10 Brand New Details We’ve Learned About Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth

With Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth’s launch looming large on the horizon, excitement surrounding the game is continuing to mount by the day, and Square Enix and Sony recently fanned those flames with a sizeable State of Play presentation that showcased a host of new gameplay footage and revealed new details on the game. As we count the days down to its launch, here, we’re going to go over a few key details we’ve learned about Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth from its recent showcase.

WORLD MAP REGIONS

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is expanding upon its predecessor’s foundations in many ways, chief among them being by having a massive, completely seamless world map that will allow for much more exploration and optional content than FF7 Remake. During the game’s State of Play presentation, director Naoki Hamaguchi spoke about several regions that you’ll find in the game’s world. There’s the Grasslands, south of Midgard, which will seemingly be the first region players will explore; Junon, which is named after the Shinra military fortress city that serves as the region’s biggest landmark; the Corel region, where you’ll find plenty of sparkling beaches and the resort town of Costa del Sol, not to mention the famous Gold Saucer; the Gongaga region and the Cosmo Canyon region, the homes of crucial characters in Zack Fair and Red XIII respectively; the Nibel region, where Cloud and Tifa grew up together, and which will have a crucial role to play in the story; and finally, the high seas of the Meridian Ocean, where you’ll be able to piot a seaplane.

NEW DETAILS ON WORLD INTEL AND PROTORELICS

Assisting Chadley with gathering World Intel throughout Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth’s vast world map is how players will primarily be developing their Materia this time, but exactly what form will it take? Well, many. These optional activities will task players with a variety of different objectives, from wrangling chocobos to playing with mooglettes, from taking on massive, mechanical sentries in combat to finding hidden areas and dungeons with secret, fearsome bosses. Additionally, helping Chadley will also entail looking for mysterious artifacts known as Protorelics, each one of which will come with a unique side story, featuring different characters, minigames, enemies, and more. Scattering all Protorelics will also lead to some significant new developments, Square Enix has teased.

ODD JOBS

Odd Jobs will be another important game-wide side activity in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, which are basically side quests that Cloud, as a mercenary, will pick up from characters that he will meet throughout the world. Like other side activities in the game, it seems like variety will be a key focal point here. Based on the footage we saw in the recent State of Play, you’ll be doing everything from luring chickens and hunting treasure to clicking photographs and tackling obstacle courses as… frogs. Yeah.

According to Square Enix, each Odd Job will have its own unique story, while some (like one that will revolve around Johnny, a character fans will remember from 2020’s Remake) will also borrow elements from the original FF7.

GOLD SAUCER MINIGAMES

Minigames are going to have a huge presence in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, and it looks like there’s going to be a variety of them on offer. Many will be found spread out throughout the game’s world map, while several will also be concentrated within a single location- that, of course, being Gold Saucer. A number of these were showcased in the recent State of Play showcase, including 3D Brawler and chocobo racing (whose names are pretty self-explanatory) and G-Bike, which will see you taking on enemies while racing a bike through an expressway. Others, like a dogfighting space combat minigame and a Rocket League-esque football minigame were also briefly shown. Beyond that, you can also expect returning minigames from FF7 Remake, with some added bells and whistles on top.

NEW QUEEN’S BLOOD DETAILS

Queen’s Blood, the card game inspired by The Witcher 3’s Gwent, is seemingly set to be Rebirth’s biggest and most expansive minigame. And how exactly will it work? Your ultimate goal will be to gain control of two out of three rows, with each card you put down allowing you to claim blocks within those rows. Different cards will, of course, be useful to different degrees, while players will also be able to expand their decks by finding new cards in the world, winning them off of opponents, or purchasing them at shops.

EXPLORATION ABILITIES

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is set to feature a wide variety of playable characters, and while we’ve spoken plenty in the past about how they’ll function in combat, they’ll also boast unique abilities when exploring the world. Tifa can use a grappling gun to pull herself toward grappling points, Yuffie can swing across gaps, Barret can shoot his gun to destroy objects, Red XIII can clamber up walls, Cait Sith can grab and throw items, while Aerith can manipulate the Lifestream to solve puzzles and get past obstacles.

PARTY LEVEL

In addition to allowing players to deepen Cloud’s bond with each party member individually through separate quests and activities, FF7 Rebirth will also track how well your party is gelling together with an overarching party level. Leveling up your party will make an increasing number of unlockable skills and synergy commands available in each character’s individual folio, which is a new system in Rebirth similar (at least to some extent) to Final Fantasy 10’s Grid Sphere.

MUSIC

Final Fantasy as a series goes hand-in-hand with best-in-class music, and Final Fantasy 7 in particular has an especially iconic soundtrack. With Rebirth, Square Enix seems like it’s going all-out in every way possible. There are over 400 music tracks in the game, many of which will be what are being described as “innovative” mixes and new takes on familiar pieces from the original game (a few of which we heard briefly during the State of Play presentation).

GRAPHICS MODES

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is being billed as a PlayStation 5 showpiece, with the promise of improved visuals, load times, and more. And as you’d expect, you’ll have the chance to prioritize visuals or performance as well. The game will feature a Graphics Mode, which will run at 4K resolution and 30 FPS, and a Performance Mode, which will knock down the resolution but run at 60 FPS.

DEMO

Square Enix loves putting out pre-launch demos for its games (Final Fantasy in particular), and unsurprisingly, a demo of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is also now available. Requiring a hefty 48 GB of free storage space, the demo covers an early section of the game that focuses on Cloud and Sephiroth in Nibelheim- and yes, Sephiroth is playable in this section. Meanwhile, Square Enix has said that it will also be releasing an update for the demo on February 21 that will add another section, allowing players to explore parts of the Junon region. As with past FF demos, your progress won’t carry over into the full game, but if you play the demo, you will, at least, be able to skip past that section in the full game, while you’ll also be granted a couple of bonus in-game items.

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