Final Fantasy 7 Revelation director reveals how game's 'weird' feeling was fixed

Final Fantasy 7 Revelation director Naoki Hamaguchi revealed how he and the development team worked on an issue that could have made the upcoming game feel "weird".

Final Fantasy 7 Revelation is the third and final entry in the Final Fantasy 7 Remake trilogy, finishing off the retold story from the 1997 classic Final Fantasy 7.

It looks to be even bigger in scope than Rebirth, which is already a big game itself, with new and returning explorable areas as well as the Highwind (an airship) making its first appearance in the Remake trilogy where players can travel around the world quickly by air.

And given the imminent doom the planet finds itself in Revelation, Hamaguchi told Indy100 balancing the feel between the imminent threat and exploring the open world while completing side quests was crucial.

"We had a lot of positive comments on the scale of the game and diversity of gameplay," he said via a translator about the playable Gamescom demo.

"A few people did say we've got meteor up there in the sky, weapons, the world is approaching the end, there's a sense of imminent threat - exploring the map and doing side content might feel a bit weird.

"That was something I was aware of and encouraged change on a few times.

"To give a specific example, if someone was to say 'the world could end tomorrow, we need to go and save the planet right now', if you then do side content and explore the world then that's going to feel like a bit of a detour and a bit of derailment."

There's so much to do and explore in Final Fantasy 7 Revelation / Square Enix

Hamaguchi went on to say this initial conundrum has actually played quite a key part in how the characters develop.

"The approach I wanted to take instead was more along the lines of these main characters thinking 'if the world were to end tomorrow and I might die in that final battle, what would I want to have done?'" he said.

"So instead of rushing into it, they're looking at themselves, their motivations and really coming to terms with that before heading off.

"I was really careful in our approach to this. It's the main characters going out and looking for their reasons to fight and as they explore the world map and take on a lot of this content, it's all tied close together.

"It's not they're taking some kind of wild detour while the world is in crisis."

Final Fantasy 7 Revelation releases on 8 April 2027 on PS5, XBOX Series X/S, Nintendo Switch 2 and PC.

Elsewhere from Indy100:

• Final Fantasy 7 Revelation director addresses Chadley and MAI complaints
• Final Fantasy 7 Revelation will not feature Cloud or Tifa for good chunk of the game

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