Final Fantasy 7 Return rumors are such nonsense that they're taking me back to the ridiculous "leaks" of the '90s

The Final Fantasy 7 remake trilogy is giving us all a hearty dose of '90s JRPG nostalgia, but you know what kind of gaming content I've been missing? Bad leaks. Today's rumors are too slick, with apparent insiders sharing inside info from anonymous sources that's often just vague enough to offer plausible deniability. The new leaks for FF7 part 3, though, offer all the classics, from blurry screenshots to overly detailed overviews promising the moon and more. Oh yeah – we're back, baby.

This starts on ResetEra, where a user started a brand-new account, called it PimplePoppingPunk, and posted a nearly 1,000-word breakdown of "Final Fantasy 7 Return," which they claim is the title of the final entry in the remake trilogy. They say they're posting "on behalf of somebody else I know to protect their identity who works somewhere in the chain between Square Enix marketing and Summer Game Fest event staff."

PimplePoppingPunk's claims? Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth will be unveiled at Summer Game Fest with a launch set for "early 2027." It'll have three new party members, including a brand-new one invented for the remake. It'll have three times as many cutscenes as Rebirth, and its world will be double the size.

"Return" is a believable title for the game given Square Enix's naming conventions, and it's equally plausible that it'll be revealed at Summer Game Fest. The rest, though? Well, let me put it this way. We had a four-year gap between Remake and Rebirth. A 2027 release for Return would mean it has an even shorter development cycle, and we're supposed to believe it has double the content of its predecessor.

This is the sort of sublimely ridiculous, "my uncle works at Nintendo" speculation that powered the playground rumors which, in better days, served as the world's gaming discourse. Keep them coming, I say. PimplePoppingPunk also claims that the game's classic combat mode is getting overhauled to offer something more along the lines of a traditional, turn-based experience, and I at least hope that part's true, even if I don't believe it is.

As if that weren't enough, we've also got an old-school 4chan leak: a blurry, overexposed screenshot apparently depicting Cloud running through a town, shown next to a logo for Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. I'll refrain from linking to the original source of that image because, well, none of you deserve to be made to look at 4chan, but you can see it embedded in the tweet above.

Now that we're in the age of AI-generated content, I'm pretty sure you could make a screenshot far more convincing than this one without resorting to traditional Photoshop tricks, but honestly, I admire the effort. Building fake leaks in this style is a dying art, but one I'm glad to see hasn't been lost entirely.

Not only has Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth's director played Remake part 3 before you, he's beaten it "over 40 times."