Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth Will Come In Two Discs, The Right Way To Release Physical Games

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth has been officially revealed in Summer Games Fest. Funnily enough, the one thing everyone is talking about it doesn’t really have anything to do with the game content itself.

As reported by Eurogamer, that would be the somewhat surprising announcement that Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth will be coming in two discs. It is surprising because video games coming in multiple physical media haven’t been a thing for some time.

Unfortunately, the growing trend had been for game companies to not even bother to try to put their newest games on disc or cart. For Overwatch, the Nintendo Switch box literally does not have a cartridge inside it, instead coming with a game code.

Subsequently, games on PlayStation and Xbox have recently been coming out with no real data on disc, instead with the disc functioning as an installer / DRM. Entering the disc to the console prompts a download of the entire game to the hard drive. Subsequently, for many of these games, even if the game was downloaded, you will need the disc to be in the console to be allowed to play.

With all that in mind, this two disc release should actually be welcome news. It may force players to switch between discs while playing, but that would be a fair compromise to having a real physical copy of the game that can be played even if the digital version becomes unavailable in the future.

But let’s talk about the game itself here. It picks up where the last game dropped off, and it is also made clear that the story diverges from the original Final Fantasy 7, with some time paradoxes at work.

Cloud, Aerith, and Tifa do return, alongside Yuffie, from the Intergrade DLC, and Red XIII, who will be playable for the first time in Final Fantasy 7. Red XIII was previously playable in any video game, in the deep cut 3D fighter Ehrgeiz.

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is slated for early 2024, and is exclusive to the PlayStation 5. Square Enix also released a press release describing it as a standalone adventure. They claim the story has been written in such a way, so that you won’t have to play Final Fantasy 7 Remake,

 the first game in this remake trilogy to understand the events of this game.

Some spoiler talk follows here.

It will be interesting to see how Square Enix deals with the fact that some characters died in Final Fantasy 7 Remake. Fans will probably remember Jessie’s death in particular, but the same happened to Wedge and President Shinra.

Maybe Zach Fair’s fate, having been shown to have both died and still being alive, might be a clue to Square Enix’s approach. The living Zach Fair exists in a second timeline. As some fans may remember, even the main cast should not have survived the events of Final Fantasy 7 Remake, and Sephiroth himself questions how Aerith is still alive.

It’s all mysterious and curious, so hopefully Square Enix doesn’t fake all the fans out with a non-canon story for this remake series in the end.