Between the release of Final Fantasy 7 in 1997 and the first chapter in the Remake trilogy in 2020, quite a few games have been released and have gone on to inspire developers. Final Fantasy 7 Revelation game director Naoki Hamaguchi is one such developer, as he explained that games like The Witcher 3 and Horizon helped inspire him and his team to deliver cinematic storytelling native to interactive media, as well as player agency through customizability and scalable world exploration.
“Final Fantasy 6 was a very impactful title for me when I was playing the games when I was younger, when I was a child. But as a creator, I would say that The Witcher 3 would fill that role of what inspired game creation,” Hamaguchi said to GameSpot. “When I started working on the Remake series, I would frequently go back to The Witcher 3 and just marvel at the things that that game excels at. It’s a frequent one that I revisit.”
Hamaguchi added that the Final Fantasy 7 Remake team also wanted to take a different approach to storytelling, as they didn’t just want to insert cutscenes into the game world. Hamaguchi says he studied how The Witcher 3 and Guerrilla’s Horizon created cinematic pay-offs within the framework of their gameplay mechanics. “We do have to acknowledge that there are certain moments that bring satisfaction that can be only achieved by doing it within the video game medium,” Hamaguchi explained. “I think that is exactly something that The Witcher 3 and games like Horizon were really excelling at, just delivering these satisfactory moments. They feel cinematic. That was something that we were trying to follow suit with.”
More than a decade after its release, The Witcher 3 is still considered one of the greatest open-world games of all time, and it’s getting a massive remastered edition on September 29. Next year will also see the launch of an expansion, Songs of the Past, which should help with the long wait for The Witcher 4. Fortunately, Final Fantasy fans won’t have to wait too much longer for the final chapter in the remake series to land, as Final Fantasy 7 Revelation will launch for PC and consoles in April 2027.
Square Enix is aiming to make this the biggest game possible, with a “planetary scale” world to jump into. Beyond the main campaign to stop Sephiroth once and for all, there’ll also be other activities to take part in, like some classic snowboarding fun.
Interview conducted by Emma Fyffe.