While we still don’t know a ton about exactly what Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is, its director Naoki Hamaguchi has confirmed it will feature a “multifaceted world with a high degree of freedom.”
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, for those unfamiliar, is the second entry in the Final Fantasy 7 Remake project and will pick up after the ending of the first game that saw our heroes leaving the walls of Midgar. In the original game, this is when the world opened up and the more contained opening hours became something much grander.
Hamaguchi’s comments don’t quite confirm that Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth would be full open world, but the “high degree of freedom” comment should entice fans and will hopefully mean players will still have that wonder when exploring the wider world and the chance to choose how they tackle some of its missions and side content.
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth
Developer comment number 2#FF7R pic.twitter.com/WKQkBPWWsJ— FINAL FANTASY VII (@finalfantasyvii) June 3, 2023
“Players will be able to journey across the wide and multifaceted world with a high degree of freedom, experiencing a myriad of different stories,” Hamaguchi said.
IGN spoke to Hamaguchi in 2021 about this second part of Final Fantasy Remake, and he said the team was dealing with the challenge of how they would allow players to experience this next adventure.
“As for improvement, or should I say ‘change,’ moving forward — because the next installment will involve Cloud and company to leave Midgar and explore the world map, our next challenge will be to create gameplay that leverages the vastness of the world, unlike what we did in this current title.”
Final Fantasy 7 Remake director Tetsuya Nomura also chimed in and said Clould would be “running around a lot of nature.” All signs appear to point to a much more open second chapter, and hopefully we won’t have to wait too long to find out more.
Hamaguchi’s answer on Twitter came just one day after the first “developer comment” from the Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth team that confirmed the game’s development is “progressing smoothly and according to plan.” If this holds, this should mean fans will get a chance to jump back into the world of Final Fantasy VII this winter.
For more, check out how Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth will be the second part of a trilogy and the news that work has already begun on Final Fantasy 7 Remake Part 3.
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Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.