Final Fantasy VII Rebirth creators on trauma, open-world design and 2024’s catchiest song

It’s been a massive year for Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.

Upon its launch on PS5 in February, the second instalment in the ambitious trilogy dramatically reimagining PS1 classic Final Fantasy VII quickly became the highest-rated Final Fantasy game in decades. Reviewers heaped praise on the game for meaningfully building upon its predecessor, Final Fantasy VII Remake, with a more emotional narrative, deeper character dynamics, improved combat, and a pivot to a sprawling open world.

Rebirth was also tied with Astro Bot for the most nominations at The Game Awards with seven each, including the coveted Game of the Year. (Astro Bot ended up winning four awards, including GOTY, while Rebirth took home Best Score and Music.) Also announced during The Game Awards was a highly-anticipated PC port for Rebirth, which will launch on January 23rd.

The overwhelmingly positive reception to Rebirth isn’t lost on the creators of the game, who are currently hard at work on the third Final Fantasy VII Remake game. The two main faces of Rebirth, Yoshinori Kitase, the director of the original Final Fantasy VII and producer of the Remake series, and Naoki Hamaguchi, the co-director of the Remake series, have even gotten to experience that love firsthand as part of an international promotional tour that’s taken them to all kinds of different conventions, media previews and awards shows.

For Kitase, a major highlight of this whole experience has been seeing fans passionately cosplaying the characters of Final Fantasy VII, especially at August’s Otakon convention in Washington.

“We were very impressed that cosplayers are around, no matter what country we go to. And it’s great to see how much love they have for the characters. We were excited to see just how much passion these fans have,” says Kitase, through a translator, during an interview alongside Hamaguchi with MobileSyrup before The Game Awards.

Hamaguchi adds that he’s been happy to see this love for VII extend across the globe, including the various parts of North America, Europe, South East Asia and the Middle East that they’ve visited.

“It’s very interesting to see that a game that was released 20 plus years ago, this Final Fantasy VII franchise, so to speak, has been spread throughout the world through this Remake project. And it gave me that sort of realization that we were able to reach this many people,” says Hamaguchi. “And especially with fans that were in South East Asia and the Middle East, I noticed that they were a lot younger, and some of them actually approached me saying that ‘I’m aspiring to be a game creator myself.’ And so I felt that sort of energy coming from these younger people. And so as a creator, I was very stimulated, and I think it also gave me motivation to continue creating.”

It’s a full circle moment for Hamaguchi, who has credited Kitase’s work on the likes of Final Fantasy VI and VII for inspiring him in his teenage years to pursue game development. He would later cut his teeth as a programmer on the likes of Final Fantasy XII and the XIII trilogy. Now, as one of the key minds behind the Remake trilogy, Hamaguchi has developed an even deeper appreciation for the characters that he’s loved for decades, especially series lead Cloud Strife.

Hamaguchi feels closest to Cloud as a character. 

“I’ve been on this Remake project for about eight or nine years at this point, and I would have to go through and play the development build almost every day. So there wasn’t a day that I wouldn’t see Cloud, because I’m controlling him on screen a lot of the time. And so I feel like he’s become even closer than family, because I’ve been seeing him on screen for such a long time.” he says with a laugh.

Of course, the Remake project also gives FF veterans like Kitase an opportunity to meaningfully expand upon their old work. For the original VII director, he’s most excited to get to flesh out a character who was completely missable in 1997.

“Since the original Final Fantasy VII, I’ve always had an affinity for Vincent,” he says. “I’ve always wanted a horror character in Final Fantasy, so my wish came true with this character being introduced, and with the Final Fantasy VII Remake project, we haven’t yet gone further in depth and we haven’t seen him too much in action yet, and so I’m really excited to see how he’s going to be depicted and compare how he is depicted versus the original. And I hope players will be excited also to see how we delve a little deeper into some of his episodes.”

Note: This is where the conversation shifts to significant Rebirth spoilers. 

Indeed, fans will no doubt be eager to see how the third game explores the likes of Vincent and Cid, who only had small supporting roles in Rebirth, given the level of characterization for the rest of the cast so far. To that point, no scene better exemplifies Rebirth‘s stronger writing than in the penultimate chapter in which the party chases after Sephiroth into the Temple of the Ancients. In a brand-new section not in the original VII, the player controls each character in a series of psychological trials in which they must confront their deep-rooted trauma. (A particularly heart-wrenching segment has you controlling a child Aerith as she loses her mother and faces the hardships of the dystopian Midgar on her own.) Final Fantasy VII has always been about the struggle to overcome loss, and allowing the player to actively help each character work through this is one of Rebirth‘s masterstrokes.

