Final Fantasy Resonance's director says the upcoming throwback JRPG is part of a "resurgence" of turn-based games, though one that still has plenty of fresh ideas.

Wrapping up a chat with RPG Site at PAX, director Hiroto Furuya says we're in the middle of a "resurgence of turn-based RPGs and JRPGs" – which sounds pretty darn good to me. And if that sounds pretty darn good to you, the Final Fantasy Resonance devs hope the Final Fantasy Brave Exvius refresh might be of interest.

"Looking at the recent wave of things globally, it seems there's a resurgence of turn-based RPGs and JRPGs," he says. "It is kind of like being re-examined once more.

"We consider Final Fantasy Resonance as one aspect of that overarching wave or trend. I think there is something to note about the appeal of classic RPGs, and the fun of classic RPGs, really. We're trying to capture that through Final Fantasy Resonance – but not stop at that.

"We wanted to ensure that we're delivering a new experience, a new title, to audiences all around the world."

Having played the demo myself, I can see part of what Furuya means. Final Fantasy Resonance is very much playing the hits – you've got crystals, chocobos, and a mixture of magic and machinery. More to the point, though, there's a turn-based battle system with some deeper series cuts. There's an order to who moves next, but filling a foe's stagger meter shakes that up – and ensures you'll get a window to deal increased damage.

What I've most enjoyed, though, is that the visuals and action are really dialed up to 11. The art style remains the HD-2D style popularized by Octopath Traveler, though cutscenes, both mid-fight and in-story, really deliver a sense of spectacle.

Of course, when Furuya talks about the trend of turn-based RPGs and JRPGs, it goes beyond what Square Enix has managed to accomplish with the Octopath series and other HD-2D remakes. Atlus has been holding down that fort for a while with the likes of Persona and Metaphor: ReFantazio, and genre love letter Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has won so many awards it's hard to ignore. Speaking of awards, the J'RPG is only really rivaled in recent times by Baldur's Gate 3. I'm starting to think there's something to these turn-based games.

Final Fantasy Resonance appeals to my inner child like no RPG since Chrono Trigger.

Final Fantasy 7 Remake series director Naoki Hamaguchi is to thank for each member of the party having access to all of the FITS jobs from the start in Final Fantasy 7 Revelation.

As we approach the end of Final Fantasy 7's remake trilogy, Square Enix is introducing one of the biggest overhauls to the game in its third act. FITS is a new system which works as a job system seen in games like Final Fantasy 5, 12, and Tactics which in turn will allow you to tailor your characters to specific archetypes, with four available to be equipped.

During a PAX West 2026 panel (via Game8) Hamaguchi reveals that the original plan was to have each character unlock FITS throughout the game as unlocks for getting through specific milestones. So for example (my own, not Hamaguchi's), Tifa could be unlocked with Black Mage, Barrett gets Knight, and you would need to unlock the other classes with each. However, Hamaguchi says this is something he personally overruled, meaning once FITS is unlocked, each party member will have access to all four jobs.

However, FITS, true to its name, will also come with unique costumes for each character for every job, which brings back the eternal style vs usefulness quandary that every RPG player has faced some point in their life. Do I go with what looks the best, or do I go with the most efficient set?

Hamaguchi also announces that the team has included a skin system to the game separate from the FITS. So, if you want Tifa in her classic outfit compared to the loose sleeves look we've seen her donning during gameplay footage, you'll be able to do so. Perhaps even more excitingly, Hamaguchi says there will be bonus skins unlocked from side content throughout the game too, which hopefully means we'll get some good fanservice fits like Cloud and Tifa's Advent Children outfits or Yuffie and Cid's Kingdom Hearts looks.

Square Enix wants to turn Final Fantasy 7 into "an IP with an ever-evolving future" beyond the FF7 Remake trilogy.

Square Enix turned to Final Fantasy 7 spin-off film Advent Children to inform how the remake trilogy should look, partly because the developers believed fans found it to be the "ideal vision" of the OG JRPG.

As part of a PAX West panel that delves into how the trilogy was designed, Final Fantasy 7 Revelation director Naoki Hamaguchi explains why Advent Children was the "graphical goal."

"For many fans, we can say that Advent Children is remembered as an ideal vision of Final Fantasy 7," he says. "So, we wanted to bring the appeal of that visual piece to life as a game that gamers themselves could experience."

As a slide further explains, Square Enix wanted to 'gamify' the film experience so fans of the flick could experience its visual quality and atmosphere – obviously, in a more immersive way. A big reason is that devs believed the film "set a new standard" for Final Fantasy 7 in terms of character expression, especially in Cloud and Sephiroth's appearance, movement, and presence.

Naturally, part of the reason that Final Fantasy 7 Remake could look like Advent Children, despite being a game, is that the latter came out in 2005, so the capability of gaming graphics had plenty of time to advance. Still, it's an interesting visual reference. While the OG Final Fantasy 7 is as old as the hills, Cloud and the gang have appeared elsewhere in the years following that, offering a glimpse of what they might look like with an update.

Perhaps our closest was the opening scene, remade for the PS3 to showcase its graphical capabilities. To the great sadness of many, it was merely a tech demo and not an actual remake reveal, but the vibe was there. Additionally, Cloud has appeared in plenty of other fighting games, both Square Enix-led and not, which gave us a hint of what he could look like in an updated game. For years, a Final Fantasy 7 remake was merely a wishlist item for fans, not something Square Enix would commit to for a while.

How times change. Still, it's nice to see another reference to wider Final Fantasy 7 media, which Square Enix hasn't been shy of making, especially when it comes to what Final Fantasy 7 Revelation might include from the series broader offering – not just its visual style and quality. We will, of course, see what all of that includes when Final Fantasy 7 Revelation releases on April 8, 2027.

Square Enix wants to turn Final Fantasy 7 into "an IP with an ever-evolving future" beyond the FF7 Remake trilogy.

Square Enix just gave fans their most in-depth look at Final Fantasy 7 Revelation in motion yet during today's PlayStation State of Play, confirming an April release date and post-launch story DLC, but there was one detail JRPG diehards just can't get over: the showcase demonstrated cutscenes you can speed up. That's it. That's the controversy.

I know, I know, it's completely uncharacteristic for a community of online JRPG fans to dramatize a completely optional and seemingly harmless feature in a game like Final Fantasy 7, but alas, one Twitter user reacted to the news by proclaiming, "games are truly dead." That post has 1.7 thousand likes and a handful of comments largely in agreement. "They really did make a mode for larpers that watch YouTube videos at 2X speed," reads one such reply.

Now, to be fair, this particular reaction was in response to Square Enix advertising the fast-forward feature, and after reviewing that part of today's showcase, it definitely stuck me as a bit odd that it was such a focus. But I'll go out on a limb and say that games are probably not truly dead just yet, at the very least, not because Final Fantasy 7 Revelation has cutscenes you can speed up... just like Final Fantasy 7 Remake and Rebirth before it.

I will definitely concede that it's a weird look, and, if you look at it a certain way, it's even mildly insulting to Revelation's writers, since Square Enix is explicitly putting its fast-forward button on display instead of their work in a big trailer. But I do think the feature itself is on the same level as skippable written dialogue, which has been a thing in video games forever. I'll even put myself at great risk in comments sections by admitting I find it deeply annoying when dialogue can't be sped up. Still, everyone's entitled to their own unique feelings on this sort of thing, and I seem to be in the minority by simply not really caring all that much.

"look i'm excited about this game, but this functionality is absolutely an admission of defeat imo," reads a Bluesky post from Into the Aether host Brendon Bigley.

"okay i'm sorry but the 1.5x speed watching brainrot has gone too far if we're now doing playback speed for video game dialogue," says Game Informer video editor Eric Van Allen.

My best guess as to why Square decided to put fast-forwardable cutscenes on display today is that it was a response to the years of complaints about length and bloat in the Final Fantasy 7 Remake trilogy. These are massive games that demand a commensurate time commitment, and I'm assuming the fast-forward option is Square's answer to that feedback, whether it's appropriate or not.

Final Fantasy 7 Revelation's physical edition comes on "one disc," and yes, there's a mandatory download before you can play.

Square Enix has detailed the Final Fantasy 7 Revelation Collector's Edition, and I hope you've got $350 to spare.

Over on the Square Enix store website, the publisher confirmed the contents and price for the Final Fantasy 7 Revelation Collector's Edition. To get the bad news out of the way, it's going to be $350, which already puts it on the high end for collectors editions – barring the really ridiculous ones. This is made even worse for the UK; it's going to be £350 even though that's not how conversion rates work at all (£350 roughly translates to $472).

But what are you getting for all of that? Obviously, the game itself, alongside the Deluxe Edition content which is set to feature two DLC expansions – one featuring Sephiroth and another starring Vincent and the Turks. On top of that, the Deluxe Edition features a CD mini-soundtrack, a hardcover artbook, and an exclusive steelbook with art from all three games in the trilogy. Each physical edition comes with a Magic: The Gathering card titled Final Showdown, too.

As for the Collector's Edition itself? You're getting the physical deluxe edition, and a separate box featuring the only exclusive addition. This is a statue featuring Cloud, Zack, and Sephiroth (who are 6.7 in, 7.1 in, and 7.9 inches tall, respectively), all posing with their weapons next to each other.

This collector's edition is only available for console players, with Nintendo Switch 2, Xbox Series X|S, and PS5 being the only options. So if you want to play the game on Steam, you might have to grab a console copy to get this statue.

Final Fantasy 7 Revelation includes more spin-off characters, Naoki Hamaguchi says, and devs "thought really hard" about including more compilation references for the trilogy's finale.

Before Final Fantasy 14 gets its hotly anticipated new expansion Evercold, Square Enix has one final update in store with fresh Dawntrail content: Patch 7.56.

Patch 7.56 is set to arrive next Tuesday on September 8, bringing the series of Patch 7.5x updates to a close – and, of course, Dawntrail's bigger post-launch content.

Harboring the limited Beastmaster job, new main scenario quests, and much, much more, it's one heck of a release ahead of Evercold… a release that might just lead into the upcoming expansion itself with the introduction of a strikingly familiar pink-haired Miqo'te.

If you've seen the Evercold trailer, then you likely recognize Visna, the mysterious cat girl with icy eyes and a freckled face – something we don't even get to truly apply to our own Warriors of Light (yet, anyway).

Interestingly enough, Square Enix just updated its official media webpage for Patch 7.5, including Patch 7.56, of course, with new screenshots… and Visna herself appears in one of them, implying she'll be in-game before Evercold.

Not only that, but she seems to be donning a crossbow of sorts on her back – and, you know, that's pretty eye-catching, seeing as there are two new jobs coming in Evercold and we only know about the tank class so far: the Bastion.

Could the DPS underway be a crossbow wielder or something in that vein? Well, the image is certainly proving enough to spur all kinds of theories online.

Just take a look at Reddit, for one.

In response to a fan noting their surprise at "the Miqo'te NPC from the Evercold trailer" seemingly being introduced in Patch 7.56 and asking "she definitely can't be the new job, right," another explains that she might just be.

"You can actually spy a crossbow on her back," they write. "So it might actually be the new job." Further down, somebody else points out that Visna is holding a "wand" of sorts, too.

They suggest "the job will have crossbow and wand offhand and you carve runes with the wand which then grant either weaknesses/special attacks that either the crossbow or your bird can attack."

The "bird" they reference here likely stems from the popular theory that the new DPS class is a falconer of some flavor – but who knows? It's all just speculation for now, but it is intriguing to see the girl in Patch 7.56 screencaps… and her "weapon," if that's what it is.

We'll learn more next week, come Patch 7.56 and its shenanigans. There is the Beastmaster job to look forward to as well as more questing and the like, so it's not all mystery.

Magic: The Gathering swiftly learns the power of Final Fantasy 14 as a mommy cat lady overtakes its most popular commander card

Update: A big caveat has just come to light about Final Fantasy 7 Revelation's physical edition. On PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, the RPG will come on a single disc, and you'll have to endure a mandatory download before you can play the game.

This was confirmed in an official Square Enix announcement, which details that both versions come on "one disc" and in each case "an internet connection is required to download additional game data in order to play the physical version of the game."

It's not unusual for physical games to require additional downloads before you can play these days, but up until now the Final Fantasy 7 remake trilogy had been a notable exception to that trend. Both of the previous two games launched in multi-disc packages, which included all the data needed to play without any additional download. I'm glad that Revelation is still coming on disc, but I am disappointed that Square Enix is scaling back its commitment to physical collectors for the final piece of the trilogy.

