Director Naoki Hamaguchi Explains Final Fantasy VII Revelation Development Speed and Combat Mechanics Plus Character Arcs for Cid and Chadley
Director Naoki Hamaguchi spoke with Restart.run to break down the development choices made by the team to finalize this ten year trilogy in a decade. When speaking with associate editor Jesse Vitelli and news editor Imran Kahn, Hamaguchi explained why they chose to show 10 minutes of actual gameplay footage, instead of an introductory CGI trailer. This lengthy video was designed to allow newcomers a sense of how deep the overall experience is in the Final Fantasy VII remake title. It has been revealed that the upcoming title is in development for spring of 2027 for the PS5, Xbox Series consoles, Switch 2, and PC.
This is perhaps the most impressive aspect of the modern Remake project the velocity of its production cycle. Having three large scale role playing games released within ten years time is unheard of for an industry where most titles can take between five to seven years of active development alone. According to Hamaguchi, the staff stability at Square Enix played the biggest role. The main staff has not changed since the release of Remake and the beginning of Rebirth, meaning there has been no real break between the development of each game, allowing development to proceed with maximum momentum.
Toward the end of development of Rebirth, we kind of had an idea of how to approach Revelation. So in that sense, I think also having a constant alignment within the staff, and so the same staff, or most of the staff, also worked on Revelation from Rebirth as well, and so we were able to maintain that same type of flow, and I think that really helped development to create this in that span of time.
The final game will put a significant focus both narratively and mechanically on the giant Weapons in the Final Fantasy VII story. Rather than having the gigantic boss fights be something like separate mini games, Hamaguchi explained the team wished for the Weapon encounters to seamlessly blend into the current combat engine. The idea here is to ensure the Materia and characters the players have accumulated to get to that point of the story still matter. However, each individual Weapon fight will have their own mechanics, such as the gun focus demonstrated in the footage, and will come in a variety of new designs as determined by Tetsuya Nomura.
We could have taken the approach of turning it into a Weapons mini game of just making it a thing of its own, potentially. But if we took this route, then perhaps the Materia that players collected at this point would be meaningless, and so in that sense we wanted to build upon the existing combat system and use that as a foundation.
Cid, whose attitude was tempered from the original 1997 title during Rebirth development, was another character whose portrayal was addressed. Hamaguchi clarified that Cid will remain the same outspoken type of character, but with a warmth beneath the surface. The finale will allow players to get a better sense of Cid with a visit to Rocket Town to uncover his past.
In Revelation I wouldn't say Cid is necessarily a mean spirited character, per se. I think he is a straight shooter, he says what he thinks and feels, but I think he also has, very much of a warmth as a human being. And this time around, there is also a focus on Cid with Rocket Town that players can experience.
The presence of research assistant Chadley was also clarified after its absence in early promotional material. The director insisted that Chadley would not be hurt and, in fact, would play a very important role in the central story of the third game after activation of the Black Materia, chaos after the Weapons awoke, and establishment of his research facility to observe Meteor.
