When Square Enix decided to remake its most iconic title, it had to do much more than upgrade the graphics. They knew that the only way that this would work in the modern age of gaming would be to overhaul the game and make it stand out from the crowd in numerous ways. That’s why they broke it up into several parts. The first part of the “Remake Saga” focused solely on the events of Midgar. Then, they took things to the majority of Gaia within Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, which was released earlier this year. Today, the team dropped a special video showcasing the steps the team took to make the title as epic as it could possibly be.
The Final Fantasy VII Rebirth video can be seen below, and if you look at the tabs on the right side of the YouTube page, you’ll see the various topics of discussion that the team went over within the 90-minute behind-the-scenes look. For example, the team, which in this case featured director Naoki Hamaguchi, co-director Motomu Toriyama, art director Shintaro Takai, and battle director Teruki Endo talked about the initial fan response to the game, how to handle certain scenes, rewriting the story in key places, and so on:
Although it was slight, the team also teased a bit about the final game in the “Remake Saga,” as they want to see fans “enthusiastic” about what’s coming.
Needless to say, it took a lot of work to make this second entry in the saga happen. After all, they went from a rather confined space within Midgar to being an open-world game where every single place Cloud and crew had to go needed to be meaningful. One of the boons of the game development process for them was that they were able to keep much of the team from the first game to the second and now from the second game to the third. That meant there were people already familiar with things and knew how to make it work.
The irony is that despite the game being one of the best titles of 2024 and one of the frontrunners for “Game of the Year,” Final Fantasy VII Rebirth hasn’t had the best sales success. In fact, it hasn’t even matched, or come close to matching, the first entry in the “Remake Saga.” Sony hopes to change that by bringing the title to PC soon, and the final entry in the saga will likely have a similar thing happen to it.