Original story: It's official: Final Fantasy 7 Revelation will be released physically alongside the digital launch on April 8, 2027. The game's launch is coming well before Sony's planned 2028 cutoff for physical PlayStation discs, but director Naoki Hamaguchi had previously been cagey on the topic of a physical release. Yet I guess there was no reason to worry.

Square Enix confirmed the news in a tweet. "The promise has been made," the post begins. "Final Fantasy VII Revelation launches both physically and digitally on April 8, 2027."

That line about a "promise" is certainly intended as a tagline referring to the end of the trilogy, but it has an extra air of sincerity for collectors who've already added the first two parts to their shelves.

Both previous parts of the remake trilogy launched on disc, and some people – hi, it's me, I'm some people – even own those discs multiple times over thanks to a multi-gen release of the first game. I'm upset about discs going away for a wide variety of reasons, but it's at least nice to know I won't have to keep an empty box on my shelf where Revelation should go.

There's one big caveat for Nintendo collectors, however. As with previous releases of the remake trilogy on Switch 2, this one will come on a game-key card. Can't win them all, I guess.

Plenty of additional info on Final Fantasy 7 Revelation dropped alongside today's State of Play trailer, too. We've got an April release date, confirmation of two story DLC expansions, and a $350 collector's edition featuring more inches of Sephiroth than any of us can reasonably deal with.

Here are all the new games for 2026 and beyond you need to know about.

As much as I enjoy the high-fidelity visuals and real-time combat available in Final Fantasy 7 Remake and Rebirth, I'll always be a sucker for a pixel-art, turn-based RPG. Clearly, Square Enix also understands this timeless appeal because the publisher is on course to release Final Fantasy Resonance this year and, after playing it at Gamescom, it's now my most anticipated new game this year.

With its HD-2D aesthetic blending 2D sprites with 3D environments, Final Fantasy Resonance brings to mind games like Octopath Traveler, and instantly feels familiar if you're well-versed in classic RPGs. You roam around the world before the screen shatters and a battle begins, inputting commands and watching them play out in a sequence as you whittle down enemy health bars. However, Resonance isn't without a unique twist.

An RPG with Vision

The party I get to play with is made up of four original characters, with a variety of skills and elemental affinities, including Rain who deals melee damage with vigor, and Fina who boasts great healing spells. However, I'm most struck by the fact each hero has a Vision; a spirit character who supports them by sharing powers in combat. I'm told some Visions are new while many others are familiar faces from the Final Fantasy franchise, which makes sense as I'm staring at Cloud Strife from FF7.

These spirit friends, reminiscent of the Stands from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure and the equipable characters in Fire Emblem Engage, can be unlocked by beating in-game dungeons known as Sanctums. Once selected, they diversify each party member's repertoire by adding new spells, increasing your options in battle.

Visions are most noteworthy when performing Resonance attacks – special moves that can be used once all enemies are staggered (denoted by a separate gauge to their health). Once their postures are broken, you can hit them with the titular flashy attack for huge damage.

However, if your character's Vision gauge is full, you can perform a Sweeping Resonance for even greater effect. I start off using Cloud's jaw-dropping Sweeping Resonance, the HD-2D graphics giving way to gorgeous, fully-rendered 3D models as Cloud furiously slashes through enemies.

Similarly, when The Warrior of Light from the OG Final Fantasy manifests in full 3D and brings destruction upon my enemies, I feel a giddy thrill that appeals to my inner child more than an ice-cold glass of Dr Pepper.

The combination of visual styles isn't the only way Final Fantasy Resonance so lovingly blends old and new. Being a classic-style RPG, the developer hasn't shied away from grinding as an in-game mechanic. That might put some players off, but you can toggle the speed of encounters to effectively half the time required to level up your party and Visions. It's a simple feature, but the difference it can make should not be underestimated.

In addition, my preview's dungeon comes complete with useful checkpoints for fast travel and resting, which are modern staples that I always appreciate. It also helps that the item names are all instantly recognizable to Final Fantasy veterans, from Hi-Potions to Phoenix Downs, creating a sense of familiarity that maintains momentum.

This isn't to say that nostalgia is vital to enjoying Final Fantasy Resonance. The turn-based combat is layered and exciting, and the pixel art shimmers like a California sunset. But to those of us of a certain vintage (old enough to have played those older pixel RPGs at launch, as well as catch the Jamiroquai reference in the last sentence), this game channels the era when Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy 6 captured our hearts while still keeping our feet firmly planted in the here and now. It's a masterstroke and only Square Enix could have managed it.

Resonate with this preview? Then check out our best Final Fantasy games ranking or our best JRPGs list for more to play next!

Square Enix has confirmed that Final Fantasy 7 Revelation is going to release on April 8, 2027

The new PlayStation State of Play trailer for Final Fantasy 7 Revelation focused on the party members, with new looks at Cid and Vincent, who round out the original cast of Final Fantasy 7 characters featured in the original game. Not only that, but we got a new look at some of the areas featured in the final chapter, like Yuffie's home of Wutai.

More importantly, however, Square Enix confirmed exactly when we'll be playing Final Fantasy 7 Revelation: April 8, 2027, which is almost exactly seven years after the release of Final Fantasy 7 Remake on April 10, 2020.

Square Enix followed up this trailer with a deep-dive into the gameplay of Final Fantasy 7 Revelation, showing some of the open-world gameplay and the party channeling their inner Fortnite as they dive off the battle bus-flavored Highwind. We also saw some of the new traversal mechanics once you are off the Highwind, with Yuffie using a grapple gun to get around Wutai.

On top of that, you're also to choose your main character in the open world, with the player no longer locked to playing as Cloud. This extends into the side quests too, as Square showed off that these can play out differently depending on which character you choose to take the quest on as.

All that is to say, Square Enix heard that Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth was too big for some, and seems to have made it even bigger for Revelation.

Final Fantasy 7 Revelation includes more spin-off characters, Naoki Hamaguchi says, and devs "thought really hard" about including more compilation references for the trilogy's finale.

Final Fantasy Resonance, the first Final Fantasy game presented in Square Enix's HD-2D style, is getting a demo later today, September 3.

Though announced at today's PlayStation State of Play live show, the Final Fantasy Resonance demo is expected on all platforms, which also includes Xbox, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC (Steam).

The demo is unavailable and unlisted at the time of writing. A PlayStation trailer confirms that the demo covers "the entire first chapter" of the game, with progress carrying over to the full game if you decide to buy in.

The trailer gives us a look at Sephiroth as he appears in the Final Fantasy 7 Remake trilogy – and, more importantly, Resonance's giant, pixel art, boss fight Sephiroth.

Sephiroth is the latest Final Fantasy icon to get the HD-2D treatment courtesy of Resonance. A suite of characters make combat cameos in summon-like Resonance attacks, with the likes of Final Fantasy 10's Tidus and Final Fantasy 7's Cloud already shown.

The HD-2D style was pioneered by Octopath Traveler then refined in the likes of the Dragon Quest remakes and, per our The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales review, some more recent outings. Resonance is both the next Final Fantasy game and the first entry to adopt this art style – and, somewhat confusingly, also technically a remake of Final Fantasy Brave Exvius.

Final Fantasy Resonance itself will be released next month on October 22.

Resonance returns to turn-based combat and random encounters, with producer Keisuka Nakashima arguing that the system allows for "truly memorable" battles.

The game exists largely because Nakashima and other Brave Exvius developers felt that the once-gacha-driven game is "too good to become unplayable" after its global end of service in 2025. As someone who's wanted a turn-based, HD-2D Final Fantasy ever since Octopath Traveler was released, I'm excited to see if

Final Fantasy 7 Revelation boss is "very much aware" you hate Chadley for being a socially inept doofus, but he will soon have "a very integral part" in the story anyway.

Final Fantasy 7 Revelation director Naoki Hamaguchi knows exactly what you were thinking as you played the existing two installments of the remake trilogy: get this robot pee pee pants Chadley off my screen now and forever, I banish thee. But you're going to have to try to adopt a more positive mindset. The unhelpful assistant humanoid Chadley is returning for Final Fantasy 7 Revelation, due in 2027, and Hamaguchi teases that the golden-haired nuisance might be more critical to your story than ever before.

"I am very much aware of the reaction some fans in the community had to Chadley," Hamaguchi says to IGN through an interpreter at Gamescom 2026. So far, the gnat with a baby face hasn't proved himself as "a particularly important character to the story," Hamaguchi continues. "I am very much aware of that opinion." But it sounds like Final Fantasy 7 Revelation will try to change it.

"In the previous game, in Rebirth, [Chadley's] role is such [that he was] kind of a guide, a tutorial, to lead people into all of the side content," Hamaguchi explains, "but his role has actually changed for Revelation." The conclusion to the Final Fantasy 7 remake trilogy will apparently contain "some scenes where he plays a very integral part, a strong role, in the main story itself."

Does this mean Chadley will finally learn how to read a room? The character was introduced for the first Final Fantasy 7 Remake part in 2020, simply because, Hamaguchi said at the time, "We wanted to include content in which [combat upgrades and modifier] materia could be obtained through mission rewards in parallel with the main story progression; considering lore, we came up with a role that would make him a researcher working for Shinra." As such, Chadley seemingly never had a reason to be pleasant to be around, and both he and Final Fantasy 7 trilogy players suffered for it.

Most recently, the lonely dweeb created an entire AI female version of himself, Mai, to increase his opportunities to talk to you. But though he created her, Mai hardly showed Chadley respect. That's no way for Chadley to live, and it's an unfortunate domestic scene for you to witness as an objective third party. What a miserable Chadley existence.

Anyway, Final Fantasy 7 Revelation will be the guy's last chance to act natural… or possibly even supernatural.

"I can't tell you right now whether he does become more powerful than Sephiroth or not," Hamaguchi says to IGN's joking question on the topic, "but you're going to have to see in the game. And I hope you look forward to finding out." OK, I won't.

Final Fantasy 7 Revelation includes more spin-off characters, Naoki Hamaguchi says, and devs "thought really hard" about including more compilation references for the trilogy's finale.

Final Fantasy 7 remake trilogy overlord Naoki Hamaguchi can't believe he got to share the Gamescom stage with his hero, Geralt of Rivia – in spirit, at least, since developer CD Projekt Red used Opening Night Live 2026 to announce its unexpected The Witcher 3 refresh and expansion. And The Witcher 4 lead level designer Miles Tost feels the same way.

"The pleasure was ours," Tost writes in an August 26 Twitter reply to Hamaguchi. "Final Fantasy, especially 7 have a special place in my heart and I'm so happy I get to relive that through your and your team's hard work!"

Originally, Hamaguchi wrote on Twitter after Opening Night Live (ONL), "Sharing the final spotlight at ONL alongside The Witcher 3, one of my favorite games of all time, was a truly special moment for me.
It was a great honor to stand on the same stage as a game that has inspired me for so many years."

It's rare that you see developers as seemingly untouchable as Square Enix's Hamaguchi show that, in the cocoon of their living rooms, they're still fans who feel that knot of excitement forming each time a certain title screen comes up. It's nice!

Hamaguchi has always been generous in sharing his love for The Witcher franchise, though, spending the past few years emphasizing that The Witcher 3 is one of his major Final Fantasy 7 remake inspirations. In 2024, Final Fantasy producer Yoshinori Kitase even told fans that, while watching that year's Witcher 4 trailer at The Game Awards, "Hamaguchi was so excited when Ciri removed her hood, he almost stood up!"

So I'm especially glad for him to be at Gamescom this year, where he was also recently able to meet CD Projekt Red joint CEO Michał Nowakowski and show him some of Square Enix's upcoming Final Fantasy 7 Revelation. Hamaguchi says on Twitter about the experience, "It was a great honor to have Michał Nowakowski, Joint CEO of CD PROJEKT RED, stop by the Square Enix booth.

"Sharing the stage at ONL alongside The Witcher 3, one of my all-time favorite games, was already a special moment. Having Michał come by in person made it even more memorable.

"I was also very happy to tell him directly that The Witcher 3 continues to be one of the biggest inspirations for me as a game creator." Let us pray, now, for Hamaguchi's sake, that the new The Witcher 3 expansion Songs of the Past is just as sweet as he probably thinks it is when it launches in 2027.

Keep up with the entire Gamescom 2026 schedule.

Dragon Quest series creator Yuji Horii has spoken about how surprised he was by the overwhelming success of the series' third entry. After moderate success with the first two games, the third thrust the series into the spotlight in a way that Horii never expected.

In an interview with Famitsu that's been translated by GamesRadar+, Horii describes how he felt the series became a cultural phenomenon almost over night. "The first Dragon Quest was made in 1986, and two years later we made Dragon Quest 3," he says. "This was when it became a cultural phenomenon, but we were conscious that this might not last."

