Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth Aims to Give Players a “High Degree of Freedom”

Over the past few days, the Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth Twitter account has posted developer responses to specific questions about the next entry in Cloud’s journey. This all seems to be leading to some reveal at one of the upcoming summer gaming events, but it’s also giving players important new info. For example, the first developer comment told us that the team is still nailing down a release date for Rebirth. On June 3, director Naoki Hamaguchi jumped into the proceeding to talk about how players will interact with the world outside of Midgar, and his answer has fans excited about what Rebirth might offer players.

Hamaguchi’s exact words were that players will have “a high degree of freedom” when exploring Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth‘s world. Remember, the first game in the Remake series took place entirely within Midgar, which is a small slice of what was available in the original Final Fantasy 7 back in 1997. After leaving Midgar, players went all over Gaia, and it’s expected that we’ll be doing some sightseeing in Rebirth as well. This remark from Hamaguchi shows that Rebirth will include several different methods of traversing the world.

The first thing many fans probably thought about is the airship from the original FF7. It seemed likely that we’d be seeing it and Cid Highwind making a comeback at some point, but this seems to suggest that they’ll both be involved in Rebirth. Outside of that, there are several other vehicles that might pop up, the most likely being, of course, Chocobos. Those cute animals are a series mainstay, so having them in Rebirth to help players traverse the world a bit more quickly makes perfect sense.

Hamaguchi also mentioned that players will “experience a myriad of different stories” while playing through Rebirth. It’s not totally clear what he means by this, but it would not be surprising to see Square add side stories for all of the characters Cloud meets. We’ve already seen Square drop the Intermission DLC, which expanded on Yuffie’s story. With several characters joining the team over the rest of the tale, we may see further side adventures that flesh characters out even more.