Aerith has been making fans cry for nearly 30 years.

“This is an interesting section because it was not originally in script writer [Kazushige] Nojima’s plot. We did have a mention of, ‘Okay, we’ll have some gameplay in this area,’ but that was to the extent of what we had at first,” explains Hamaguchi. “But when we were designing that final dungeon in general, and then leading up to the last battle, we wanted to have the players experience and synchronize with the different characters that we’ve been on this journey with, and so we came up with the idea of having these kinds of individual experiences of each of the different characters before that final battle.”

From there, Hamguchi says the entire new section was inspired by an anime.

“When we were thinking about sort of gameplay ideas, I happened to watch the Demon Slayer movie where they were covering the arc on the Mugen Train and [protagonist] Tanjiro had to get over his past, and something in him is awakened,” he says. “And that was a great inspiration for me. So I went to talk to [Rebirth co-director Motomu] Toriyama and see if we can build that into the scenario. And so that’s how the idea of having these individual [characters] face their past in these different moments [came about].”

Rebirth‘s Temple of the Ancients section is also, in many ways, the peak of the entire game’s deeper examination of Cloud’s literal identity crisis, showing our hero being pulled further from his friends due to Sephiroth’s influence. In the original VII, Cloud’s journey of self-discovery, in which he served as one of gaming’s first-ever unreliable narrators, is incredibly important to players. And thanks to the dozens of additional hours of playtime in Rebirth, the team was able to unpack Cloud’s mental health struggles with even more nuance, especially with respect to his relationships with Tifa and Aerith.

Sephiroth gets into Cloud’s head in Rebirth even more than he did in the original game.

For Kitase, this greater depiction of Cloud’s increasingly unhinged mental state calls back to a key scene in the original VII immediately before Aerith’s iconic death scene. “We definitely have that sort of moment of fate, so to speak, with Aerith, and you may recall Cloud lifts his sword as if he’s going to strike Aerith. And that was actually in the original and it felt very sudden and abrupt, whereas in the Remake project, even going back to the first Remake installment, we do see that Sephiroth is already starting to take a hold of Cloud’s mind. And I think we’ve had the opportunity to depict it in more detail.”

Part of that greater detail involves how Rebirth handles Aerith’s aforementioned demise. In the original game, it’s made explicitly clear that Aerith is dead through mournful dialogue and Cloud laying her to rest in a lake. Rebirth, however, depicts this climactic scene with far more ambiguity, leading to a good deal of controversy among fans. Nonetheless, Kitase says this mixed response and debate is exactly what the team wanted to achieve with Rebirth.

“How the ending of the original played out, I’m sure players experienced a very deep sense of loss after what happened to Aerith. And with the original, you kind of had to accept the fact that she was gone. And there was a very straightforward interpretation of what happened. But then with the Remake project, or Rebirth specifically, there’s that sense of Cloud not being able to accept the fact that Aerith is gone,” he says. “And I think that’s how it was conveyed on screen was different in terms of the original and Rebirth. You don’t know which is real or which is in your mind, and we’re hoping that kind of synchronizes with what the players felt when they realized that Aerith is gone. We still have that sort of sense of, ‘Wait, is it or is it not happening?’ That sort of unclearness, we’re hoping will hold the players’ interest into the third installment.”

While fans attempt to process the deeper meaning behind Rebirth‘s ending, they can also look forward to how Square Enix is planning to expand exploration and world design with the third game. After all, one of the major highlights of Rebirth is the ability to explore the world of Final Fantasy VII, Gaia, with the level of graphics and open-world exploration afforded by modern technology. For many players, myself included, one of the many emotional highs of the original VII was leaving Midgar and setting out into the overworld for the first time, a powerful sense of awe and mystery enhanced by composer Nobuo Uematsu’s absolutely beautiful score.

To translate that to Rebirth, the team adopted an “open field” approach wherein there are, rather appropriately, seven major explorable regions that are geographically distinct, like the dank swamps of the Grasslands, dense jungles of Gongaga and mountains of Nibel.