While Horii wasn't sure that the series would have the staying power, Dragon Quest has earned its status as cultural icon with the twelfth mainline entry in development, and dozens of spin-offs released. Dragon Quest 3 was truly the turning point for the series and it became impossible for Horii and his team to ignore the impact their game had.

"[DQ3's success] was completely unexpected," he explains. "Of course, I knew it had a chance [of being a hit] when we were making it, but I would have never believed that people would wait in line in order to buy it. I cycled out to Shinjuku to look at the queue, and everyone was lined up all night in the cold, and I remember thinking 'my bad'."

Despite queues reportedly up to 4km in length, Horii was apparently treated the same around the office. However, tensions were high when it was time to develop the next game in the series. "I was really worried about DQ4. Because DQ3 became such a cultural phenomenon, expectations for DQ4 were building up," he says.

Dragon Quest 7 was going to be an open-world game, series creator Yuji Horii says, but "the story fell apart" so the team had to "add some degree of order to it"

Kingdom Hearts series writer and director Tetsuya Nomura says the script for the upcoming fourth entry in the series is almost twice as long as the last numbered entry, and yet there were still more parts he wanted to include but was unable to.

In an interview with Famitsu that's been translated by GamesRadar+, Nomura talks about the voice actors and recording schedule for Kingdom Hearts 4. The Japanese voice cast is apparently already complete, while the English cast is reportedly 60 - 70% through their parts.

This is particularly impressive given Nomura's comments on the length of the script he wrote for the long-awaited game. "The size of the script for this game is almost twice as big as that of Kingdom Hearts 3, so this made the [voice] recording schedule really difficult," he explains.

Despite the increased length of the script compared to its predecessor, there were still parts Nomura wanted to add but had to cut for time. "There were more parts that I wanted to include, but I was already pushing it," he says.

While there will be more dialogue than in previous entries, that doesn't mean the game will be bigger or longer. In fact, in the same interview, the director says the game won't feature a large number of Disney worlds, so the team is being selective about the number of different settings they show.

Kingdom Hearts 4 "will be ready well before the release date," Tetsuya Nomura says, as the JRPG's development is going smoother than it has "in the history" of the series

Kingdom Hearts 4 leads Tetsuya Nomura and Tai Yasue are exceptionally confident that the game will meet its target of a 2027 release. The pair even make comments that development has been the smoothest in the series' history and that it will be ready well in advance.

The gaming industry is no stranger to delays, and when people have had to wait a particularly long time between games, it can be a blow to fans to see the release date pushed back. However, series director Nomura and co-director Yasue seem extremely confident that Kingdom Hearts 4 will make it out in time for its late-2027 release window.

In an interview with Famitsu, translated by GamesRadar+, the pair discuss the long-awaited fourth numbered entry's release date. "The team is very particular, sometimes they are more particular about things than even I am," says Nomura. "However, as I mentioned in the [D23] panel, the release window won't be delayed."

Yasue also chimes in with an update on development. "Progress is going smoother than it has in the history of the Kingdom Hearts series," he says. "I think you can rest assured about this." The pair have squashed rumors of a Kingdom Hearts 4 delay before, but this is the first time they've given such clear reasons for their confidence.

"It will be ready well before the release date," says Nomura. "We don't expect to even go into our buffer time. That's the reason I'm returning to Japan so quickly."

It's rare to see a release date given with such absolute confidence, so we can very much expect to see more from Sora before the end of 2027.

Disney isn't stopping with Kingdom Hearts 4 and a new anime, as "there are so many things we want to do" with the 25-year-old JRPG series

Dragon Quest creator Yuji Horii has revealed that 2000's Dragon Quest 7 was originally intended to be a completely open-world game, but was reworked to have some order to exploration after the story apparently "fell apart."

In an interview with Famitsu that's been translated by GamesRadar+, Horii talks about the development of different games in the series. When it comes to one of the most popular games in the series, Dragon Quest 7, he explains that it was originally intended to have an open design before it was decided that the story needed more linearity.

Unlike the series' games that came before it, Dragon Quest 7 featured a much larger world spanning many continents, and with that came the idea of the protagonist discovering and building the world's map. The plan was for this to be done in any order, but the idea was quickly scrapped.

"Because collecting maps is at the center [of Dragon Quest 7], in the beginning the stone shards were scattered all over the world," Horii explains. "It wouldn't matter which stone shard you collected, you'd still be able to progress the story."

However, in the final game, there are many points where you need a specific shard to progress, and this was decided for plot purposes. "We tried it, but the story fell apart," he explains. "We had no choice but to add some degree of order to it. There are some stone shards that can be obtained before or after others, but the ones related to important plot points have some order to them."

If Horii and his team had pulled it off, Dragon Quest 7 wouldn't have been the first open-world game, but it would have been one of the biggest at the time.

Dragon Quest creator Yuji Horii says AI "hardly ever makes things up" anymore, even if it once made up that he works for Nintendo

Final Fantasy 7 remake trilogy director Naoki Hamaguchi says that the Gamescom announcements and trailer reveal for the final entry Final Fantasy 7 Revelation "marks the beginning" of fresh information about the game.

First unveiled at Summer Game Fest in June 2026, Final Fantasy 7 Revelation's Gamescom trailer is just the second released for the long-awaited game. However, Hamaguchi took to Twitter after the show to explain that the latest trailer is just the beginning of the game's upcoming announcements, with many more expected before the game's release early next year.

In the tweet, Hamaguchi says that the Opening Night Live trailer "marks the beginning of our information rollout," and continues that the team will "be sharing much more in the months ahead." While there is still plenty of time before Revelation's launch, we can expect a lot more information in the future.

The tweet is written in both English and Japanese and contains mostly the same information. The main difference between the two is that the English mentions information coming "in the months ahead," whereas the Japanese is vaguer about the time frame. However, distinctions like this are not uncommon, as Japanese is more contextual.

If you were titillated by the latest reveals from Gamescom, then it seems you will continue to eat well in the coming months.

Zack Fair has an even bigger role in Final Fantasy 7 Revelation, series director Naoki Hamaguchi says

Our new look at Final Fantasy 7 Revelation at Gamescom Opening Night Live was brief, but it did give us our first look at several of the finale's big Weapon fights. After months of speculation, Ruby Weapon, Emerald Weapon, and Ultima Weapon have all made their big debut, and these epic battles are looking spectacular so far.

We caught a brief glimpse of Emerald Weapon during a cutscene in Rebirth, but it appears the creature will play a much bigger role in Revelation, in line with the structure of the original game. Notably, the trailer shows what appears to be a real-time submarine fight against Emerald Weapon, which is certainly an expansion on its original appearance.

You can see all three creatures, and plenty more teasers on what to expect from Revelation, in the trailer below.

While the submarine did factor into the original Emerald Weapon fight in FF7, since it's how you reached the creature in the first place, there wasn't much in the way of direct combat aboard the vehicle. Director Naoki Hamaguchi previously alluded to the possibility of minigames at various points in these big fights, but he also told us that the main combat system would be "at the base" of the important battles. I'd say it's safe to expect that we'll be disembarking the sub to face Emerald Weapon directly by the end.

Notably, this is also our first look at Ultima Weapon (and yes, it's Ultima rather than Ultimate, as it's named in the original game). Fans were previously looking at free-to-play spin-offs for a potential hint at Ultima Weapon's design, but it looks like Revelation's take is a little different from that last iteration. We'll see it in full this spring.

Stay with us for more as the Gamescom 2026 schedule rolls on.

Dragon Quest creator Yuji Horii admits he's a fan of AI and of how much it's evolved over the years, saying it "hardly ever makes things up" anymore. He made these comments after being asked about the Gemini-powered chatbot that was recently added to the series' MMO.

The Dragon Quest series is credited with having one of gaming's first AI systems: in 1990's Dragon Quest 4, the player could give party members general instructions, and the AI then selected actions for each one. However, the series' latest implementation of AI has been far less popular.

Dragon Quest 10, the series Japanese-exclusive MMO, recently launched its seventh and final expansion, Lost Children of Time and Space, with a divisive addition. The expansion included a companion called Oshaberi Slimey – literally talkative Slimey – one of Dragon Quest's iconic blue slimes in a jester's hat. However, fans were disappointed to hear that Slimey works by using a Google Gemini-powered chatbot.

In an interview with Famitsu that's been translated by GamesRadar+, Horii explains his choice to implement Slimey and his opinions on AI in general. "Because nowadays AI is really smart, it's fun," he says. "It doesn't matter what I ask it, it hardly ever makes things up [anymore]."

AI often has issues with factual accuracy, as it often gives users an answer even if it doesn't have the necessary information. The game designer who is most commonly associated with Square Enix has had a similar experience. "Quite some time ago I asked AI about myself and it said I was 'a Nintendo employee,'" he says with a laugh.

He goes on to defend AI by saying, "It's evolving, and lately there are a lot of things you can do with it. Slimey is a conversational partner, so I think it lowers the barrier of entry to interacting with AI."

Like Final Fantasy 7 Revelation boss, Dragon Quest creator Yuji Horii worries live streams may not actually sell games: "Some people will be satisfied by just watching"

Dragon Quest creator and industry legend Yuri Horii says that he doesn't understand how live streaming games has become so popular, and he wonders if the practice helps advertise games or not. He believes that streaming fans are the result of a new type of light, or casual, gamer who just wants to see what a game is about without playing it themselves.

In an interview with Famitsu that's been translated by GamesRadar+, Horii discusses how much player tastes have changed when it comes to the types of experiences people seek out with games. He believes the gaming audience has split into two distinct categories: core gamers who want to know everything about their games, and casual gamers who skip through and want to finish quickly.

"In terms of more casual gamers, people have increasingly enjoyed game live streaming," Horii says. "In the past, just watching people play games all the time was not seen as a form of entertainment. Though saying that, I used to watch my friends play over their shoulders. But now live streaming has become really popular."

Displaying some truly powerful 'back in my day' energy, Horii admits that he doesn't understand the allure of watching someone else play a game over playing it yourself, even if the streamer adds interesting commentary. "It used to be unthinkable that the player would be the funny one and attract fans rather than the game," he says.

However, while the rise of live streaming means that developers now have a much bigger potential audience for their games, Horii is still unsure if it works as a marketing strategy. "It's really interesting to see how people play the games you made," he says. "But I don't know if it works as a marketing tool. Some people will be satisfied by just watching the live stream, and some will want to play after seeing it. I'm really not sure yet."

A similar sentiment was echoed earlier this year by Final Fantasy 7 Remake director Naoki Hamaguchi, who believes that streamers have changed gaming forever. He says that during development it's important to consider making games that people want to play rather than just watch.

Dragon Quest 9 has been trapped on the Nintendo DS for 17 years, and franchise creator Yuji Horii was "a little disheartened" to learn fans never wanted that.

Kingdom Hearts is celebrating its 25th anniversary next year with the release of Kingdom Hearts 4. While it doesn't have a release date yet, it was also revealed that a Kingdom Hearts animated series is in development for Disney's streaming platforms. However, this is apparently just the beginning of the franchise's plans, according to Disney's director of games, Nana Gadd.

In an interview with 4Gamer that's been translated by GamesRadar+, Gadd discussed the new Kingdom Hearts 4 trailer and anime announcement that were part of Disney's biennial fan convention D23. The series, which features a mash-up of Disney and Final Fantasy characters with original roles sprinkled in, is already known for its expansiveness, but it seems Disney is eager for more.

So far, Kingdom Hearts has been mostly focused on gaming, with over a dozen releases spanning a wide range of genres. While there are also manga and light novels, the majority of the fandom focuses on video games. However, with the announcement of the animated series, it's clear that Disney is hoping to expand.

"Even though Kingdom Hearts has been around for 25 years, there are so many things we want to do," says Gadd. "The announcement of the animated series is truly just the first step."

The franchise is already known for its complicated story, where you need to experience every piece of media just to have a hope of figuring it out. With that in mind, this statement has an exciting yet threatening aura.

Kingdom Hearts 4 features Pixar's Coco because Tetsuya Nomura thought it "would be the best world" for Sora's story

After three long decades, Terranigma is finally getting a modern re-release. The Super Nintendo JRPG, which was developed by Quintet and published by Enix in 1995, was never released in North America and had never been re-released on a later platform. But now, publisher Clear River Games is bringing the beloved classic to modern consoles and PC.

The new version of Terranigma will be released on PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S, Switch 2, Switch, Steam, and GOG in "early 2027," according to a press release.

