Final Fantasy VII Rebirth director Naoki Hamaguchi has revealed that in developing Cloud and crew’s next adventure, he intentionally wanted to avoid filling the game with “fan service” – and thankfully, he’s not talking about the ‘sex appeal’ kind.
[SPOILER WARNING: Though we have attempted to keep things vague as possible, this article may contain spoilers for Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. If you’d like to avoid them, please refrain from reading any further.]
Reflecting on the game’s development during a recent interview with Eurogamer‘s Ed Nightingale, Hamaguchi admitted that one of the biggest challenges he faced was avoiding the temptation of portraying one particular event in the exact fashion way as the original.
“There was a danger there, there was definitely a trap,” said the director. “With the original game, I was just a fan. I played the game when I was younger, and I’ve got my perspective on that scene as just a single fan.”
Hamaguchi then admitted, “I felt if I made a decision – it has to go in this direction, we have to do it this way – that would very much make it a fan-driven thing.”
“[It would make the game feel] more like fan service,” he added. “I kind of want to avoid doing that.”
As such, Hamaguchi decided that rather than focus on the scene’s surface-level aesthetics, he instead decided to approach it by considering the creative intention of the original Final Fantasy VII‘s production team.
“Mr. [Yoshinori] Kitase [the director and writer of the original Final Fantasy VII] often says this, that he really wanted to create that kind of debate and speculation after the game and moving through to the third [Remake] game, that people keep talking about it up until they do see the final conclusion,” Hamaguchi revealed. “In that sense I think we probably have achieved exactly what he wanted to do there and I’m very satisfied with that, because people are still talking about it.”
To this end, Hamaguchi noted that while many fans found Rebirth‘s ending to be controversial, this reception was actually “kind of the way we wanted it to go”, as the production team wanted to ensure that players would remain interested in the Remake timeline’s narrative through to the third game.
“The important thing is that the player will wonder whether it’s going to change or not,” he said. “So if it was all exactly as it was in the original storyline, you’d know exactly what was coming: There’d be no anticipation, there’d be no excitement” “For people who played the game, they’d know exactly what’s coming next. It wouldn’t really be a fun experience. It might be nostalgic, but it wouldn’t be a fun experience.”
Further speaking to the game’s implementation of said changes, Hamaguchi asserted that “The real purpose of these elements is to indicate to the player, this is where the story might change.”
“It doesn’t mean it will change, this is where it could change,” the director teased. “You might see something new, you might see something different. And that really does help people to keep engaged with the story and keep having that wonder and that anticipation about what’s coming next.”
Turning his attentions back to fan’s division regarding Rebirth‘s ending, Hamaguchi affirmed, “I think that kind of divided opinion is something we were always going to get just because Final Fantasy VII, the original game, was such a popular game, it’s such a well known game that if we’d have completely left it as it was, not change anything, people wouldn’t like that.”
“And if we changed it completely, there’d be another set of people who wouldn’t like that at all,” he continued. So we really have to try and find a balance, I think, to try and satisfy as many people as possible.”
Drawing his thoughts on the subject to a close, Hamaguchi explained, “I really do want to continue with that level of fans looking at us [and asking] so how’s it going to change? What’s the ultimate conclusion of this story going to be? Is it going to be the same? Is it going to change? And to keep that level of excitement and anticipation up for the third game in the series.”
“I think that’s the job that we’ve set for ourselves,” he concluded.
