While Square Enix continues to silently work on the third game in the Final Fantasy 7 Remake trilogy, director Naoki Hamaguchi has now revealed more details about what we can expect when it finally comes out. In an interview with Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier, Hamaguchi confirmed that, among other places, Rocket Town and Wutai will both be present in the title.
“[Wutai is] one of the main locations. Yuffie’s made a very prominent appearance, stating her case about her homeland. So if Wutai’s not featured, I think the fans are going to yell at me,” said Hamaguchi when asked about some of the ion-game locations. He also went on to confirm some of the other features, like expanding the flying capabilities of the Highwind.
“We want to expand on the gameplay experience,” he said. “Flying the Highwind is a very large part of the third installment. Let me leave it at that.” As for other details, Hamaguchi preferred to keep his cards close to his chest. While he didn’t confirm or deny the presence of the Chocobo breeding mechanic in Final Fantasy 7 Remake Part 3, he did note that the bird mounts will function differently when compared to Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth.
“We didn’t want the three installments to be a reskinning of the same game over and over again,” Hamaguchi explained when discussing new gameplay elements coming to Remake Part 3. “We want to make sure we’re expanding with every installment in terms of scale, as well as retaining that freshness as you go into each installment.”
One of the bigger locations in the original Final Fantasy 7 was the Great Glacier area. In the third entry of the Remake trilogy, Hamaguchi noted that Rebirth ends up with players in the Forgotten City. If it follows the footsteps of the original, Remake Part 3 might also end up directly leading players to the Icicle Inn.
As for when Final Fantasy 7 Remake Part 3 will finally get revealed, Hamaguchi said that it is slated to happen some time this year. “I’m hoping it’s not going to be too far in the future,” he said, before also revealing that 95 percent of the development team of Rebirth is working on the third entry. “I think the number is closer to 95% of the Rebirth staff that stayed on for the third project,” he explained.
Back in January, Hamaguchi had confirmed that Final Fantasy 7 Remake Part 3 will see the return of one of its more popular minigames: Queen’s Blood. In an interview, he revealed that the new version of the card game will be a “powered-up version”.
“Queen’s Blood is a very popular and beloved minigame, and I believe a lot of people are still wanting something like that,” Hamaguchi said. “I want to expand on Queen’s Blood so that we are enhancing it, and giving you a more powered-up version of it when you see that third instalment… Queen’s Blood is still going to be available in the third instalment. We just want to expand on it.”
In the meantime, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth got confirmed for Nintendo Switch 2, with the development team targeting a steady frame rate of 30 FPS. It is slated for release on June 3rd.