Judging by the first trailer and Steam page, this will be a re-release that preserves the original game's look, feel, and gameplay – though the announcement notes that this version "thoughtfully adds to the original masterpiece, bringing a host of upgrades, tweaks and bonus features, designed to make the best, better still and provide an ideal point of entry for modern gamers."

Terranigma is an action RPG where you play as a boy who resurrects the Earth, charting its history from primordial evolution up through the modern day. Developer Quintet was known for Super NES classics like ActRaiser and Illusion of Gaia, and Terranigma is widely regarded as one of the best RPGs ever released on the platform. A shame, then, that its worldwide release was so limited.

Unlike many cult classic JRPGs, Terranigma actually was released outside of Japan – just not in North America. Nintendo published the game in Europe and Australia late in 1996, but by that time the gaming world was already obsessed with the newfangled 3D graphics of platforms like the PS1 and N64. Whatever plans might've existed for a North American version were dashed by the closure of Enix's US office, well before the Square merger, in late 1995.

Before the HD era largely standardized television formats worldwide, PAL TVs were fundamentally different from the NTSC televisions used in the US and Japan – most notably in the fact that they refresh 50 times per second instead of 60. That makes Terranigma's PAL-only release a problem for English-speaking players worldwide these days, since it runs at an improper speed that's out of line with the Japanese original.

Numerous fan patches and console mods have given RPG fans ways to play Terranigma over the years, but the rights situation around the game – with part of its ownership tied up with the original developers at Quintet, and part held by the modern Square Enix – meant that it had never gotten an official, modern port. And thus, there was never a way to officially play it in English at the intended 60Hz speed.

“I hope the themes of god and humanity, creation and destruction, and the atmosphere of the world itself resonate with today's players too," original artist Kamui Fujiwara says in the press release. "Not as a relic of the past, but as a living, breathing work. This moment has been long awaited and now it is finally here. I hope you will enjoy it with all your heart.”

Check out more of the best SNES games of all time.

Kingdom Hearts lead Tetsuya Nomura says that Pixar's Coco was chosen as a Disney world in Kingdom Hearts 4 as it was the best fit for Sora's story.

Speaking at the Kingdom Hearts D23 panel (via Genki_JPN on Twitter), after the reveal that The Land of the Dead from Pixar's Coco is the first Disney world featured in the upcoming Square Enix RPG Nomura spoke about world selections.

"Whenever I do have a chance to decide that we absolutely need to include a certain world. I generally think about how well it synergizes with overall the main story progression with Sora" he explains. And that with Kingdom Hearts 4, Nomura adds, "when I thought about the themes, we felt that Coco would be the best world that would help achieve that goal."

Spoilers for Kingdom Hearts 3 (and potentially 4, I guess) to follow.

Okay, so from my understanding as someone who has not played Kingdom Hearts 3 yet (I'm trying to make my way through all of the non-numbered entries between 2 and 3 as intended) Sora sort of dies at the end of the game by being banished from his reality, before awakening in the realistic world seen in trailers for Kingdom Hearts 4, this is known as the Quadratum, which acts as an afterlife.

Not only that, but fans speculate Sora has lost his memories in Kingdom Hearts 4, due to him fainting when seeing visions of Goofy and Donald. This then ties into the Coco world. The latest trailer opens with Hector explaining that people disappear from the afterlife when forgotten (like in the film), which seems like a pretty intentional thing to open with, especially if this theory is true.

Part of the reason the first Kingdom Hearts is my favourite in the series is mostly down to how much the Disney side was integrated into the main plot – which is something I've seen as a major complaint with Kingdom Hearts 3 – so if that's the case again with 4, it's certainly an exciting prospect. But at the same time, I really want the most esoteric crossovers possible to happen with Disney's massive library. Give me an Arlen, Texas world where Sora teams up with Hank and Bobby Hill to stop the heartless from taking over Strickland Propane, I beg of you.

Kingdom Hearts 4's Goofy and Donald are playable for the first time ever, and Mickey's Paper Mario-style sections are "very different from Sora's adventure"

Kingdom Hearts lore is extensive, convoluted, and confusing. I don't mean that as a dig – I am a Metal Gear fan, after all – but even after playing every game in the series, I've still got to read a half-dozen wiki pages and watch a few lore videos before I start remembering the specifics of any given plot beat. That's why I'm so impressed that Tetsuya Nomura and the rest of the devs have managed to remember a small, but key detail about Heartless behavior in Kingdom Hearts 4.

The first Disney world announced for Kingdom Hearts 4 is Pixar's Coco, In the recent D23 trailer, we see a pair of Heartless emerge and start creeping toward the film's protagonist, Miguel, who is the only living person in the vicinity – they completely ignore the other denizens of the Land of the Dead.

A couple of days after that trailer debuted, a Kingdom Hearts fan called Noir LilBomber tweeted a theory: "One thing me and my friends noticed in the kingdom hearts 4 trailer is that the heartless only appear to react to Miguel and not the other characters. This is in line with the Ansem report from KH1 that stated the heartless only react to LIVING test subjects."

This theory started getting shared pretty widely among the fandom, and yes, that detail goes back to Ansem's Report 4, which appeared in the first Kingdom Hearts game. "The Heartless appear in groups, and are multiplying rapidly. I've provided them both living and nonliving samples," the report goes. "They've responded only to the living."

This detail actually manifests in a more meaningful way in the OG game, too. When Sora and the crew first arrive in Halloween Town, the Heartless are basically inert, and don't attack the largely undead Nightmare Before Christmas characters there. It's only after Skellington and Dr. Finkelstein build an artificial heart for the Heartless to pine after that they turn violent.

So it's entirely consistent with established lore that the Heatless appearing in the Land of the Dead are only interested in the one living being they see: Miguel. Honestly, bravo to Nomura and the rest of the crew. I doubt many would've noticed if that detail was swept under the rug, but the devs are clearly committed to making sure even the most obscure bits of Kingdom Hearts lore live on in the long-awaited sequel.

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Dragon Quest 9 was a Nintendo DS exclusive when it launched in 2009 – and it technically still is. Square Enix never set the RPG free, despite many of its fans' appetite for a remake, and it seems franchise creator Yuji Horii isn't worried about it – possibly because he's still hurting from fans' reactions to the DS game 17 years ago.

The RPG's emperor recently spoke to Japanese site Famitsu as Dragon Quest celebrated its 40th anniversary; Nintendo Everything translated a chunk of Horii's interview. In it, he discusses fans' response to Dragon Quest 9 being a Nintendo DS exclusive after experiencing the visual splendor of the first completely 3D Dragon Quest, Dragon Quest 8, in 2004. Their response was… not good.

"It made for interesting gameplay," Horii says about the Nintendo DS, "and I thought everyone would be surprised, but when we announced it, we had a lot of criticism, like 'What? On Nintendo DS?' At the time we were actually a little disheartened."

He explains that Square Enix was motivated to lock Dragon Quest 9 to the DS because its developers wanted "quick and easy play over local networks." He says that, "At that time there were not many games using local networks and it was difficult to do so. But with Nintendo DS, the moment you turn the power on you can connect with people."

Fans had been preparing themselves for Dragon Quest 9 to launch on technology with some muscle, the PS3 or Wii, maybe, as a contemporaneous Nintendo Life article suggests. So their jaws dropped through the floor and straight into Hell once Square Enix made the unprecedented announcement that, no, Dragon Quest 9 will be bound to the petite DS.

Forum discussions from around Dragon Quest 9's release reveal players' vitriol for the cute DS which I believe is innocent in all of this; it's not the console's fault it was made to be whimsical handheld and not a prehistoric Steam Deck. One 17-year-old thread on GameFAQs features players calling Dragon Quest 9 "really horrible" and "extremely boring."

But, with time, public sentiment started turning around. User Liamland says on a 12-year-old GameFAQs thread, "After playing [Dragon Quest 8] on the PS2, it would seem as if [Dragon Quest 9] on the NDS was a step down, from a graphics and sound standpoint. But ultimately the DLC content, multiplayer tag mode, and character flexibility of DQIX makes it arguably a better game than DQVIII."

"We thought that was an amazing system, and decided we wanted to make Dragon Quest 9 using that ability," Horii tells Famitsu. So Fans have grown to agree with him – though, they'd still really like it to be at least a little more free from the Nintendo DS.

"Is there any hope?" asks one Reddit thread wondering about the likelihood of a Dragon Quest 9 remake. The answer is, probably not – Square Enix has never spoken of it despite fans' incessant screams. After all this time, Dragon Quest 9's developers continue to be chased by the same problem: no one really wants Dragon Quest 9 to be exclusive to the Nintendo DS, and they never did.

RPGs like Dragon Quest 11 and Nier: Automata are heavily outsourced, Square Enix producer says, with surprisingly few devs in-house.

The official Kingdom Hearts social media accounts have paid tribute to American actor Hayden Panettiere, the voice behind Kairi in the earliest games in the RPG series, after her death at age 36.

Panettiere held numerous iconic roles throughout her career, both on screen and in video games. From Princess Dot in A Bug's Life to Kirby Reed in the Scream series, Sam in Until Dawn, and Kairi in Kingdom Hearts 1, 2, and Birth by Sleep (as well as Xion in Dream Drop Distance), she's had a massive impact on many franchises.

Now, the official Kingdom Hearts account on Twitter and Bluesky has paid tribute to Panettiere, sending condolences to her friends and family.

"We are deeply saddened by the passing of Hayden Panettiere," a statement begins. "Through her performance as Kairi, Hayden brought warmth, heart, and an unforgettable voice to the Kingdom Hearts series.

"Our thoughts are with her family, friends, and loved ones," it concludes.

Supermassive Games, the studio behind Until Dawn, has shared a similar sentiment, spotlighting her work in turning Sam "into one of horror gaming's most iconic final girls" in the 2015 game – one that'd go on to get a remake in 2024, as well as a movie adaptation last year.

"We are deeply saddened to hear of the passing of Hayden Panettiere," the devs say. "Hayden brought Sam to life in Until Dawn, shaping her into one of horror gaming's most iconic final girls. Our thoughts are with her friends, family, and our community. Rest in peace, Hayden."

After all the D23 reveals, we're finally starting to get a sense of what Kingdom Hearts 4 will look like, and series lead Tetsuya Nomura is already teasing further mysteries to be revealed. Apparently, the devs had an idea during the development of Kingdom Hearts 3 that's gone unrealized since that game launched in 2019, and they're finally getting to bring it to life in Kingdom Hearts 4. Personally? My money's on Star Wars.

During the Deep Dive into Kingdom Hearts panel at D23, which has been archived by YouTube channels like SpottinGames, the developers discussed the advantages of creating worlds based on general concepts rather than specific movie stories. Disney Town, for example, was an opportunity for the devs to build a world around the vibes of Toontown in Disneyland, with more freedom to define in-game world's layout and flow.

"Imagining something new based off of, solely, a certain type of concept certainly is something that's very fun and enjoyable," Nomura says. "It's also, in some ways, less daunting because there's no expectation of having to replicate something exactly as it is. It also gives us more freedom to incorporate a variety of gimmicks that we're thinking about. It's also a lot easier to incorporate from a narrative perspective, too. So it's a very versatile approach with many advantages."

Nomura took this opportunity to jump into a further tease for fans: "When it comes to the overall game design, for Kingdom Hearts 4 there's actually an idea that we had since Kingdom Hearts 3, that we weren't able to realize just because of certain difficulties. But we were able to realize that with this installment. For us, we think it's a very, very exciting idea and so I do hope people look forward to it."

Like I mentioned earlier, I'm convinced that this idea is one for a Star Wars world. The timing makes sense, as Kingdom Hearts 3 was the first major entry in the series to be released after Disney's acquisition of the property. Those hints at "certain difficulties" also line up, as Disney may have been a little more protective of Star Wars' image before 2019, when the franchise hadn't yet been the subject of multiple Fortnite collabs and other crossovers. Star Wars also presents a wide array of possibilities for unique in-game worlds that don't have to be tied to a specific set of characters from the films.

That, of course, is pure speculation on my part, but rumors of a Star Wars world have persisted since some of our earliest glimpses of Kingdom Hearts 4 in 2022, when a teaser appeared to show the foot of an AT-ST on the forest moon of Endor. I guess we've still got to wait a little bit longer to find out whether Sora is heading to that galaxy far, far away.

Kingdom Hearts 4 delay "is not happening," Tetsuya Nomura says after fans immediately doubt the RPG's late 2027 launch window: "I want to set the record straight."

Amid a deep sale and the biggest news drop for Kingdom Hearts 4 to date, the series collection became the top-selling paid game on Steam.

