A real joy of both Final Fantasy 7 Remake and Rebirth was seeing all the references to the universe as a whole. This tradition will continue in Final Fantasy 7 Revelation, according to director Naoki Hamaguchi, but he refuses to spoil any characters from across the original game's spin-offs that we might see.
"If I was to just come out now and say this character is in it, this character is in it would be a big surprise to people. So I can’t say that," he tells IGN. Boo! What he will say, though, is that an explicit goal here was to re-combine all the Final Fantasy 7 Compilation elements.
"The objective we have not just with Revelation, but with all three of the games in the Remake trilogy was to remake not just the original FF7 itself," he explains, "but to create a new version of the FF7 universe which includes all of the compilation, the side stories, the side content, spin-off titles within that content from the beginning."
Vincent Valentine's backstory from Dirge of Cerberus is part of his lore in Rebirth stands out as one example, but it's the side characters that are the most intriguing. Cissnei from Crisis Core pops up in Rebirth, and Zack Fair is alive as well, pulling him out of just being flashbacks for Cloud.
"I think that was a really nice surprise and people reacted very positively to seeing the compilation characters appearing," he says. "And rest assured, quite naturally that is going to continue into Revelation."
I should expect so. If I had to guess at who might show up, Veld and Elfé from Before Crisis would be interesting, and Genesis Rhapsodos seems likely, since the trilogy's leaned quite heavily into Crisis Core so far.
Hamaguchi doubles down on the idea that, since this is the trilogy closer, things will be bigger and better than before. "With Revelation being the finale, the culmination of the series, the team got together and we thought really hard about what kind of fan service things, what kind of ways people will be excited to see these characters and these references to the spin-offs appear in it," he explains.
"So rest assured that there is a lot of great stuff for people looking out for that."
