Once Final Fantasy 7 Revelation comes out on April 8, 2027, the entire Final Fantasy 7 remake trilogy will likely total at least 150 hours of Cloud being tormented – assuming the final installment is as long as the two before it. That's already a lot of Final Fantasy 7 remake, but Square Enix company director Yoshinori Kitase might be craving more, and he wouldn't rule out a spin-off, or 12.
He had the same open approach to the original Final Fantasy 7 game in 1997, Kitase tells Malaysia-based games news site GamerBraves. That RPG was meant to be a one-and-done experience until fans' sleepless enthusiasm led to years of related games, like the popular Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII from 2007, which also got remastered in 2022 as Final Fantasy 7 Crisis Core Reunion.
Kitase says, "In terms of the remake series with [Final Fantasy 7], we really wanted to feel like, and we really have put so much work into this to feel like we've done everything we possibly can to make this [newest] title have the best quality it possibly can have." At the moment, that assessment seems honest – GamesRadar+ senior producer James Daly writes in his recent Final Fantasy 7 Revelation preview, "I wonder how Naoki Hamaguchi and Square Enix so masterfully manage to weave nostalgia into something so obviously new in so many ways. Maybe I'll never truly understand."
At the risk of sounding cynical, I think it helps that Square Enix developers are so willing to squeeze every single molecule of inspiration from Final Fantasy 7 until it's dry and crackling. The developer learned this approach 30 years ago. "When we created the original Final Fantasy VII," Kitase says, "we really thought like, 'Okay, we're done now. We can move on.'"
But fans of what many consider to be one of the best Final Fantasy games of all time weren't ready to let go. "The characters were so popular and so lasting," Kitase recalls. "The fan reaction to these characters really is what brought on the spinoff games as well like Advent Children and Crisis Core.”
Now, Kitase says about Final Fantasy 7 Revelation, "We can confidently say it's the end of the series." But there's a giant, shining asterisk assigned to that statement. Square Enix is fine with walking away from its remake trilogy, but the overall concept of Final Fantasy 7 might still be holding a few cups worth of spin-off ideas.
"Who knows what's going to happen with fan reaction and how people come to enjoy this series and this finale," Kitase says. The door is open.
