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You may know him as the former editor/in-chief of Destructoid, where he published hundreds of game reviews across all genres, including MMOs, sports games, and Metroidvanias.
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Final Fantasy 7 reveal it was really a surprise when it was revealed at the Summer Game Fest (SGF) Live Opening Showcase. Even though we knew it would inevitably happen at some point, seeing the announcement, and it’s potentially in less than a yearit’s a little different.
The trailer wasn’t brief either, as we got to see full Highwind gameplay and a ton of footage. We also learned that it would be coming to PC, PS5, Switch 2, and Xbox Series X/S at launch (avoiding the previous timed PlayStation 5 exclusivity) was icing on the cake.
There’s a lot to dig into FF7 Revelationand we were ready when we got the chance to talk to co-director Naoki Hamaguchi about how the trilogy came to be and what to expect.
Given that Final Fantasy 7 reveal will have full platform parity at launch, it was worth looking into. Hamaguchi was ready to talk about it: “The main reason we’re taking a platform parity approach isn’t really our preference as creators… there’s no technical barrier… it was a more strategic approach as a company. With our [current CEO] The overall goal is to achieve parity across platforms and launch our titles on multiple platforms from day one. »
“Previously there was a platform exclusivity agreement with SIE, so our goals have changed a bit and we are looking to achieve platform parity from day one.” Afterward, I asked Hamaguchi if his team would have preferred to have built platform parity from day one, and he had a thoughtful response.
“That’s an interesting question. Let’s say we don’t have to worry about how Square Enix as a company…what strategic approach they might have…putting all that aside as a creator, I would like to bring my titles to as many gamers as possible. There’s nothing more you can ask for as a creator to create an environment where everyone can enjoy it…including setting up the PC platform, it’s a much more modern approach. If I had a choice, I would take that approach too.”
We spoke with Hamaguchi in the past on the porting process with FF7 Rebirthand it turns out the studio has learned even more since then: “I think through the trailer and the footage that we showed, it’s easy to tell that it wasn’t an easy task to achieve all of this on all the different consoles. One thing I can say is that experiencing the porting process, from Rebirth to Xbox and Nintendo Switch 2, was an extremely valuable experience that we were able to leverage for FF7 Revelation.”
“We launched the FF7 Rebirth ports just a few days ago, and the reception seems to be pretty positive so far, which is great to see, but having an idea of how the porting process works has been a huge asset to us and throughout the development of Revelation.”
Hamaguchi expands on this thinking, providing an interesting insight into the industry’s reaction to ports and exclusivity: “One thing I’ve noticed is that there’s an overall difference in how fans react to the porting process. In the West, the reaction to ports is often positive. Whereas some Japanese gamers have this mentality that something as epic and grand as Final Fantasy should be reserved for a powerful console, like the PlayStation.”
He goes on to explain how the reaction has become more positive over time: “So sometimes the common feedback we get from Japanese consumers is that if it launches on the same day as, say, Switch 2, the quality will be hampered. Some people see it that way. But Revelation, we saw a handful of feedback from Japanese players that was more positive, and I think that’s because we were able to launch a powerful port for Remake and Rebirth. So the quality won’t be hampered.”
Since Highwind is going to introduce a whole new open world element to the game, I asked if Revelation would use a chapter-based format, which Hamaguchi confirmed: “So in terms of how the main story plays out, the approach will be similar to what we took for Rebirth, in that we’re taking the chapter approach.”
“When we looked at how players engaged with the main story of Rebirth, a lot of people didn’t want to leave the zones without completing everything… at the start of the game, players have access to the Highwind. Once they do that, they can go to a variety of zones immediately after, like the Grasslands, Junon, Correl. In each of these regions, there are different zones where we will have different levels suggested. So, some zones in this region might be more difficult than others.”
“So players will have to make that choice if they want to save these areas for another time. If players try to approach it like Rebirth and complete everything, it’s going to take a long time. But the player’s choice as to which order to take everything is customizable and based on each player’s playstyle.”
“Looking back over the last 10 years, it was a constant hustle”
It turns out that developing a massive trilogy of remakes takes time. Hamaguchi explains how the team approached this long development cycle and the lessons they learned along the way:
“It’s a really ambitious series of titles… a trilogy of three AAA titles… it’s an incredibly difficult thing to do. And most other developers would probably agree with that. It turns out it took us about a decade… we were aware that the technological limits were going to change as we progressed. With Remake, we were focused on implementing what we were able to do at that time with the limitations we had. In terms of what we wanted to do with Rebirth and Revelation, we didn’t have a concrete idea at the time for Remake.”
“We knew that what was possible would change in the coming years. We focused on creating Remake first, then Rebirth and Revelations. But at the same time, if we had to start from scratch after Remake, it would have taken us a lot longer. We started thinking about what we wanted to do with Rebirth at least a year before Remake. This approach and the fact that we were able to keep our core development team between the three titles was a huge factor in us being able to achieve this long but without problem journey of exit of all of them.
“Looking back over the last 10 years, it was a constant hustle,” Hamaguchi confides. “The Final Fantasy 7 franchise as a whole is something I admire immensely as a fan, so we’re confident that this latest installment will be amazing, but at the same time we wanted to make sure we weren’t delivering something half-heartedly. So there was a feeling of pressure at all times to deliver for the fans. We’re still working on the game, it’s not quite finished yet, but it will be something that fans are going to love.”
To close out our interview, I asked Hamaguchi about potential post-game details and what players can expect beyond the main story. When discussing my history with the series, I mentioned that upon seeing Ruby and Emerald Weapon (two of the game’s superboss) for the first time, they blew me away with their strength at first glance and gave me a reason to power up and come back.
Surprisingly, it gave us a very good endgame match for Final Fantasy 7 reveal: “Yes, there will be a lot of boss fights at the end, strong boss fights, not just weapons, but also Knights of the Round, which many fans of the original are looking forward to in the Remake series, so there will be a lot of these boss fights after finishing the game.”
Systems
- Released
- February 29, 2024
- ESRB
- Adolescent / Violence, Blood, Mildly suggestive themes, Language, Use of alcohol and tobacco
- Developer(s)
- Square-Enix
- Editor(s)
- Square-Enix
- Engine
- Unreal Engine 4