Summer Game Fest's showcase was filled with a lot of trailers, but arguably saved the biggest for last: the first reveal of Final Fantasy 7 Revelation, the third and final game in a trilogy that expansively remakes 1997's seminal roleplaying game, Final Fantasy 7. Due out next year, FF7 Revelation has a lot of story left to explore, plot promises left to deliver on and fan expectations to meet. 

Nobody knows that better than Naoki Hamaguchi, who has led the decade-long effort to retell FF7's story on a grand scale. As co-director of 2020's Final Fantasy 7 Remake that kicked the trilogy off, then director of 2024's Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth and the upcoming FF7 Revelation, Hamaguchi has led studio Square Enix's unusual efforts to expand a single PlayStation One-era game into a trio of titles, the first two of which have been big successes. 

Days after Hamaguchi took the stage at the SGF showcase to introduce FF7 Revelation to the world, I visited Square Enix's Los Angeles offices to chat with the director about the final chapter in the FF7 remake trilogy. Through an interpreter, I asked him about what's waiting for fans and how he feels about closing the door on the largest Final Fantasy project to date -- and what it would take to remake another game in the legendary RPG series.

What has the response been so far to Revelation, especially as the last thing at the end of the Summer Game Fest trailer showcase?

Naoki Hamaguchi: Candidly speaking, I don't think we could have asked for a stronger announcement with us being able to have this final slot, the final spot in the SGF show. And seeing the response from all the fans, a lot of them were positive, and I see a lot of excitement from our players. It makes me happy to see that.

There were four years between the first and second games in the trilogy, during which FF7 Intergrade was released, a short standalone game that felt like DLC. But at SGF, you announced that FF7 Revelation would be coming three years later in spring 2027. I think fans were pleasantly surprised -- how did you manage that?

Having this rather shorter span of development, only three years between Rebirth and Revelation, I think that was the best approach for both the fans and for us developers. 

We do receive a lot of fan requests about DLCs, and there was actually a plan or discussion about that for FF7 Rebirth as well, but we ultimately decided not to develop or release a DLC for FF7 Rebirth. Instead, we decided to make a very smooth and quick transition between Rebirth and Revelation so that we were able to shift all of our development resources into Revelation -- so that we can put it out to the world as soon as we can. I personally had a lot of actually concrete ideas of what I wanted to do for the DLC of FF7 Rebirth, but again, ultimately it was about what we wanted to do with the overall development timeline of the FF7 Remake series, particularly for the third and final installment. 

This is getting ahead of ourselves since Revelation hasn't even been released, but are there plans for FF7 Revelation DLC?

With DLC for Revelation, I can't really speak to that matter right now, because obviously, there needs to be a demand or request from the fans and the players that would warrant the development of the DLC for Revelation. If there's a strong demand and support from our fans, I think that's when we would start considering what we might be able to do.

OK, let's focus back on Revelation. Broadly, what lessons did the team learn from FF7 Rebirth that you applied to Revelation?

So to take a step back, when we were developing Rebirth, we did have plans to implement this fully realized open-world format in the game. I think at the time there were quite a few comments and concerns from fans saying, is it really even possible to adapt the same exact world from the original game into this vast open-world format?

Fast-forward a few years, when we released Rebirth, I think fans were able to see for themselves that we were able to realize that fully open world format, the planet Gaia in FF7, and thankfully, we received a lot of positive responses and receptions from fans and media, so we're thankful for that. Fast-forward again, a few years later, I think at the early initial phases of development [on Revelation], the new challenge that I was facing at the time was, is the team really able to implement the Highwind controls in the game now that we have the open world?

In the presentation that we showed at SGF last week, we did show a glimpse of the Highwind and the game mechanic where all the party members jump from the Highwind and parachute to the ground. So in that sense, we were able to kind of deliver on the expectations there.

Why opt for the friction of travel in air-dropping the party rather than just have a ship move directly through the map and land in the open world?

So the way it worked in [the original Final Fantasy 7] was that players would actually land the Highwind itself and the characters would deboard the ship. What a lot of players don't realize is that the Highwind is actually a lot bigger than it seems, so if we were to actually adopt the same system as the original Final Fantasy 7, we would have to implement a lot of landable areas in the landscape of the world. If we were to actually do that, it would impact the geography of the world. It was just not feasible for us to implement multiple landing areas for the Highwind, so that's why we made the system where characters would jump over.

The other reason we adapted this parachute mechanic is when you look at a lot of popular battle royale games, the concept of characters flying from the ship and just parachuting and landing onto the ground is very popular and well-known, right? So we felt that it just made sense for us to kind of just adopt that format for our title as well.

Well, now I have to ask: Is there anything else from battle royale or other shooter games that you've integrated into Revelation?

As a mechanic, the parachute is probably the only thing.

Switching over to combat, Rebirth's cast of characters each had their own complex fighting style. But in the Revelation trailer, we saw that players can control two new characters: the transforming former Turk mercenary Vincent and the spear-wielding pilot of the party's airship, Cid Highwind. What changes to combat can players expect?

