With some of the major criticisms for Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth revolving around its open world, director Naoki Hamaguchi has acknowledged that there is certainly fatigue in the fan base with the genre. In an interview with Eurogamer, he noted that one of the team’s goals with the upcoming Final Fantasy 7 Revelation has been to ensure that the title doesn’t overdo it with its open-world aspects.
Since Revelation’s world is slated to be “even bigger than it was in Rebirth”, Hamaguchi said that it was important for the team to make sure that the players don’t have too much trouble finding parts of the game they enjoy. “The world is even bigger than it was in Rebirth, so it is more important than ever for us to ensure there’s enough guidance here, so people have no issues enjoying what this game has to offer,” he said.
“There are a lot of open world games out in the world right now, and [the idea of ‘open world fatigue’] is a very important concept to me. It depends on personal preference and different perceptions, but for me personally, I know I’ve had the experience where I’ve been thrown out into an open world game and not known where to go, not known where to begin, and not known what to do. But at the same time, the concept of being thrown into this wondrous world where anything goes is amazing.”
“But for me personally, as a creator, I think it’s very important to offer proper guidance for the players in open world games. It’s important for players to know what to do, and know where to go. In Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, we made sure to make it easy for the players to understand how much content there is, and how difficult that content is. That design philosophy is applied to Revelation: players have all the guidance that they need. This is something that both myself and the development team were very careful about when we designed the game.”
In the same interview, Hamaguchi also spoke about the combat of Final Fantasy 7 Revelation and how it was improved over the well-praised system of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. While acknowledging that the team reached what it considered “a perfected state” with the latter, the former will see a further evolution thanks to its FITS system that gives players more choice in their party members’ various roles.
“If we were to just continue to adopt the same exact hybrid combat system from Rebirth into Revelation, a lot of people are probably going to feel that it’s a bit stale [laughter]. It’s not offering anything new or refreshing, so we did want to add something new,” he said.
“I guess you become guided to select certain characters in certain situations. [The system] didn’t truly offer that freedom of choice when it comes to the character choice. So we were thinking, what could we do to address that?”
Final Fantasy 7 Revelation is slated to cap off the Remake trilogy when it comes out next year on PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch 2. Rumors have indicated that the team might even be working on some post-launch story DLCs for it. In the meantime, Hamaguchi has spoken about how it’s going to be an emotional journey for players, with the same sentiment being echoed by Cloud Strife’s voice actor.