The Gongaga region.

“With Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, we wanted to take that overworld of the original Final Fantasy VII and bring it into that format of what we had in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. And so I knew the overarching world needed to be one connected sort of space,” Hamaguchi explains.

“With Rebirth, the story didn’t allow for everything to be open at once, and so we made sure that the areas that you can explore followed where the story took you and then provided the different sort of experiences, and then exploration elements within those different sort of areas that we start to open up and provide that sense of excitement when players step into a new area. And then, towards the end, you get to ride on Tiny Bronco. And then you can see, from a bird’s eye view, that everything was actually all connected, so it kind of ties back to that one connected space.”

It’s a smart approach for multiple reasons. For one, it gives each region its own environmental themes and self-contained sidequests and story arcs, but it also helps prepare the team for the third game. In the latter half of the original VII, the player acquires the airship known as the Highwind, allowing them to freely explore the entire open world that was once separated by islands, mountains and other environmental obstacles. “We’re introducing the Highwind as a vehicle, so we’re hoping that that will allow for an even larger scale that the people can experience in the world of the game,” teases Hamaguchi of Rebirth‘s sequel.

Cait Sith got a much larger role in Rebirth.

But despite the increasingly grander scope of the Remake trilogy, the team hasn’t lost sight of one of the key appeals of the original VII: its impeccable tonal balance. In one moment, you’d be roaming around a dingy market to find garments to cross-dress Cloud for an infiltration mission, and in another, you’d witness the monolithic Shinra corporation ruthlessly eradicating a lower-class district in an effort to weed out its enemies. That earnest openness to mix irreverence and seriousness is one of VII‘s great strengths, and Rebirth — with its mix of over-the-top setpieces, litany of amusement park hijinks and mini-games and larger roles for inherently goofy companions like the anthropomorphic caped cat, Cait Sith — commits to it with even more aplomb.

In fact, one of Rebirth‘s most popular moments involves a sidequest in which Cloud and the party get caught up in the strained relationship between a mother and her son and must shepherd a little dog named Salmon between them. Generally, gamers view escort missions as tedious and frustrating filler content, but Rebirth‘s Salmon quest has proven a major hit for a variety of reasons. For one, the subplot sees Barret coming to terms with the limited time he was with his daughter Marlene, a touching character moment that deepens our understanding of him. But at the same time, this sidequest also features an unbelievably catchy pop ballad (affectionately dubbed the “bow wow wow” song by fans) that is so beloved it’s even played at official Rebirth concerts around the world. (Given that this award-winning soundtrack has over 400 songs, this is a particularly impressive feat.

They did it! They played bow wow wow wow wow wow at the Final Fantasy VII Rebirth world tour orchestra. pic.twitter.com/pdx67BTzDC

— Destiny Jackson (@DestinyDreadful) August 11, 2024

When asked about the origins of the sidequest, Hamaguchi gives credit to co-director Toriyama. “He was very particular about this, and he worked with the composer to come up with this catchy song. The lyrics probably have a lot of Toriyama’s influence in it,” he explains.

“And then, in terms of the gameplay, we were introducing this side of Junon to our players, which was not in the original game. And so we had to have some way of driving the people into that new area and introducing it to them. And I think it would have been a little bland if we were just, ‘Okay, we’re gonna go into this town.’ And I love animals, and I’m more of a cat person, if I always feature cats, players will get tired of cats,” he adds with a laugh. “So I wanted to introduce a little dog on the quest, and then have Cloud follow along. And the idea came about that way for the gameplay, and then Toriyama jumped on. And then we worked on making that background music. And in the end… people seemed to enjoy it and became some really fun content, so I’m really happy to see that people really received it well.”

The abundance of love for an otherwise minor piece of optional content is a testament to the creativity of the Rebirth team to constantly reinvent such a beloved world, and it’s something Hamaguchi doesn’t take for granted.

“It was surprising! I’m sure there’ll be likes and dislikes in terms of the different quests that are offered throughout the game, but with Salmon’s quest, I think it is relatively cute in terms of the BGM [background music], and then it does involve an animal, so maybe it does appeal to a larger group of players,” he says. “But I think also with the sort of way we let the people lead the player into that content, having Rhonda [the mother] go in there and guiding them specifically, I think also helped with the recognition as well.”

This interview has been edited for language and clarity.

Image credit: Square Enix