At last weekend's D23 event, Kingdom Hearts 4 got its biggest batch of new info to date with a new trailer that confirmed the first Disney world for the upcoming Square Enix RPG will be none other than The Land of the Dead from Pixar's Coco, with Miguel and Hector joining Sora's party. Alongside that, we got confirmation that we'll be able to play as Mickey, Donald, and Goofy in the game. Not to mention, there's a Kingdom Hearts anime series coming to Disney+.

Clearly, the hype from the series' massive fanbase was somewhat contagious, as the series' first collection, Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5+2.5 Remix (which collects four games and two games turned into movies), has been tearing it up on Steam. Helped along by a huge discount which brings the 1.5+2.5 collection down to $14.99 / £11.99, as well as a discount on Kingdom Hearts Integrum Masterpiece, which features fellow collection Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue, and Kingdom Hearts 3 + Re Mind DLC for $29.99 | £25.49, giving you (almost) the entire franchise for under $30.

The hype and the sale have done wonders, as the series has skyrocketed over on Steam, as Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5+2.5 Remix has become the top-selling game on Steam (not counting free-to-play titles like Counter-Strike 2, Apex Legends, and Dota 2). And now begins the race to play every single one of those games before late 2027, because they all matter to the lore, and don't bank on a delay either, as Tetsuya Nomura says one is "not happening"

As Kingdom Hearts 4 fans await an update at D23, Disney says the JRPG series is now a $1 billion franchise

In a promise that could fill ravenous Kingdom Hearts 4 fans with hope or simply age very poorly, the RPG's lead says the game will definitely not be delayed and will meet its late 2027 launch window.

Over the weekend, Kingdom Hearts 4 hopefuls were finally rewarded for their years of patience with a new trailer as well as the confirmation that the RPG is set to launch at the end of next year. Until recently, news on the game had been almost nonexistent since its reveal over four years ago, so you can understand why some folks think that the end now being in sight is a bit too good to be true.

However, series director Tetsuya Nomura and Kingdom Hearts 4 co-director Tai Yasue want to squash any of those worries right now. Speaking at D23, Nomura acknowledges the immediate speculation from fans that "the release date might still get pushed back" before launch, saying: "I want to set the record straight: That is not happening."

Nomura reiterates the plan to release Kingdom Hearts 4 in late 2027, adding that "a lot of the marketing for the game has only just started, and so I do hope that people also look forward to hearing more news as well." In other words, it seems, Square Enix isn't just going to go radio silent until launch, either, so we can get excited for more trailers and the like.

Yasue doubles down on Nomura's statement as he proclaims, "I can confidently say and promise that it will launch in 2027," adding: "Schedule-wise, the development is very smooth. It's not like an 80%, 90% – it's a 100% thing. We'll be there in 2027 for sure."

Obviously, no game developer is ever going to follow their big release window announcement with comments suggesting that things are looking a bit shaky behind the scenes, and the team might not actually make the deadline they just publicly announced, but to so boldly promise no delays like this certainly suggests a high level of confidence. With that said, we've seen similar things said before and fans have still been burned – just look at GTA 6, and Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick saying in early 2025 that "we feel really good" about it launching that year… before it was delayed. …Twice.

Kingdom Hearts 4's Goofy and Donald are playable for the first time ever, and Mickey's Paper Mario-style sections are "very different from Sora's adventure."

Much of Final Fantasy 7 Revelation remains a mystery, though fans are hoping that the social media activity of a Japanese icon who featured in some of the JRPG's spin-offs is teasing some big plans.

Over on Instagram lately, Japanese musician Gackt has posted an image of himself cosplaying as Genesis Rhapsodos, for whom he provides the inspiration and Japanese voice in the Final Fantasy 7 spin-off games Crisis Core and Dirge of Cerberus. What's more, the song playing in the background of the post appears in Dirge of Cerberus.

The cheeky social media is interesting for a few reasons, though there are some caveats. Gackt's connection to Final Fantasy 7 has been there for a long time, and it's something he often posts about. Looking at his Instagram page, he often posts old clips and performances – some of which include himself dressed up as Genesis. There have been a few times over the years that supposed teases lead to little.

However! Sometimes they do lead to something. As one fan on Twitter notes, just days before the Crisis Core remake was announced, Gackt posted about returning to a studio he hadn't visited in "over ten years" for some voice recording. Hm!

Either way, fans are speculating with excitement. Dirge of Cerberus is yet to get a remake, sure, though something else to consider is the timing, as fans wonder if Genesis might appear as a boss fight in the Remake trilogy's grand finale. Final Fantasy 7 Revelation boss Naoki Hamaguchi has spoken a few times recently about how the spin-off games and Advent Children film tie into the grand finale, and did so recently at Final Fantasy 14's Berlin Fan Fest.

"I see a great deal of that discussion," he said at the time to YouTuber Ashif’s Release Notes. "I've seen a lot of people discussing and speculating off the back of interviews with myself and with Kitase-san, 'Is the ending of this going to connect to Advent Children?'

"But it's not a question. I don't want to sit here and say it connects to this, it connects to that. But obviously, there are a lot of other titles within the VII universe. So, we're talking about Advent Children, we're talking about Dirge of Cerberus, Crisis Core. And we want to bring all of those in and make sure we're not leaving those out."

Hamaguchi goes on to say that "once we have all of those in place, we're looking towards the ending." The question the developers are theoretically asking themselves is "what kind of ending are we going to head for in Revelation that still has those ties?"

Naturally, you'll have to wait for Final Fantasy 7 Revelation to release next year to truly find out, though Gackt's social media activity isn't making the wait any easier.

Final Fantasy 7 Revelation director says each character in the RPG only has 4 jobs because making games is so much harder now.

The games industry will undergo a sea change in early 2028, with Sony ceasing production of PlayStation discs. Despite the pushback on this decision, it remains in place, and data from Square Enix certainly affirms that the gaming audience is already going digital.

According to the company's latest earnings report, significantly more players are already purchasing their games digitally. In a slide breaking down units sold across video games in digital entertainment, we can see that 90.11% of all game sales are "downloads" rather than "packaged."

This comes from numbers in North America, Europe, Japan, and Asia, and the rest of the world. That's a pretty large disparity, underpinning a clear preference for digital over physical purchasing.

But the situation isn't that clear-cut. You have to consider what people's options actually are. Buying physical games can be relatively tricky depending on where you live - there may not be a brick-and-mortar store nearby, forcing you to buy online. It might be both cheaper and more convenient to simply get the game you want on the PlayStation Store, Steam, or whatever.

Then you have releases that are only available digitally for the time being, like the HD remasters of Final Fantasy 10 and 10-2 for Switch 2. These are on top of Final Fantasy 14, which is predominantly sold online - though you can technically get a packaged version of old versions.

Physical game sales often appear smaller than they actually are when they're pit against combined digital sales that include microtransactions, DLC, and subscriptions on top of full game sales, and that's especially true for Square Enix given the Final Fantasy 14-sized hippo hanging off its game figures.

It's similar to the logic we've seen from Capcom, which reckons 95% of its sales will be digital over the next fiscal year. That's all well and good, but for the majority of PC players alone, there's no other option, so of course the stats will skew that way.

Market forces, not just preferences, are pushing people towards non-physical sources for games. Ultimately, just because the majority does something a certain way, it doesn't mean the others should be forgotten, which is the main argument against Sony's new policy. That said, figures are figures, and Square Enix's audience is, like many, all about digital products.

"I hope PS6 will be a disaster": Sony reminds everyone it's taking discs away in warnings reportedly added to new PS5 consoles

The long-rumored Final Fantasy 9 remake is currently stalling despite being quite far along – at least for now, according to one report.

In comments made last month that are now doing the rounds of the internet, veteran games journalist Alex Donaldson of RPGsite and recently Respec delves into what's going on with one of the industry's most notoriously unannounced projects.

Per Donaldson, the Final Fantasy 9 project was a single game and was quite far along in development before it eventually ground to a halt. As of right now, the JRPG remake is no longer moving forward.

If you're feeling deflated, though, there is some hope. Donaldson notes that the new mobile Dissidia game was basically canceled for over a year before eventually being revived. Given that Final Fantasy 9's remake project has a lot of work already done, the same could happen here.

Mind you, "illustrations created as potential box art and as key art were just tweeted out for the anniversary," so you might not want to get your hopes up too much.

Donaldson's remarks came as part of a wider discussion of a Final Fantasy 14 Fan Fest panel featuring director and producer Naoki "Yoshi-P" Yoshida and Final Fantasy 7 Revelation lead Naoki Hamaguchi. Not only did Yoshi-P turn heads by saying that remakes of FF6, FF8, and FF9 would need multiple installments, but he also pointed out that fans want Hamaguchi to direct FF17, and what better praise of someone could that be?

In short, per Donaldson, the veteran Final Fantasy 14 boss has a habit of disguising a teaser as speculation.

For example, when showing off the MMO's Dawntrail expansion, he turned a few heads by saying the reason behind the FF9 nods was "a secret." If we're talking about rumored timelines, it's interesting that a Final Fantasy 9 remake was reportedly in the works at that point.

As such, his pointing out how difficult it would be to remake such a game at the moment can read as a soft confirmation that it's too difficult to press ahead with the project right now.

In a similar way, it's noteworthy that he would point out how people would like Hamaguchi to direct the next mainline Final Fantasy game, especially with FF7: Revelation due to wrap up the trilogy next year.

Of course, there's a reason certain projects aren't official: things can change. Games that make sense in one moment don't in the next, so even if something is teased, you might not want to look into something too much until it comes from the source itself.

Final Fantasy 9's own rumored remake is a good example of that in action. We first caught wind of the project as part of an infamous Nvidia leak that's slowly but surely confirmed the plans of many differing developers and publishers. Since then, while we haven't heard anything official from Square Enix, we have received the odd update from outside sources with decent track records.

Just earlier this year, for example, one such source said the JRPG project is on ice.

As ever, take everything you read with a pinch of salt as plans change, accounts conflict, and sometimes a random remark is just that, rather than a tease of what's to come. Still, if you were looking forward to the unannounced Final Fantasy 9 remake actually being announced, you may want to put it to the back of your mind for now.

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth multi-platform push and Final Fantasy 14 Evercold hype give Square Enix a welcome win as profits surge over 88%

Things are looking good for Square Enix at the moment. Thanks in no small part to Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth's staggered launch and Final Fantasy 14 gearing up for a new expansion, the company reported a huge increase in overall profits.

These numbers come from Square Enix's latest financial results, where it says the publisher has seen an 88.6% jump in operating income for the three-month period ending June 30. That's a pretty high margin, to say the least.

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is listed as a specific reason for this, seeing as the blockbuster RPG arrived on Nintendo Switch 2 and Xbox Series X/S in June. It had a "solid performance," according to the report, alongside The Adventures of Eliot: The Millennium Tales.

Staying with Moogles and Chocobos, then, Final Fantasy 14's been putting in a strong shift to boot. We're on the road to the next major expansion, Evercold, and the buzz is being felt in Square Enix's accounting. There's been "improved user activity" in the MMORPG of late, stemming from the " advance recognition" of what's coming.

Eorzea's been a hive of activity in recent months, with the active player count crossing the one million threshold for the first time since early 2025. People are ready for what Evercold has to offer, and they're getting their friends involved ahead of the expansion's rollout.

Of course, besides the MMO's latest chapter, we have Final Fantasy 7 Revelation coming in 2027. I'd expect these numbers to grow again once both of these mammoth releases are available. Just one other question: when's Final Fantasy 17 coming?

Final Fantasy 14 fans discover "Creepypasta Backrooms" area in Patch 7.55, and Square Enix is feeding into the horror: "If you're not careful and you noclip out of reality..."

It's looking likely that we could be getting another look at Kingdom Hearts 4 this month. The franchise is set for a retrospective showcase at D23, and some potential panelists have been revealed, increasing the odds that the latest installment will be part of proceedings in some capacity.

The Deep Dive into Kingdom Hearts panel will take place on August 15, and thanks to the D23 app, we now know three possible participants (thanks, Kingdom Hearts Insider). Haley Joel Osment will be at the event, an expected presence since he's the voice of protagonist Sora as well as the villain Vanitas.

He's being joined by David Gallagher, the voice of Riku, another unsurprising attendee. But the third person listed is an exciting one: Tai Yasue, the co-director of Kingdom Hearts 4.

Now, Yasue also co-directed Kingdom Hearts 3 and a bunch of the spin-offs, including Birth by Sleep and Dream Drop Distance, making him a tenured voice on the property's development, but it's convenient he can speak to the upcoming sequel, too. This could be the first time we hear a lead dev speak on Sora, Donald and Goofy's next misadventure, if it happens, but I should note they're all just listed for D23 in general and not tied to any specific showcase.

