Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth Director Says “No Option Than a Trilogy Was Realistic” For the Remakes

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Naoki Hamaguchi, director of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth and project lead for the remake trilogy, explained that splitting the original Final Fantasy 7 into three games was unavoidable. He stated in an interview with nTower that this decision was made before he joined the team, and was necessary to successfully update the classic 1997 RPG for modern audiences. While some fans have suggested this approach added unnecessary length, Hamaguchi maintains it was the only way to adapt the game.

He clarified that the decision to make it a trilogy wasn’t about a desire to do so, but rather a necessity. When they looked at the amount of story and detail they needed to cover, a trilogy was the only practical way to tell it.

To create the three-part remake of Final Fantasy 7, the developers significantly expanded the beginning of the story. In the original Final Fantasy 7, the city of Midgar was a smaller section of the overall game, but the 2020 remake transformed it into a large, detailed experience. The team planned to give this same level of depth and scope to all the locations in the game.

Although the Midgar section of Final Fantasy 7 isn’t very long in the original game, it packs in a lot of details about the world, characters, and story. When we decided to remake it with today’s technology, we realized we’d need a significant amount of new content to make it a full, separate game.

Hamaguchi explained that the team carefully planned where each game in the Final Fantasy 7 Remake trilogy would end, creating natural stopping points in the story. A good example of this is how Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth concludes.

Originally, the story didn’t have a clear turning point at the ancient city and with Aerith’s death. I suggested to producer Yoshinori Kitase that we use Aerith’s fate as a natural dividing point in the story, as it would fit the narrative better.

Tetsuya Nomura, a co-director on the project, explained that after that point, the plan for the whole three-part story really fell into place.

Recently, Hamaguchi explained that the development team was being careful not to make big changes to the story of Final Fantasy 7, as it was a particularly sensitive area. Any changes they did make were primarily to enhance the emotional impact of the story and make it flow more naturally with the player’s experience.

Hamaguchi explained that the focus wasn’t on altering the story itself, but on making sure the player felt the right emotions at the right moments as time progressed. He admitted this meant repeatedly revisiting and refining scenes, and it was something the development team was particularly careful about.

Although we don’t yet know the name or release date of the third part of the Final Fantasy 7 Remake, the developers are currently focused on launching Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth on Nintendo Switch 2 and Xbox Series X/S on June 3rd. You can read our review of Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade on Nintendo Switch 2 for more details.

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2026-05-11 15:11