The Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth team has shared what they want to see in the impending third part of the Remake Trilogy.
An Inside Square Enix episode delves into the mammoth second part of the trilogy, but a small segment at the end has the game's lead developers coyly commenting on the third game, which is presumably in the very early stages of production, and how it's aiming to both improve on what came before and set itself apart.
Battle director Teruki Endo explains that the "whole team focused on expanding the battles and the wider gameplay cycle" in Rebirth, so players were always making new discoveries right up until the very end. "Personally, I think it would be nice to give the player even more freedom, so I want to give that a try and am thinking about how to do it right now," he continues. "It is quite a rare thing to have a third game already confirmed… Everyone would be shocked if there wasn't a third game, wouldn't they," he quips.
"Mentally, I am already working on the third game," says art director Shintaro Takai, before pointing out that Final Fantasy 7's Gaia is "so big and all-encompassing" that the upcoming finale could stretch in any direction. The "playful" and "little comical touches" that come through in Red XIII riding a Chocobo, for example, leave the door open for "some fairly odd things" to happen in the future, as well as the world-ending melodrama that's almost certainly on the way.
Director Naoki Hamaguchi agreed, explaining that the team wanted to "give fans a different kind of experience to what they had in Remake and Rebirth." Remake was very much a semi-linear trail through the dusty streets of Midgar, while Rebirth busted those walls down and let the gang loose in massive open-world sections stuffed with side activities. No matter what comes next, Hamaguchi says that he will "strive to finish it as soon as possible" - he previously said it could be done in just three years because the development team hadn't been split apart.