Thus far, we've just two trailers. And though it's exciting, it's been difficult to fully contextualize (Kingdom Hearts being obtuse, shocking right?), so it'll be helpful to get some insights into where the narrative is going and what roles some of the characters will be playing.

There's no release window yet for the next mainline installment, and I wouldn't expect one at D23. A showcase handled specifically by Square Enix is much more likely for that information, but we may get a little more footage alongside whatever the panelists can tell us. We've come a long way from sealing the darkness in Wonderland and the Deep Jungle, and the road forward continues unabated.

Canceled Kingdom Hearts spin-off's intro apparently leaks online and not even veteran fans understand what's going on: "Why does it look like Pacific Rim but with Keyblades."

Final Fantasy 7 Remake series director Naoki Hamaguchi has revealed Final Fantasy 7 Revelation is close to completion, and that he's quite confident that it'll hit the mark.

Speaking to YouTube creator Ashif’s Release Notes (via Genki_JPN), Hamaguchi was asked about his approach to helming the Final Fantasy 7 Remake trilogy, as someone who was inspired by the series itself, and while the 12 years he's been working on the project have caused him to feel a massive amount of responsibility and pressure, things have somewhat calmed as he approaches the end.

"Having been able to announce FF7 revelation at SGF, I hope that people out there can look at it and think this looks like it will be pretty good," Hamaguchi says, adding, "As we are now approaching the end, it's nearing completion. I personally can pick it up and play it and think, 'yeah, this feels good; this is satisfying.' So I am quite confident in it."

Of course, with it being the final entry in the Final Fantasy 7 Remake trilogy and coinciding with the original game's 30th anniversary, Revelation has a fair amount riding on it as a release. Hamaguchi acknowledges this: "Of course the final judgment is in the hands of the players... but I feel confident." He adds, "I can see the end. So my honest state at the moment is that I can finally feel that pressure lifting."

Despite some major problems people have with the current remake games, and the weird ending of Rebirth leaving the series on a bit of a rough note for many, it's hard to deny that they are mostly an excellent time. Hopefully the finale lands for everyone, and finally clears up some of the weird remake timeline shenanigans.

Final Fantasy 7 Revelation boss says the ending "might be fully faithful to the original" RPG, or "it might end up being something completely different"

There have been some stark differences between the Final Fantasy 7 Remake trilogy and the original game thus far, and the conclusion could be another place where creative liberties are taken. That said, don't expect any hints from overseer Naoki Hamaguchi, who's playing coy in the hopes people choose to just enjoy the journey instead.

"I have never told any media outlet about what kind of ending Final Fantasy 7 Revelation will have," he tells Automaton.

"I don't want people to focus just on the ending," he adds. "I’m aiming to create a game that will make people feel 'I'm glad they made the Remake series,' or 'I'm glad I was able to see the Final Fantasy 7 Remake series through to the end' when they look back on the whole trilogy."

Considering he and his team will have one PlayStation release into three blockbuster games on modern hardware, I can understand his perspective. That's a decade-plus of development, redesigning, and restructuring the narrative to offer hundreds of hours of gameplay, all while celebrating and maintaining the legacy of a game that shook the industry.

But as we approach the third and final installment, the big question is: Should we expect it to end like the 1997 version, or is Hamaguchi planning the curveball of curveballs? He's saying nothing.

"The ending might be fully faithful to the original, or it might end up being something completely different," he explains. "Or perhaps, it might go in a direction no one could have imagined in the first place. I’d like everyone to experience it for themselves."

Those are big words. The climax of Final Fantasy 7 is right up there when it comes to memorable scenes in the sci-fi adventure. I'd probably place it third behind Sephiroth burning Nibelheim and the death of Aerith in set-pieces that always give me goosebumps.

I mean, Cloud doing Omnislash? And then the lifeforce coming to protect the planet? It's pure cinema. I can't see your final limit break being removed - it's just such a perfectly timed moment - but Hamaguchi hasn't done me wrong yet. I trust him, and I'm ready for what Revelation has to offer.

Final Fantasy 7 Revelation director says each character in the RPG only has 4 jobs because making games is so much harder now

The 1997 RPG Final Fantasy 7 is one of the most beloved games of all time, so naturally this decade's remake trilogy has been received, although largely positively, under intense scrutiny. A remake in every sense of the word, three distinct games have been made out of the original one, and Square Enix has been liberal with changes and expansions to the story, combat, world, and minigames, which naturally means fans have been squabbling online about all of the differences for about six years now. Naoki Hamaguchi, director on Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth and Revelation, sees that as a good thing.

Ahead of Final Fantasy 7 Revelation's release next year, Hamaguchi tells Automaton he's "grateful" for the remake trilogy's discourse because it means people care.

"Games are a medium, a community, and a culture. While a culture has certain unchanging aspects, I believe it only truly shapes into a culture when people discuss it from many different perspectives," says Hamaguchi. "If everyone looked at something in exactly the same way, I think it might not leave a lasting impression and could fade into obscurity over time. The very fact that the community is so active, that conversations happen, and debates keep erupting, is a kind of entertainment in and of itself."

I don't know about you, but I'm tickled by the mental image of Hamaguchi browsing Final Fantasy-related subreddits, sipping a cup of coffee, and giggling as his diehard fans argue about impossibly hot fantasy characters with big hair. In more elegant words, Hamaguchi says those heated discussions are proof of passion, which is hard to argue with.

"When people discuss and get heated about the minigames, the story, or the relationships between characters in FFVII, I think that only happens because they see value in those elements," he says. "I'm proud that this series has enough depth and capacity to inspire those kinds of discussions."

Even from game to game in the remake series, there's a lot of variation in terms of gameplay and structure, with the first 2020 entry being far more linear than the massive open world that is Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. Hamaguchi told GamesRadar+ in a recent interview that people "got a little bit tired" of all the side quests in Rebirth and might have "stepped away" in exhaustion, which suggests Revelation could be a little more streamlined.

Final Fantasy 7 Revelation director wants "some kind of physical edition" for the RPG, but he can't promise it as Sony becomes the latest to "shift away" toward digital

Final Fantasy 14 is no horror game, standing as the MMORPG gem of Square Enix's beloved JRPG series – but it sure does have its spooky moments.

If you know the lore behind the Palace of the Dead, you're probably familiar with how creepy Final Fantasy 14 can get – but its environments and atmosphere are arguably not very eerie, even in Deep Dungeons with heart-wrenching backstories like PotD… most of them, anyway.

One Warrior of Light has discovered an area that almost feels like it should be out-of-bounds in the North Horn of the Occult Crescent, and it's spine-chilling.

"I think I found one of the creepiest places SE did in a while," they write, sharing screenshots of their discovery over on Reddit. The spot comes from the MMO's recent Patch 7.55, and appears after players go through a foggy Silent Hill-esque hole in the wall – yes, hole.

"Was wandering in Occult Crescent North Horn and found a hole in the wall and got a big chill in the spine seeing this," as the poster reports.

"Reminded me of some Creepypasta Backrooms shenanigans," they add – and, yeah, I can certainly see why.

Everything is paint-white, floating against a pitch-black background. There are crawling arms reaching for nothing, forming freaky arches. Enemies prowl the strange area in the Occult Crescent, too, which commenters note are formidable foes.

"I visited there today too, and let's just say it's really risky," as one reply reads. "All enemies are rank 40+," the person responding notes – but there are "four silver chests and a survey point inside" to make it worth it.

Amusingly, Square Enix has chimed in with its own amusing comment on the matter as well, writing in its own post, "If you're not careful and you noclip out of reality in the wrong areas, you'll end up in the…"

It's a silly little reference to the Backrooms, but I love it.

Will I explore the area for myself? Honestly, I'm not sure I can be bothered tackling the normal part of the Occult Crescent – but the new Phantom weapon does beckon…

Final Fantasy 14 is great and all, but Yoshi-P would "tackle completely new game designs and values" if he were to make another MMO.

There was a lot to do in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, between the main story and all the myriad side-quests – perhaps an overwhelming amount, even, and trilogy head honcho Naoki Hamaguchi is distinctly aware of that issue while making Final Fantasy 7 Revelation.

"One of the things I think people got a little bit tired of – or maybe that's when they stepped away from the game – was on the world map, there is a lot of content," Hamaguchi tells GamesRadar+ during a recent interview.

"Sometimes you'd get rewards like materia if you finish that content," he explains. "But for those people who just wanted to get those materia or rewards, they might feel like they have to do certain mini-games, even if they don't really want to."

This is the tricky balance of building out a world map. You want to give players things to do, reasons to explore every nook and cranny, but too much and suddenly it all looks like a mess of fairy lights, and you've no idea where to start.

Or, it just feels arbitrary, as is a hurdle I've encountered in Assassin's Creed games as well as Skyrim and other such sprawling role-playing misadventures, where I noticed I was just ticking things off.

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth feels bigger than its predecessor Remake, leaning into the fact we're now away from Midgar, but even with unlocking new magic and abilities, I got a bit fatigued.

His comments make it sound like Revelation will be more curated, perhaps with more variation, either in terms of mini-games and activities, or the things they provide, or both. Bigger isn't inherently better, and I'm relieved to hear Hamaguchi's taken that mindset coming off of Rebirth.

After 2 years, solo Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth modder says fine, I'll do it myself, fixing the JRPG's wonky lighting at long last

A finger on the monkey's paw curled with Nintendo fans wishing they could play the Kingdom Hearts games on Switch 2. A collection combining the mainline trilogy was announced in June, but it came with cover art that was immediately hit with AI accusations, a claim Square Enix is now wholeheartedly refuting.

In a statement given to GameSpot, the company claims everything in that cover is manmade, and the problems people were highlighting came from human hands.

"We're aware of feedback regarding recent Kingdom Hearts visuals," a Square Enix PR representative said. "These assets were created by our development team without the use of generative AI, and the issues resulted from human error."

This would be fine and dandy if we were talking about one or two problems, but there's a long list when it comes to that visual. Donald Duck has three fingers on one hand and four on the other, the hands on the clock tower don't look straight and the details around the gears of the clock are muddy, the Keyblades have inconsistently sized keychains – I could go on.

It's worth noting many of these things are tropes of gen-AI imagery, hence why fans were so quick to accuse Square Enix of using it in this instance. The software used to create AI imagery gets these facets a little bit wrong because what it puts out is a composite picture using other assets, made extremely quickly.

Nonetheless, the statement points to the revised artwork. "Quality is extremely important to us, and updated assets have been implemented where appropriate," finishes Square Enix's comment.

Another cover has since been put out. Some things have been sorted, like Donald's hands, but other parts, like the zipper on Sora's jacket going nowhere, remain. Yet another version exists on YouTube, where characters have simply been moved around.

The original is still easy to find on Square Enix's Twitter feed. The Kingdom Hearts Collection comes out on October 6, and maybe we'll see another draft of this art when it actually hits shelves.

Further proving Kingdom Hearts' existence is a miracle, ex-Disney CEO says he can't even remember why he greenlit the JRPG in the first place.

Final Fantasy 14 director Naoki "Yoshi-P" Yoshida has big plans for the MMO with its new expansion Evercold – but if he were to work on a separate online game, he might take a bit of a different path than he has with the Square Enix gem.

The beloved lead reveals as much in a new interview with GamesRadar+, first explaining how, for Evercold, he "chose to steer FF14 towards 'change' in pursuit of creating even more enjoyment and evolving further. I felt that, in terms of mindset and time, we were prepared to update the gaming experience to be more enjoyable and comfortable for our players and their lifestyles."

That aligns well with what's to come. After all, there are job changes and tweaks to years-old systems underway with the expansion – changes that I personally can't wait to give a go myself (begone, tomestone hell).

It's not easy to make said changes, though.

"Making sudden changes to try and keep up with that pace can be harmful to our operations, like how making sharp turns while driving fast tends to lead to accidents," as Yoshi-P puts it. "Making these judgment calls is a constant part of overseeing FF14."

That's not to say he'd be making the same calls if he started from the ground up on a brand-new MMO, however. "Incidentally," the Final Fantasy 14 head admits, "if I were to develop a new online live service title from scratch, I'd be challenging myself to tackle completely new game designs and values."

That's certainly got me interested, to say the least.

Now, this obviously isn't an admission of any huge new project or anything like that – but I do wonder what Yoshi-P means here. After all, we're talking about the man who managed to pick the original Final Fantasy 14's pieces out of the ashes and transform them into a rebirth for the MMO with A Realm Reborn.

It's not as though that's a small feat, and the game is still pressing on as one of the genre's greatest to date.

