New details on Final Fantasy 7 Remake: Intergrade and spin-offs revealed
A new interview with co-director Tetsuya Nomura has shed light on the future of Final Fantasy 7.
Image: Square Enix
The future of Final Fantasy 7 is bright - and basically never-ending.
Famitsu has published an interview with Tetsuya Nomura, a name you might recognise from his work on the beloved Kingdom Hearts franchise. More recently however, Nomura acted as co-director for Final Fantasy 7 Remake and its upcoming next-generation DLC Intergrade. He also served as creative director for the spin-off mobile titles Final Fantasy 7: The First Soldier and Final Fantasy 7: Ever Crisis, so it’s fair to say that he’s quite involved with the future of this franchise.
The interview shed light on these three games in particular, so we’ll take them one at a time. The big reveal for Final Fantasy 7 Remake: Intergrade is that Yuffie is the only playable character, which is a change from the character-switching system the base game used for combat. However, you will have a companion in Sonon, who comes from Wutai and works with Avalanche. You’ll work together with him in combat to create combos, but there are also ‘control modes’ that let him either fight independently or follow Yuffie around and do what she does.
This DLC episode will feature new materia and summons, so combat will see a couple more interesting additions from the main game. Interestingly, Nomura confirms that Square Enix’s original plans were to simply create a PlayStation 5 version of Final Fantasy 7 Remake without releasing any DLC, but those plans changed. Intergrade ended up making the transition to Remake Part 2’s development smoother in the long run, but the team’s focus is now solely on the sequel. Don’t expect more DLC for either this game or that one, as Nomura confirms that they’re just trying to finish the game for now.
Final Fantasy 7: The First Soldier is an interesting spin-off, taking the RPG franchise into a new genre: battle royale. It might seem a little out of left field, but Nomura states that their intention was to make a game that would appeal to people who had never played a Final Fantasy game before. He says, “I do want people to discover an interest in the world of FFVII from this game, but it goes without saying that if we are going to do it properly then there can be no half measures, and we are putting everything we have into getting the content of the game right too.”
For fans of more classic Final Fantasy gameplay however, there will be a couple familiar elements sprinkled in. For example, The First Soldier has a job system that allows each player in a squad to choose between different ‘styles’, which gives them unique skills and abilities. A closed beta test is coming, so you might be able to experience all this yourself soon. A battle royale Final Fantasy game sounds pretty wild, but hopefully it turns out well.
Lastly, we have Final Fantasy 7: Ever Crisis, a more faithful remake of the original game that runs through its entire story as well as the other spin-offs. It’s the game to play if you need to catch up on this whole universe, basically. The catch? It’s monetised using a gacha system. Although all the game’s story chapters will be released for free, you’ll have to crack open loot boxes to get ‘random weapons’, with some ‘special weapons’ also coming as a set with new costumes.
The story of Final Fantasy 7 will unfold in 10 chapters, with Cloud and friends escaping Midgar in Chapter 3. New episodes with original storylines will also cover events in The First Soldier, which takes place 30 years before Cloud’s adventures and delves into the founding of SOLDIER. Nomura teases, “It goes without saying that you will see some of the legendary heroes in their younger days, as well as younger versions of the future Shinra executives and other characters who will appear in the Final Fantasy VII Remake sequels.”
The story mode is largely faithful to the original game, but, “also features special dungeons and battles that go outside of the timeline delineated by the various compilation titles.” It’s sort of an out-of-canon way to let players take on the series’, “mightiest enemies,” without interfering with the main story. Music is all based on the original games, but newly arranged for Ever Crisis.
As for the future of Final Fantasy 7 - a game that has somehow turned into an entire franchise of its own? Nomura says, “It seems like I will be having a busy time for the foreseeable future, not just this year but next year and the year after that. This is only just the first announcement relating to FFVII and you can look forward to more information coming in the future.” So... expect these to be the first of many spin-offs to come.
It’s not like expanding the world of Final Fantasy 7 is a new concept for players - remember Crisis Core and Dirge of Cerberus? Now that the game is reaching new heights in popularity, it’s not surprising that we’re getting a whole new slate of spin-offs to play. However, considering that each game is now canon and Final Fantasy 7’s lore is closing in on Kingdom Hearts-levels of messiness, let’s hope Square Enix shows a little more restraint with future titles. I know, I know. They won’t.
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