The original Final Fantasy 7 might have featured heaps of command battles and a dense, complex mythos, but it's more than its ecologically-forward story that connected us to the game's world. Filled with a whole planet of towns to explore and people to chat with, Cloud and his RPG party frequently take time to embed themselves in these communities. Taking part in activities and minigames is a huge part of that. Who among us didn't spend whole afternoons just chilling at the Gold Saucer like we were taking a real theme park break?
One of the Final Fantasy 7 Remake trilogy's greatest strengths is understanding this appeal and building upon it as the perspective moves from an abstracted top-down view into a more realistic scale – and Final Fantasy 7 Revelation is aiming to take that even further with its scope of activities. While some people might be eager to see what the final game in the series will reveal about Aerith's fate, or just what is going on with the formerly deceased Zack Fair, we have more urgent questions for director Naoki Hamaguchi. What about snowboarding? What about my precious cards?!
FFX Tricky
"The snowboarding minigame is just essential to FF7 as a whole," says Hamaguchi. He's totally correct. Cloud dealing with emotional trauma and delving deep into haunting research notes before tearing down a mountain while grabbing sick air is a vital part of the PS1 classic's identity. "I feel like that's what fans are expecting," he says, and the team are keen to deliver on that promise.
With the remake trilogy drawing to a close early 2027, we get ready for the epic conclusion with our Final Fantasy 7 Revelation Big Preview across hands-on impressions, dev access, and deep dives into the whole adventure so far.
"It's not just going to be a minigame you access through the Gold Saucer," confirms Hamaguchi. "It's actually going to be involved in the main story as well." While this detailed remake and pseudo-sequel trilogy dig deeper into some of the story's themes and seriousness, it's historically not been afraid to show its sillier side. If how the team expanded on Wall Market in Final Fantasy 7 Remake is anything to go by, there's every chance snowboarding here will be played straight while adding plenty of flourish.
"In terms of when exactly you're going to play it during the game in the main story, I'll say I hope you stay tuned!" adds Hamaguchi. Though these remakes alter the events of the original game at points, most of the main beats are intact, so it'll be interesting to see if this tease means it'll shift context slightly. Going off the PS1 original, I'd expect to see it fairly early in Final Fantasy 7 Revelation. Yet, I could imagine it becoming a fist-pumping sequence closer to a climax instead. Who's to say there even will be a traditional fight against Sephiroth instead of Cloud and the silver-haired villain settling their differences by shredding the slopes?
Final Fantasy 7 Revelation is boasting even more content than its already stuffed predecessor and middle-entry in the trilogy, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. Able to hop in the Highwind airship to explore a planetary-sized open world, that'll likely mean plenty of returning activities and minigames for Cloud and the cast to check up on – especially back at the Gold Saucer.
Rather than resurrecting minigames from the original FF7, though, a card game that stole our hearts in FF7 Rebirth will be returning in FF7 Revelation. Taking cues from the series' history with card-based side-activities – most notably Triple Triad across Final Fantasy 8 and Final Fantasy 14 – Queen's Blood is a lane-based monster-slinging card game that saw us taking on all manner of opponents throughout the last adventure, including a cruise ship tournament and a mysterious conspiracy. The best Final Fantasy games usually have some sort of side-diversion I become obsessed with.
"Ever since the launch of FF7 Rebirth, we've [had] a lot of warm, positive reception specifically to the Queen's Blood minigame. We saw a lot of people saying, 'Oh, are you guys making a standalone game for Queen's Blood?' or 'Oh, it's going to be in Part Three, right?'," laughs Hamaguchi. Other RPGs with card games have indeed made that standalone leap – and with the recent The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Remastered I've been hooked on Gwent once again. Soon enough, Queen's Blood will have me equally hypnotized.
"We saw a lot of those [comments]. So, from early on, there really was no other option for us – like, yeah, we've definitely got to put it into Part Three, so that was a given from the start!" says Hamaguchi. This time around, the wolf-like party member Red XIII will take the lead in the new Queen's Blood storyline, building on his role as the enigmatic challenger on the cruise in FF7 Rebirth.
The new storyline will seemingly be its own self-contained activity with rewards that just feed back into the deckbuilding so those who don't like it can safely move on. It's a shift in the reward system that stops players who are only interested in certain types of play feeling strong-armed into completing everything if they don't want to, which wasn't the case with FF7 Rebirth. For FF7 Revelation, "what's important is communicating to the player, making it very easy to see what you're going to get for going through that content, what kind of rewards you can expect," says Hamaguchi.
Besides the new narrative content taking Red XIII through his Queen's Blood matches, the card game will also be receiving updates. "The gameplay of Queen's Blood, it was really good – we felt that it was in a pretty good state, and a lot of fans were pretty happy about it too – but we didn't want to just rehash the same exact thing. We did polish the system again. We are implementing new rules and mechanics into [it]." says Hamaguchi.
Aspects like balance have been a big point of discussion on the team, with a lot of tweaks throughout development to get it right. "We are pretty confident that we're able to show, like, a new side of Queen's Blood that fans did not see in Rebirth." Say no more. Just deal me in!
Fancy more fantasy? Check out our best RPGs and best JRPGs rankings for more adventures worth unsheathing your Buster Sword to tackle.
