While Final Fantasy 7 Revelation is shaping up to be the biggest entry in the Final Fantasy 7 Remake trilogy so far, director Naoki Hamaguchi has revealed that the first entry in the series – and also the most linear one – was actually the hardest to make. In an interview with French content creator Mistermv (via Genki_JPN), Hamaguchi spoke about the challenges of development, and even revealed that the project first started with only 30 people.
The fact that the work done on Final Fantasy 7 Remake also helped by serving as the foundation on top of which Rebirth and Revelation could be built certainly helped. However, for Remake itself, the team had to deal with a number of things, including figuring out the visual style and gameplay experience, from essentially nothing. Ultimately, Hamaguchi said that the trials and tribulations faced by the team during Remake’s development helped with the work on Rebirth and Revelation.
Final Fantasy 7 Revelation is being developed for PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch 2, and is slated for release on April 7th. In the meantime, Hamaguchi has been quite vocal in revealing bits and pieces of information about the upcoming title. Just last month, he spoke about how challenging it was for him not to turn the Remake trilogy into a personal fan project.
“We haven’t altered the core of the story based on reactions at any given time. It feels as though we’ve built up each title one by one without wavering from the central theme we established at the very start of the Remake series. It wasn’t easy. I felt it was absolutely essential to avoid turning a masterpiece like FF7 into something that felt like my own personal fan project.”
He also spoke about incorporating new elements in the story of Final Fantasy 7 Remake, and said that the biggest challenges behind doing that involved “constantly asking ourselves whether what we were creating could truly be called FF7R.”
Hamaguchi has also spoken about the risky business decision of turning the Final Fantasy 7 Remake project into a trilogy. He noted that if the first game had failed commercially, it would have led to the cancelation of its follow-ups.
“For example, if the first title had sold really poorly and been poorly reviewed, I mean, what do you do with the rest of the titles? There’s also this need to keep the team as similar as possible across all of the titles, and that’s another huge headache, especially for people who control the strings. Those are big risks that you have to take, and I don’t think many will.”
In the meantime, Hamaguchi has confirmed that gameplay content related to summons won’t just be relegated to Chadley’s VR simulations anymore. Rather, players exploring the world will get to find and take on these challenges naturally. This also likely means that we might get to see how these summons affect the world around them before being turned into materia that can be used in combat.
For more on Final Fantasy 7 Revelation, check out how getting a multiplatform release was “an inevitable outcome”, according to Hamaguchi.
