Final Fantasy 7 Remake director had to swap his inspirations from The Last of Us to The Witcher 3 to make Rebirth's open world

Final Fantasy 7 Remake and Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth might technically be 'remaking' the same 1997 original, but they sometimes feel like they belong to entirely different genres, and that's partly because the development team drew inspiration from totally different games during production.

Final Fantasy 7 Remake aped some of the biggest action-adventure hits of the PS4 generation as Cloud slashed across zig-zagging corridors, crawled through tight spaces, and only occasionally broke off from the linear path to explore towns and complete side quests. Speaking to Edge Magazine, director Naoki Hamaguchi says the team looked to games like The Last of Us, God of War, and Uncharted on how to structure the journey across Midgar.

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth was an entirely different beast, though. Cloud and Co aren't just running through the city's understandably narrow and linear roads anymore. This is the part of the 1997 game where the party is in a wide-open Gaia, free from most roadblocks and able to literally walk on the map's various fields, forests, and towns.

Hamaguchi knew the team wouldn't be able to re-use the tricks they learned while making Remake, so he instead turned to open-world blockbusters this time and decided to play The Witcher 3 and Horizon Zero Dawn to see how other developers built their huge worlds. "Then we looked to recreate the same kinds of experiences and systems that we had in the 1997 game, but with this more modern edge," he explained.

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth shippers waited 27 years for Cloud to kiss Tifa, but the team only added it because they wanted “something more” than a hug.