I suppose it'll all remain speculation… unless Yoshi-P ever does give something new a go – although judging by what he's said before regarding working on Final Fantasy for at least another decade, I doubt it's something we'd see anytime soon. But, hey, I'm not complaining.

Final Fantasy 14, Monster Hunter, and Animal Crossing top new survey of games Japanese players have spent the most time on and I can't say I'm surprised.

As exciting as the fight with Sephiroth will be in Final Fantasy 7 Revelation, it's the Weapon battles that I'm most looking forward to. They're going to be glorious spectacles, and according to Naoki Hamaguchi, overseer of the remake trilogy, a true challenge of your skills – with the occasional curveball for good measure.

"Obviously, what we're making is an RPG," Hamaguchi tells GamesRadar+ in a new interview. "One of the things that's fun about RPGs is having the characters you've leveled, you've customized, and you've brought them up where they are, and using them to overcome difficult situations."

For the endgame, the devs wanted to find balance between injecting novelty into the fights against Sapphire, Diamond and the other Weapons, and making them straight-ahead slobberknockers. "Say you had this fight against a Weapon, a giant enemy, or something that's really exciting or cool," he begins.

"And you go into it, and it's just a completely new mechanic or minigame," he continues. "I think there are quite a few players who would come away from that feeling quite disappointed that it wasn't a reflection of the effort that they put into building something up to that point."

I would agree. This will be three games into the re-telling of Final Fantasy 7, and as someone who loves tinkering with his materia and equipment, I like feeling my build succeed over any and every kind of adversity. Sometimes to my own detriment – I have forced myself to complete Darks Souls runs with less than optimal characters because I felt I had something to prove.

I digress. Hamaguchi says the devs "want to have the Final Fantasy 7 Remake series combat system at the base," regardless of what other bells and whistles might be attached to a Weapon encounter. "There may be some minigames involved in parts of them, say at the beginning of one of the fights or something like that, to mix things up a little bit," he comments.

"But the core battle is really focused on the characters that you have come through the rest of the game with as an RPG."

Final Fantasy 7 Revelation director wants "some kind of physical edition" for the RPG, but he can't promise it as Sony becomes the latest to "shift away" toward digital.

A nationwide survey asking Japanese players which games they've spent the most time in is both super surprising and exactly what you'd expect. Massive evergreen giants such as Final Fantasy 14 and Animal Crossing New Horizons topping the list was definitely predictable, but I'm also kind of stunned to see a rogue PSP Monster Hunter game come dangerously close to the top spot.

A new survey of 5,400 people published in Famitsu magazine (shared online by Genki) has now revealed a list of the 20 most time-consuming games people in Japan have lost hours, days, or even months to. Most of the list won't surprise you – heck, there's a good chance you've also enjoyed some of them for ages – but there's also a few strays that'll definitely make you blink too hard.

Here's the full list in order:

1. Final Fantasy 14
2. Monster Hunter Portable 2nd G
3. Final Fantasy 11
4. Animal Crossing New Horizons
5. Dragon Quest 10 Online
6. Minecraft
7. Apex Legends
8. Final Fantasy 7
9. Splatoon 2
10. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
11. Genshin Impact
12. Monster Hunter World
13. Fortnite
14. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
15. Splatoon 3
16. Ragnarok Online
17. Fate/ Grand Order
18. Granblue Fantasy
19. The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim
20. Dragon Quest 3

Three Final Fantasies, a bunch of gachas, a handful of open-world RPGs, and a couple live-service shooters? Yeah, that checks out pretty perfectly.

In particular, critically acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy 14 coming out on top is perhaps the most predictable outcome of all. You could squash a couple already-mammoth single-player RPGs together, and they still wouldn't match up to the quality content on offer in Square Enix's seemingly immortal online world, which is only gearing up to get even bigger with next year's Evercold expansion.

What's more interesting are the few surprises here. Take Monster Hunter Portable 2nd G, a PSP game that's far from the series' most popular entry but still managed to secure a second place finish. Curiously, there's no Pokemon representation here at all, and only four games on the list come from publishers based in the USA: Fortnite, Minecraft, Apex Legends, and good old Skyrim.

Final Fantasy 14 Evercold changes housing for the better, Yoshi-P says, and World of Warcraft's "amazing" take on the MMO staple has "been a good source of research."

It's finally happening. The Final Fantasy 7 Remake series is coming to Final Fantasy 14.

Over the last decade, its addition felt like a question of when rather than if. Final Fantasy 14 is designed, in part, to be a theme park that pays tribute to the wider series, with references and nods aplenty. We've seen plenty of crossovers over the years – from Final Fantasy 16 and Nier to other franchises like Monster Hunter – and Final Fantasy 14's own producer and director Naoki 'Yoshi-P' Yoshida has spoken about the possibility before, saying the timing needed to be right.

So how did it finally happen, and why now, exactly? Speaking to Final Fantasy 7 Revelation boss Naoki Hamaguchi at Final Fantasy 14's Berlin leg of Fan Fest, it's one of the first questions I ask.

Hamaguchi tells me that discussions kicked off about a year ago during a conversation with Yoshi-P about the release dates for Evercold and Revelation, and it all went from there.

"Is there something we can do to use the fact that they're close together to bring some energy to the Final Fantasy franchise as a whole?" Hamaguchi tells us of the question he and Yoshi-P pondered. "That's really how things started."

Have you heard of . . .

Fast forward to today, and we have a better idea of what that collaboration looks like. Final Fantasy 14 is getting a Final Fantasy 7-themed raid called Beyond the Lifestream that involves the supervision of veterans of the OG JRPG – that being, writer Kazushige Nojima and the man responsible for Cloud's look, Tetsuya Nomura. Amusingly, Final Fantasy 14's version of the Gold Saucer is getting a revamp to look more like it does in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, complete with a typing game that'll get an FF7 theme to start.

Speaking to his own role in the collaboration, Hamaguchi says that, similar to Yoshi-P, he's there to guide the team's excitement into something realistic and achievable. "We have to be really careful that it's not impacting the [Final Fantasy] 14 patch release schedule," he says, "because then we're putting the cart before the horse."

As for what a successful collaboration looks like, Hamaguchi says Final Fantasy 7 fans jumping into Final Fantasy 14 and becoming Warriors of Light would be great, especially if Evercold and the crossover brought some of that momentum to the launch of Final Fantasy 7 Revelation itself. "I suppose the ultimate aim is to see that throughline of excitement and enjoyment," Hamaguchi adds.

There's certainly a solid sense of anticipation around both games already. Final Fantasy 14's Evercold reveal has certainly left some of the MMO heads on this very website feeling hopeful, and Hamaguchi tells me it's been "really wonderful" to see players pick up Final Fantasy Remake and Rebirth on PC, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch 2 following the reveal of Revelation.

Duty complete

Of course, excitement can lead to additional pressure. Final Fantasy 7 Revelation is the final entry in a trilogy that essentially splits one game into three. While I enjoyed what Rebirth offers in terms of combat and the open world, I ask Hamaguchi how the team is freshening up the game, especially in light of his recent comments about open-world fatigue.

Hamaguchi tells me there are two ways in which they're doing that. The first is adding a greater sense of exploration to the world map. Pointing to the Grasslands in Final Fantasy Rebirth, Hamaguchi says it's very large and expansive, but also very "flat."

The remedy is more verticality. Hamaguchi can't reveal everything, though he does say you can dive into the map from the Highwind, and your chocobo will also be able to fly, which Hamaguchi hopes will make "certain parts less frustrating."

Another way the Final Fantasy 7 Revelation team is keeping things fresh is by making sure the "goal and reward" of side content is clearer, especially following feedback from Rebirth.

"One of the things I think people got a little bit tired of – or maybe that's when they stepped away from the game – was on the world map, there is a lot of content," Hamaguchi says. "And sometimes you'd get rewards like materia if you finish that content. But for those people who just wanted to get those materia or rewards, they might feel like they have to do certain mini-games, even if they don't really want to."

To remedy this, Hamaguchi says that content in Final Fantasy 7 Revelation will match the reward to what you're doing – rewards that'll aid you in battle will be achieved through battle, a new Queen's Blood card will be earned through Queen's Blood, and so on. The hope is that the clarity will allow players to ignore the content they don't want to engage with.

Finding the right FITS

When it comes to combat, one of Final Fantasy 7 Revelation's standout new features is the FITS system – that being, Function Integrated Tactical Suitwear. It essentially acts as a new job system that allows the likes of Cloud and Tifa to play as something like a Black Mage as opposed to the brawlers people might typically typecast them as.

Despite the visual flair of a new outfit, Hamaguchi says the biggest influence on the new feature was the job system as a Final Fantasy staple overall, though he can't say there was "zero influence" taken from the likes of Final Fantasy X-2 or Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy 13.

The new feature hasn't been without its troubles, though, as Hamaguchi jokes that adding the FITS system reminded him about "how hard it is to develop games these days."

"When you look at some of the early Final Fantasy games that have job systems, you could put a lot in there," Hamaguchi says. And while the developers behind ongoing games like Final Fantasy 14 have done "fantastic work" in adding a variety of classes over the years, bringing something like 20-30 classes to a standalone title at launch would be "insanely difficult."

Hamaguchi also jokes that, while there are many open-world games out there, few allow your party to follow you around. "Even though we only have four FITS, we have a lot of characters, so it was quite a lot of work."

Another thing that makes Final Fantasy 7 Revelation stand out from the other two installments is a proper endgame. While players seeking a challenge in Final Fantasy 7 Remake and Rebirth are typically directed towards playing NewGame+, Revelation brings the challenge to your first playthrough, ready to tackle once you're powerful enough to do so.

Being the third entry in a trilogy, I ask Hamaguchi how the team is using that to shape how it's approaching the endgame and anticipated moments like fighting superbosses like Ruby and Emerald Weapon.

"Obviously, what we're making is an RPG," Hamaguchi answers. "And I think one of the things that's fun about RPGs is having the characters you've leveled, you've customized, and you've brought them up where they are, and using them to overcome difficult situations.

"So, say you had this fight against a Weapon, a giant enemy, or something that's really exciting or cool. And you go into it, and it's just a completely new mechanic or mini-game. I think there are quite a few players who would come away from that feeling quite disappointed that it wasn't a reflection of the effort that they put into building something up to that point.

"But the general goal for our team when we're thinking about making these Weapon fights is that we want to have the Final Fantasy 7 Remake series combat system at the base. What we've been building up over these three games. Perhaps there'll be some extra gadgets, some other things adding something new and unique to the Weapon battle, but we want to have that foundation there as well.

"So there may be some mini-games involved in parts of them, say at the beginning of one of the fights or something like that, to mix things up a little bit. But the core battle is really focused on the characters that you have come through the rest of the game with as an RPG."

On the case

While there are plenty of exciting developments within Final Fantasy 7 Revelation itself, those unfolding outside of the game and Square Enix are difficult to ignore. As Final Fantasy 7 Revelation nears completion, one of the more prominent conversations currently occurring across the industry is about physical media. Rockstar made headlines when it was revealed that GTA 6 would be a code-in-a-box at launch, though Sony's call to end PlayStation disc production in 2028 has swiftly dwarfed that in online chatter.

Given some of the conversations I've seen in Final Fantasy 7's fandom about whether Revelation will release on a physical disc, I ask Hamaguchi for his thoughts on the topic and whether there's any news he can share.

Hamaguchi starts by saying that some of his thoughts have been touched upon as part of Nintendo Switch 2's game-key cards – you can read about that here, as part of an interview we did with Hamaguchi last year. He then says that, as a developer and as a fan, it seems to be the trend that we're shifting away from physical to digital.

When it comes to his personal feelings, though, Hamaguchi says he's a fan of physical media, and events like Final Fantasy 14 Fen Fest are one of the many reasons why.

"I really think that people bringing up things, asking for autographs – I think that's lovely," he tells us. "I think it's a wonderful culture and it would be a shame to lose that. I want that to remain."

As for his personal prediction of where things go from here, Hamaguchi says he feels that "there will always be some kind of physical or packaged edition, even if download codes become the main way that games work."

"I feel like there will always be something," Hamaguchi says, "and I hope there will be."

Looking ahead to Final Fantasy 7 Revelation, Hamaguchi says the team is "still having internal discussions on what the exact SKU product lineup is going to be," so he can't say anything "definitive" at the time of writing. That said, he is trying his best to "allow us to have some kind of physical edition."

"Obviously, say, if you're talking to Nintendo, there's considerations about the storage limits on key cards and things like that, and then other platforms about how much you can put onto a disc," Hamaguchi explains. "Each platform and first-party have their own specific rules and regulations that we need to take into account, and think about what format is actually going to be best for the game.

