UPDATE
Are you pleased with these insights into the support cast of the upcoming sequel? Who else do you want to see get more spotlight? Let us know below!
ORIGINAL STORY
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth may not be released until February next year, but the hype around the title grows with every new insight. The recent trailers highlighted numerous expansions into the world of the remake saga, as well as the characters that will help dominate the story. However, as with the first title, there will be expansions outside of the “expected story” that will help make things feel fleshed out. Both the game’s official Twitter handle and the creative director behind the title have shed some insights on this matter, not by focusing on main characters but key supporting ones.
For example, on Twitter, a new video showed off a key interaction between Cloud and Chadley. To refresh, Chadley was a former intern at Shinra. He secretly worked against them and helped Cloud get new Materia, Summons, and more via his “research tasks.” He’ll be back in the sequel, and he’ll be doing more to help out Avalanche. As the video shows, Cloud will get the ability to unlock special towers that reveal key information on the map. Chadley notes that with these towers, he can locate key monsters to take down or resources that can be used to expand his new research projects.
So you’ll want to keep him in mind as you wander the world. The other character that will be getting more attention is Rufus, the new President of Shinra. In an interview with Inverse, Tetsuya Nomura noted that “new episodes” would help expand who Rufus is and his role in the sequel:
“We won’t be making immense departures from the original. With Remake, we went further in-depth into Avalanche in ways that were not done in the original. This will be done for Rufus as well. He will have some sort of new episodes that do not exist in the original, where we will get to know more about him and dig deeper.”
That’s important because Shinra will still play a part in the sequel title despite the main focus of Avalanche being to locate Sephiroth and stop his plans for the planet. Don’t forget, Shinra tried to get Aerith to help show them to the “promised land” so they could live in paradise while the world burned because of their actions. Sephiroth killed the President, while Cloud fought off Rufus immediately after. With Rufus now in charge, a new regime is in place, and things will get messy.
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth arrives on PS5 on February 29th.