless, based on the first hands-on demo of Final Fantasy VII Revelation, the team behind these games has doubled down on that open-world design ethos.
“We’re well aware of players and critics, how they felt about the abundance of content we had in Rebirth,” Final Fantasy VII Revelation director Naoki Hamaguchi tells Kotaku. “But that being said, this whole discussion and debate about ‘is more better or is less better?’ is not the really important part we need to think about. At the end of the day, it’s really all about the discussion of preferences. It’s about how certain players feel about this approach of having more content, but also just the game design of how we can present this.”
Revelation significantly ups the ante in terms of the remake trilogy’s open-world design, adding entirely new regions like Mideel and Wutai, while letting players return to every single location from Rebirth. In the demo I played, I was dropped right into the thick of the open world as the party gains access to Final Fantasy VII’s famous airship, the Highwind. Right off the bat, there’s a half-dozen regions open, each filled with a handful of quests, new photo opportunities, collectibles, hints of the fearsome Weapon battles, and much more. In a word, it’s overwhelming. But Hamaguchi says this sort of scope has been the intent all along.
“When you look at the original FF7, one of the big appeals wasn’t just the main story; it was also the fact it had a diverse amount of side content in quests and minigames,” Hamaguchi says, “For both Rebirth and Revelation, the core design philosophy that we had to reflect was that diverse amount of side content. After Rebirth, should we have less content for Revelation? That was never part of the discussion. That being said, we did see a lot of ways we could improve in terms of how intuitive the gameplay could be.”
Open-world rewards
It certainly seems like the intent with Revelation is additive, like adding another layer on top of an already towering cake. A precarious idea, to be sure, but one that could pay off. According to Hamaguchi, this round will be far more about player freedom and preferences, what each individual player wants to engage with. At Gamescom, a trailer showed off the new cutscene-skip option, but Hamaguchi also notes that players will be able to skip minigames if they wish—while minigames will also now have difficulty options included.
This sort of idea extends to almost every part of the game, as much more thought has been put into the actual rewards for doing side quests and other pieces of optional content, directly addressing criticism from Rebirth. Hamaguchi tells me a major point of feedback from the previous game was that too many rewards were tied directly to combat, such as equipment, weapons, skills, and so forth. This is why the team has strived to add far more variety to the rewards that can enhance things outside of combat, such as alternate costumes for every character. Coinciding with that, Hamaguchi stresses they’ve also made it clearer what rewards players will get from each minigame or other side activity, thus letting them better decide whether they want to engage with something or simply skip it.
But, of course, the other element here is that this is the finale of the trilogy, and a literal meteor looms large on the horizon, ready to smash the planet to pieces.
“What [the party’s] responsibility is in terms of stopping the meteor and saving the planet, but also these in-depth internal moments where they question themselves—bits and pieces of that will be illustrated through side content,” Hamaguchi says. “Previously we’ve talked about how each player might have a different experience depending on the character moments they see. So having this side content will give different impressions for certain players, depending on what they choose to engage with.”
Falling in love with the Highwind
The way you travel the world containing all these mainline quests and optional activities is drastically different this time around, as the Highwind provides absolute freedom to traverse the entire world at will, skydive, and land anywhere you want. But it’s also intentionally designed to enrich that experience of getting to know the party and their allies, and give them a sort of place to call home.
“As you progress through the main story and various explorations, characters’ interactions that take place within the Highwind will change. You’ll see new ones alongside your adventure, and also obtain items like memorabilia you can see inside the ship,” Hamaguchi says. “There are ways for players to enjoy the changes within that specific space. So in that sense, I think players will be able to have that specific kind of attachment to the Highwind.”
Interestingly, while exploring the ship myself, there was one particularly standout detail, which Hamaguchi said I was the very first person to notice. In one of the crew rooms, there’s a billboard with two photos from Rebirth attached: the selfie Cloud and Aerith take and the picture of the condor. The camera feature has been enhanced in Revelation, letting you take selfies as well as pictures of party members, cats, and more while out exploring. When I asked if these would be reflected on the ship, in a sort of Final Fantasy XV-esque way, Hamaguchi chuckled and reiterated that items, like photos, will be reflected in the Highwind.
