Final Fantasy 7 Revelation director, Naoki Hamaguchi, has said the ending to the trilogy has been planned since the beginning, and he’s confident about how it will conclude.
Revelation was announced at Summer Game Fest last weekend and will bring to a close Square Enix’s ambitious FF7 remake trilogy, which first debuted on PlayStation 4 in 2020.
Speaking to VGC in a Final Fantasy 7 Revelation interview, Hamaguchi said that original FF7 director and writer Yoshinori Kitase had also contributed to how the remake trilogy ends.
“Obviously, I can’t share actual details on how this story is going to end, but in terms of how we envisioned the conclusion, we did have some sort of an idea of what we wanted to do at the end. So we did have a kind of direction from the early days of development,” Hamaguchi said.
“The same goes for the producer, Yoshinori Kitase. He had his visions as well, and some of that is applied in the conclusion that we’re telling in FF7 Revelation.
“To be completely honest, I think we’re pretty confident and happy with how it’s turned out. We’re very much excited to see how fans will react to the ending of the story.”
Later in our interview, the FF7 remake series director shared his philosophy on how much player feedback should influence development, telling VGC that he believes reacting too much to user sentiment would lead to a bland experience.
Hamaguchi said he was willing to take responsibility for the big design calls in Revelation, such as including the same, if not more, amount of mini-games in the third instalment, despite some negative feedback around them in Rebirth.
“I do have some sort of logic with that idea, and I think it also applies to mediums outside of video games, like films, or TV shows,” he explained. “When you look at all the critiques, the criticism, negative feedback, and try to understand what the most common criticism is, what the median average user is saying, and try to address that and adapt your product to it, it is questionable if that approach actually leads to a better product.
“If you were to address all the negative feedback, and even take the positive feedback into account, sometimes it’s a case that you’re seeing two sides of the extreme opinions, and by applying all of that, it’s possible that you come up with a product that doesn’t really have any character. It’s just a blank state that doesn’t really have any strong appeal.”
