Parachuting through the Clouds
Square Enix have announced the third part of their Final Fantasy 7 action RPG remake trilogy. It's called Final Fantasy 7 Revelation, and it's out on all platforms including PC in spring 2027. Yep, there's no wait for a port this time. We get to live out the closing act of Cloud Strife's journey and participate in the associated Discourse at the same time as those console gremlins.
The publishers dropped a trailer for Revelation at this year's Summer Game Fest, revealing two additional/returning playable characters - Vincent Valentine and Cid Highwind. They'll join Cloud, Tifa, Barret, Red XIII, Yuffie and Cait Sith on a mission to avert an apocalyptic Meteor spell and defeat swishy bad boy Sephiroth, who is on the brink of godhood. They'll also jump out of airships a lot, in curious echo of the battle royale genre.
"The entire planet is freely explorable via the iconic Highwind airship," explains the press release. "Players can drop in via parachute anywhere, seamlessly transitioning from air to land. With Meteor descending and enormous Weapons unleashing terror, the planet’s conflicts are many, and the party will need to divide and conquer.
"Choose where to go, who to help and in what order as the planet itself fights for survival," it continues. "Make one last stand alongside a beloved cast of legendary heroes, making decisions along the journey that can impact aspects of their stories. Customize combat by switching between real-time action and Tactical Mode in the series’ acclaimed hybrid battle system, now expanded and perfected with new playable characters and powerful new abilities."
New areas in Revelation include the Mideel archipelago, the nation of Wutai, and the ice-locked Northern Continent. As for those new characters, Vincent is still the nimble gunslinger of yore, while Cid is a brute with a polearm, "quickly closing the distance for powerful single-target lance strikes or sweeping area-of-effect damage."
There are some warm words from individual developers. "All the stories and emotions accumulated over the years will culminate in the most satisfying way with this experience, brought to you as the series’ final chapter," enthuses director Naoki Hamaguchi. It's certainly been fascinating and, at times, alarming, watching Square Enix explore the knotty extended universe and legacy of the 1997 RPG in the Remake trilogy.
I confess, I fell off the remake train after finishing the original FF7 Remake, released in 2020. I've yet to touch the second instalment, Rebirth; everything I know about it comes from Nic's (RPS in peace) absolutely stonking review of the PC version, which doubles as a dissection of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. To boil his fine words down to the bones, he characterises it as project made with love yet cruelly stretched between eras in game design. Now I face the grim ordeal of deciding whether I have the time and energy to play Rebirth, with all its flaws, in order to play Revelation next year.