When you look at all of the different characters that we have in our party [by the end of Rebirth], each has its own unique role in combat. When you consider the fact that we already have six to seven playable characters in the previous two entries, all of your roles were pretty much filled at that point already. So instead of creating this new role for Cid and Vincent, the way we approached it was to create a variation of an existing role with these characters.

So to give you a specific example, for Cid, he draws a lot of parallels [and] similarities with Nanaki [aka Red XIII]. Nanaki is an on-the-ground attacker, he also has a lot of supporting abilities. But for Cid, he is adept in aerial combat, but also an attacker with some selections of a supporting ability. So we have Nanaki on the ground and CId in the air. Cid also has a lot of abilities where he shines in the air, so when used in the air, he's really effective.

We saw another change in the Revelation trailer where the party members can adopt "jobs" that change their outfits and abilities, like becoming a black mage for ranged magic. Job systems are a highlight of earlier Final Fantasy games -- what will Revelation's version, called the FITS system, offer?

Each and every character in our party has unique characteristics in battle, and that's been the same throughout the series of FF7 -- not just the remake series, but this was the same case for the original FF7. But when you think about the combat and the actual gameplay of these games, how you approach the combat, players are more than likely to choose based on the roles they have in combat instead of the actual characters. 

So with the theme of the combat system in FF7 Revelation, we wanted to set up an environment where it allows the players to freely choose the characters who they want to use in battle. If they want, they don't even have to include Cloud in their party. The way the Fit system works is that even if we give these quote-unquote "jobs" to these characters, the characters will still retain their inherent, unique abilities or their characteristics. 

So, for example, if you look at Cloud again, he more traditionally functions like a warrior type, but by adding the black mage FITS, he will still retain his role as a warrior character, where he will still attack with swords, but by giving him that black magic, he can also now attack from a distance, like long range, with his magic attacks. 

As we near the end of the interview, I'd like to ask about endings -- and specifically the confusion around what actually happened around the end of Rebirth when Aerith kind of, might have, probably died. No, I won't ask you to explain it, but I am curious if the reception to the ending of the second game affected how you're going to end Revelation? 

I will say that the conclusion of the entire remake trilogy, the conclusion of what's going to be shown and the revelation, we didn't really change anything after seeing the reception toward Rebirth.

Obviously, I can't delve into the details of how that conclusion is actually going to play out. We want our fans and players around the world to experience that firsthand in the game, see it for themselves. But I have been involved with the development of the Final Fantasy 7 remake series for more than 10 years now, and there are a lot of players around the world who have been following the series for the past 29 to 30 years from the original release of the PlayStation One version, and also the newcomers who have joined along this journey after the release of FF7 Remake. 

It's really incredible to see all this strong support from fans around the world, and my goal is to just have Revelation be a game where, after playing it, I just hope that players were glad that they followed along on this journey for so long. And to be quite honest, I feel that we are going to be able to deliver on that expectation.

You've almost got the FF7 remake trilogy finished. In your opinion, would this approach of splitting an older Final Fantasy game, in which the original FF7 game was over 40 hours of gameplay, into a trilogy that will be over 200 hours long work for any other Final Fantasy? Or did the original FF7 just have a uniqueness about it that warranted splitting its remake into three games?

I can say that I don't think this only applies to FF7. I think the same could be told for FF6 or FF9. The way that stories were told in games from that era were just fundamentally different from how we do it in modern gaming titles. So hypothetically speaking, if we were to take one of these Final Fantasy titles and if you were to remake them into a singular title, a singular experience instead of a trilogy approach that we did for FF7 -- frankly speaking, I think we have to remove or omit a lot of content that we included in the original to make it happen. 

I don't think this specifically just applies to a classic remake of a Final Fantasy title. This might also apply to other IPs that Square Enix Company might have, but again, if you were to remake something from scratch again and turn it into a singular title, I would say that's probably going to be a very difficult experience. 

Why is it so difficult?

There's a couple of reasons why I feel that way. So obviously, I myself, having the experience of working on the remake trilogy, consider myself actually very lucky for being able to be involved with this universally beloved IP, this iconic IP that is considered a landmark of gaming history. Not only that, I was able to work with an incredible team of incredibly talented individuals who stuck with me throughout the 10-plus years of the development of the [FF7 Remake] series. The very fact that we were even able to carry this to the finish line was largely thanks to them believing in me, believing in the vision, and believing in FF7.

The way it happens usually is that when the development of a title ends, the team was just disbanded. So if you wanted to work on a new title, you'd have to start from scratch again and build your team, and that process takes a long time and it takes a lot of resources. We didn't have to go through that hurdle for FF7 remake trilogy -- from Remake to Rebirth, from Rebirth to Revelation, the transition was incredibly smooth because we were able to retain the core development team throughout the entire trilogy. I'm incredibly grateful for that and grateful again to all of my colleagues who believed in me and in the vision to carry this out to the very end.

My point is that, being someone who experienced going through three remake titles, I don't think it's going to be an easy feat to do another remake of a classic IP of a classic title. If you have strong determination, it's certainly possible. But yeah, I might not recommend it too strongly to other developers.

Well, let us know if you're going to take a break or go right into the next decade of remaking another Final Fantasy!

That thought alone just makes me shudder! [laughs]