Of course, Revelation’s renewed focus on “freedom” extends past side content and is baked into the major additions coming to the combat system, which essentially fall into two categories: the job-like FITS system and the two final party members, Cid and Vincent.
Despite their seeming similarity to the jobs of many other Final Fantasy games, it seems the Revelation team is actually reluctant to call FITS that.
A job system for the modern era
“We were trying to figure out a way we could expand the combat system further from Rebirth. When you look at the magic elements that you can put in combat, there’s Materia and that character can then use that magic. We wanted to find a way to expand that magical combat element in Revelation,” says battle director Teruki Endo. “That said, the initial discussions we had within the team were that we wanted to implement something that was an original/unique idea, not tied to the job system.”
But Endo explains that the team realized there were already a lot of systems piling up, from ATB and Materia, to the Remake trilogy’s brand-new Synergy system. So in order to make it more intuitive for players, the team landed on roughly tying the FITS system to the Final Fantasy series’ recurring concept of jobs, to make it more easily approachable for players both familiar with the series at large and newcomers. Because the idea didn’t originate as a callback to the job systems of earlier games, however, Revelation focused in on four specific options that can add a massive amount of variety: Warrior, Knight, Black Mage, and Summoner. Endo notes that because the system was developed quickly and fluidly, none of the other jobs from the series were ever considered.
But technically, Revelation sort of gets a fifth bonus job through the addition of Cid who, aside from Final Fantasy Origin: Stranger of Paradise, marks the first time we’ve seen a Dragoon implemented into an action-RPG combat system.
“Dragoon is indeed one of the fan-favorite jobs from the series, and that was one of the big foundations we had for Cid as a character in this game. Him being a Dragoon, but not just a Dragoon; he likes to fly, he likes to be in the air,” Endo says. “We wanted to reflect that nature in battle, so he’s very adept at aerial combat compared to other characters. He can fly and jump high in the air and attack. In previous games, there was a jump Materia, but that was more to give variation in terms of combat choices. Cid in Revelation is different, because it’s a lot more action-oriented compared to that.”
Whereas Cid was based on that love of Dragoons, Endo wanted to provide something more fresh and new with the game’s other newly playable character, Vincent. Compared to the other ranged character in the trilogy, Barret, Vincent is more “flashy and aggressive.” The idea here was to start from scratch and create something entirely different from the other characters, with Endo saying, “Once I have a solid foundation [of my own ideas], I’ll look at [elements] that fans would want to see from Vincent’s gameplay.”
Vincent’s expanded role
While we’ve seen Vincent pull off his “Galian Beast” limit break, the one thing obviously missing from what we’ve seen thus far are his other high-powered abilities. When I pushed Endo further on whether the likes of Death Gigas and Hellmasker could appear—both attacks in which Vincent transforms into horror-movie-style monstrosities to wreak havoc on his foes—he let out a laugh and said, “I guess what I can say is that I hope fans look forward to it. But there were certainly discussions within the development team to understand what ways we could have those monsters appear in the game.”
And that’s far from the only interesting detail on how Vincent’s role in Revelation will be expanded. In the original FF7, Vincent was entirely optional, and actually remarkably easy to miss. Even then, his role in the story and interactions with other characters are somewhat subdued, although he bears the most direct link to the villain Sephiroth, outside of Cloud himself. That’s exactly why I thought it was extremely interesting that Vincent and Sephiroth have been chosen as the two characters to receive post-launch DLC stories.
Hamaguchi reveals that there were actually four ideas for the DLC that were kicked around, but he’d personally grown attached to Vincent so much that he knew the character had to get one when it was narrowed down. These new DLC stories will not alter the finale of Revelation, which Hamaguchi says will bring the remake trilogy “to a clear ending…That’s not going to change.” But it certainly sounds like Vincent has received a significantly expanded role.
“When you look at Vincent, the character and his background, he was formerly with the Turks. He’s also an employee of Shinra. As you mentioned, he also has this relationship with Sephiroth. So, in that regard, you might be able to see these story moments that show that kind of connection he has with different characters,” says Hamaguchi. “One thing I can say is that as director of the trilogy, throughout the development of Revelation, I feel I got to know Vincent more as a character. I feel like I fell in love with him even more. And I think Vincent fans will be able to share that experience as well.”