"These are the discussions that we're having at this point in time. I do hope that we'll be able to come up with something that is as close as possible as to what players and fans are going to want, but you'll have to look forward to future announcements for that."

Given that Final Fantasy 7 marked the series' debut on disc, it's certainly odd to think of a different FF7 game going without. That said, Final Fantasy 7 launched on disc because the cartridge was no longer the best format for the game, and these days, given Square Enix's own strategy pivot, that would mean making the game as accessible as possible across multiple platforms. As the industry settles into a way of working that's more about getting the most out of average hardware rather than pushing hardware's limits further, it'll be interesting to see what compromises Final Fantasy 7 Revelation can manage.

Still, I remain cautiously optimistic for what Final Fantasy 7 Revelation brings. Rebirth improved on Remake in a big way that has me curious to see what part three of the trilogy has in store, and everything we've seen and heard so far hits the right notes.

"I want this guy to make Final Fantasy 17": Yoshi-P embarrasses Final Fantasy 7 Remake lead with the "highest praise you can get" from players live on stage at FF14 Fan Fest.

Final Fantasy 7 Revelation launches early in 2027, a year ahead of the planned end of physical PlayStation discs. But given the broader shift the industry is making toward digital games – GTA 6 is certainly the most prominent example – you'd be forgiven for wondering if the final part of the remake trilogy is going to be part of that all-digital future that so many of us are dreading.

While Square Enix has not yet made the final decision on whether Final Fantasy 7 Revelation will launch on a disc, director Naoki Hamaguchi tells GamesRadar+ that he's actively pushing for it. In an interview at the recent Final Fantasy 14 Fan Festival in Berlin, he explains the challenges facing physical media these days.

"We're still having internal discussions on what the exact SKU product lineup is going to be for Revelation," Hamaguchi explains, "so I can't say anything particularly definitive at this point in time. But I am working to make the arrangements to allow us to have some kind of physical edition."

That's the most concrete bit of the answer, but Hamaguchi also offered some of his philosophy on physical media during our interview. "I do feel, as a developer and as a fan, that the general trend is for things to shift away from physical towards downloadable games," he says.

"But that's obviously talking about the trend. Personally, here at something like Fan Fest or at community events for games that I've worked on, I really think that people bringing up things, asking for autographs – I think that's lovely. I think it's a wonderful culture and it would be a shame to lose that. I want that to remain."

For his part, Hamaguchi believes that even if we lose proper game discs, he feels like "there will always be some kind of physical or packaged edition." Hamaguchi suggests, "Maybe you'll have a box with the code inside it, or maybe key cards like Nintendo's doing, or a boot disc or something. I feel like there'll always be something, and I hope there will be."

The Final Fantasy 7 remake series, of course, hearkens back to the PS1 era, where the idea of a game coming on not just one disc but several felt like an indicator of an epic adventure. Final Fantasy 7 Remake itself came on multiple discs when it launched on PS4, just as Rebirth did on its PS5 launch. While many publishers are content to offer discs with basic installers for meaty games, forcing you to download the rest online, the FF7 remake trilogy has, so far, gone above and beyond to give disc fans a premium experience.

"Obviously, say, if you're talking to Nintendo, there's considerations about the storage limits on key cards and things like that, and then other platforms about how much you can put onto a disc," Hamaguchi explains. "Each platform and first-party have their own specific rules and regulations that we need to take into account, and think about what format is actually going to be best for the game. These are the discussions that we're having at this point in time. I do hope that we'll be able to come up with something that is as close as possible as to what players and fans are going to want, but you'll have to look forward to future announcements for that."

But Hamaguchi knows how fans are going to react if he tells a media outlet like us that he wants to release Revelation in a physical format. "If you publish this, and then we announce all the products later and there is no physical edition, then they're going to rip me to pieces," he says with a laugh.

Naoki Hamaguchi talks Final Fantasy 7 Revelation, Final Fantasy 14, and physical media plans: "It's a wonderful culture and it would be a shame to lose that."

A solo modder has taken matters into their own hands and put out a new Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth mod aiming to tackle the game's long-standing lighting issues – and the results are incredible, judging by side-by-side comparisons.

Modder David 'dddd5' Matos put out the Shader Injector mod for Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth late last month (and recently updated it with a couple fixes). Since then, it's only gained more and more traction with fans.

"Framework allowing injection of modified shaders into the rendering API," the modder explains on NexusMods. "Comes with modified game shaders that improve lighting/shadow quality of the game significantly."

The tech experts at Digital Foundry also gave the mod a look and concluded the game's wonky lighting is much better across the board. Some areas, such as the glowing Gold Saucer, are "totally transformed with much better correspondence between the scene and its reflection," according to the outlet. Several comparison shots show dramatic differences between the modded and unmodded versions of the game, too.

For context, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is a mostly handsome game that's still plagued with a few odd lighting issues. Many light sources don't cast shadows at all, in-game foliage often lacks shadows, some shadows are really low quality, and lighting on character faces generally looks pretty weird in outside environments.

"The overexposure in this game was f****** unbearable," one player writes over on Reddit.

"It's so impressive how much better the lighting looks with this mod in most cases," another says. "Even the performance version which only costs a few frames."

The next instalment in the series, Final Fantasy 7 Revelation, comes out sometime next year. Here's hoping it launches in tip top shape.

Final Fantasy 7 Revelation director says "open-world fatigue" is real, and since "the world is even bigger than it was in Rebirth," Square Enix specially focused on guiding players.

Final Fantasy 14 is coming to Nintendo Switch 2 next month, and now that its file size has been confirmed… I hope you didn't want to have a bunch of games installed on your console.

Thanks to a listing on the US version of the Nintendo eShop, we've learned that the critically acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy 14 will come in a hefty 117.2GB file size on Nintendo Switch 2. For those keeping score, that comes at just under half of the Switch 2's entire 256GB storage. That's half of your Switch 2 space for Final Fantasy 14.

So not only is Final Fantasy 14 the biggest single game file available on Nintendo Switch 2 so far, it also beats out the previous record holder for the franchise – 91.8GB Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth – by over 25GB. Square Enix has been desperate to hold the title it seems, since, on top of that, the single biggest eShop game listing to date is Kingdom Hearts Collection, which clocks in at an estimated 131GB… but that includes three games.

Of course, Final Fantasy 14 being so big makes total sense. Aside from it having one of the biggest MMO base games, Final Fantasy 14 is currently five major expansions deep with Heavensward, Stormblood, Shadowbringers, Endwalker, and Dawntrail, and it's only going to get bigger once Evercold releases in January 2027. So even if you're only picking up the base game and not the complete edition of Final Fantasy 14, you will have to install all of that data, too.

Final Fantasy 14's Yoshi-P doesn't quite get the community hype around Chort, the chunky boss who quickly became an online icon: "Just why?"

Square Enix plans to reveal the next Final Fantasy 14 DPS job in a few months from now, and some fresh clues already have fans fawning over the possibility of playing as a bird-loving Falconer-type when the game's Evercold expansion drops.

This past weekend, Final Fantasy 14 composer and sound designer Masayoshi Soken took to the Fan Fest stage in Berlin to tease fans with two audio snippets related to the unannounced second job coming in next year's Evercold expansion, alongside the Bastion.

The first snippet blasted clinging and clanging noises at the audience, while the second sounded like a bird screeching and clawing at something. You can try to decipher the clues for yourself in the clip below.

"These are sound effects from the new DPS job we're going to announce at the JP Fan Fest," it's revealed via a translator. The Japanese leg of Fan Fest is set to begin on October 31, 2026, so we won't need to wait too much longer to find out what the team's been cooking.

Over on Reddit, theorists are overwhelmingly in agreement that all clues are pointing to a Falconer job or something adjacent to that, at least (Hunter, Ranger, Beastmaster, etc.) "Falconer is the ranged DPS we saw in the trailer. Bet," one fan writes.

Evercold's extended teaser trailer threw fuel over the fire, too, with a brief glimpse of a large, armored, winged creature taking flight and annoying a spellcaster.

"Willing to bet that the bird in the trailer is related to the job, but the girl is unrelated," another theorycrafter says. "The last trailer will likely extend that shot to show the bird flying to whoever is our job representative! The baton she has is more likely a plot device, rather than the weapon of the job."

A Falconer job would be entirely new for the Final Fantasy series, though past games have dabbled with similar concepts. Final Fantasy 10-2's Trainer job gives one of the characters a big bird to command, for example. And Final Fantasy 5's Hunter can also occasionally call in help from woodland critters, flying types included.

"I want this guy to make Final Fantasy 17": Yoshi-P embarrasses Final Fantasy 7 Remake lead with the "highest praise you can get" from players live on stage at FF14 Fan Fest.

Speaking on stage at Final Fantasy 14 Fan Fest, the MMORPG's lead Naoki 'Yoshi-P' Yoshida lays the praise on Naoki Hamaguchi, saying that fans are desperate for the Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth director to work on the next mainline entry in the long-running JRPG series.

The pair were standing on stage together at MMO's annual fan convention for a panel called Naoki's Room. The two series leads, who coincidentally share the same first name, answered a number of prepared questions during the talk. Towards the end of the discussion, Yoshi-P revealed that he's received many comments from fans asking for Hamaguchi to work on FF17.

"But there were comments along the lines of 'I want this guy [Hamaguchi] to make Final Fantasy 17,'" he says.

Yoshi-P continues by explaining how highly he regards the compliment. "So I think that's probably the highest praise you can get," he continues, before adding "you don't have to respond."

The FF7R lead is clearly embarrassed by the comment when he says, "my response?" Yoshi-P then makes a gesture that he doesn't need to answer before quickly wrapping up the discussion.

Some have speculated that this is a hint that Hamaguchi is indeed working on FF17, but it's vague at best. While Hamaguchi is visibly embarrassed, it could be from the compliment, from being caught off guard, or because he's unsure if he can talk about the projects he's working on. Equally, Yoshi-P may have cut Hamaguchi off to save him from his embarrassment.

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth was a huge success and we're sure Hamaguchi would do an excellent job developing a completely new mainline entry, rather than his current remakes. However, as the third part of the remake trilogy, Final Fantasy 7 Revelation, isn't scheduled to be released until 2027, we hope he focuses his energy on perfecting that game first.

Final Fantasy 6, 8, or 9 remakes would need even more games than the FF7 trilogy, Yoshi-P warns: "We'd probably end up having to release them in 4 or maybe even 5 installments."

Careful what you wish for, Final Fantasy fans. Potential future remakes of other games in the series would probably require even more individual parts than the Final Fantasy 7 Remake trilogy – at least, if they were remade in that same style – according to Final Fantasy 14's Naoki 'Yoshi-P' Yoshida.

The MMORPG's director said as much during a panel at Fan Fest Berlin – with Final Fantasy 7 Remake lead Naoki Hamaguchi also in attendance – warning folks that the wait for an entire remake of Final Fantasy 6, for example, would be even more painfully long than what we've become accustomed to.

"Of course I understand the feelings of the players, but you gotta think about it," Yoshi-P says, per a translator, of fan requests for future series remakes. "Look at Final Fantasy 6, it's such an incredibly huge game. The scale is just immense."

But the same argument is true for other games in the series, like Final Fantasy 8 and Final Fantasy 9, he adds: "So, of course, now because you are working on the Final Fantasy 7 series, I do get that people would be asking for remakes of other titles. But if we did remake those other titles, we'd probably end up having to release them in four or maybe even five installments."

Final Fantasy games used to be absolutely huge in their scope because the developers couldn't render everything in excruciating detail as they can now – nor did they need to. Final Fantasy 6 was able to fit 14 playable characters, a huge world map that dramatically changes throughout the adventure, and countless epic fights onto a humble SNES cartridge. You can imagine how doing all of that in a game with Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth's production value would be tricky.

Ahead of Final Fantasy 7 Revelation, Hamaguchi himself made clear that a hypothetical remake of Final Fantasy 6 would be in better hands with another developer anyway. He seems more keen on doing something new after Revelation ships.

At Fan Fest, Hamaguchi explained that he felt incredibly lucky that so many developers stayed together for all three games in the FF7 Remake trilogy, back to back. "That's why I can't just sit here and go, 'Yeah, yeah, I'll remake [FF6],' because it's not quite that easy."

Perhaps the way forward for Final Fantasy remakes is the upcoming Final Fantasy Resonance, a gorgeous pixel art game with turn-based combat, rather than the giant world of the FF7 Remake games.

Final Fantasy 14 Evercold changes housing for the better, Yoshi-P says, and World of Warcraft's "amazing" take on the MMO staple has "been a good source of research."