Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth's director, Naoki Hamaguchi, has opened up about Zack Fair's involvement in the game, noting that he is an "immensely important" character who plays a "crucial" role in the story.
20.12.2023 - 12:43 / gamesradar.com / Yoshinori Kitase / Naoki Hamaguchi / Be A / You Can
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is resurrecting the series' staple world map for the first time since Final Fantasy 9, over 23 years ago.
Issue 362 of Game Informer features a huge preview of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, interviewing development figureheads like co-director Naoki Hamaguchi, creative director Tetsuya Nomuyra, and producer Yoshinori Kitase. One feature the preview focuses on is Rebirth's new world map, which is drawing from Final Fantasy's past with a fully open-world map.
Reflecting on the past, Kitase says that the original Final Fantasy featured a fully open-world map, and this continued all the way to Final Fantasy 9 in 2000. "But starting with Final Fantasy 10, when we entered into this real-time 3D world, this is when map development ceased or halted to some degree," Kitase says, adding with 10, players simply chose where they wanted to go and traveled there.
"In that sense, the feeling was that, since it's real-time 3D, it's not quite possible to create this full world map anymore," the producer continued. Kitase assumed that Hamaguchi would want to continue the trend of recent Final Fantasy maps in Rebirth - a map that isn't fully open-world, but instead lets the player explore smaller separate areas.
Both Kitase and Hamaguchi felt like it would be a "disservice" to the original Final Fantasy 7 if Rebirth didn't include an interconnected game map. Other team members like Nomura were happy to hear the world map was back for Rebirth, and the creative director added that it was "always strange" that Final Fantasy did away with the open-world map for a time.
"I thought that you can't really have an RPG without a world map, and specifically for Final Fantasy 7, to fully experience this world, we must have a world map; we can't be without it," Nomura said. Game Informer's preview says Rebirth features "huge" open-world areas as a result, which push players towards the huge side content the new RPG has to offer.
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth releases on February 29, 2024, exclusively for PS5.
You can read up on our upcoming PS5 games guide for a look over all the other exclusives Sony has lined up for the coming year.
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth's director, Naoki Hamaguchi, has opened up about Zack Fair's involvement in the game, noting that he is an "immensely important" character who plays a "crucial" role in the story.
With the release of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth fast approaching, co-director Naoki Hamaguchi has opened up a little on what players can expect from Zack Fair’s inclusion in the game.
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is looking like its going to be a much more expansive game than its predecessor. Its main story alone is said to be around 40 hours long, while Square Enix says that with side content included, that can go up to over 100 hours. A lot of that is obviously going to be thanks to its vast, seamless open world setting, and speaking recently with Game Informer, the action RPG’s developers spoke a bit more about what that will bring to the table.
Unsurprisingly, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is going to continue to expand and recontextualize the original PS1 classic in more ways than one, from its seamless open world map to the content it will house to just how long the game will be. That, unsurprisingly, will mean added screentime and narrative content for a number of characters, among which fan-favourite villain Sephiroth will seemingly be one of the most prominent.
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is going to feature a scene that made the game's Creative Director cry, but it's not what everybody may think.
Final Fantasy 7 RebirthcreativedirectorTetsuya Nomura has revealed that there's one particular scene in the game that makes him want to cry. This article may contain spoilers for the original Final Fantasy 7.
Since Final Fantasy 7 Remake launched in 2021 and given how events played out, everyone has had the same question regarding a particular character’s fate Speaking to Game Informer, director Naoki Hamaguchi and creative director Tetsuya Nomura talk about how the team approached. Spoilers follow for Final Fantasy 7 Remake and the original game, so be warned.
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is shaping up to be a pretty emotional game, as fans of the original will know that there are some proper tear-jerking scenes set to appear. Most of the speculation rightly surrounds the fate of Aerith and whether she'll get skewered by Sephiroth, but there are plenty of other highly emotional scenes in the run-up to that iconic moment.
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth isn’t just remaking the classic game’s middle portion, it’s expanding every single aspect, including how much the iconic Sephiroth shows up in the world map.
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth's director, Naoki Hamaguchi, says that players will get a deeper understanding of Sephiroth than they ever have before and that they might "truly feel bad" for him after getting to know him.
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth's director, Naoki Hamaguchi, says that one of his biggest aspirations for 2024 is for fans of the series to get to see "Aerith's fate unfold".
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth's director, Naoki Hamaguchi, has revealed how Cait Sith plays in a recent preview, confirming that he'll still have luck-based abilities.