‘Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth’ Director Talks Aerith’s Fate, Future Plans

SPOILER ALERT: This interview contains light spoilers for “Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.” 

When it comes to Final Fantasy and Square Enix, Naoki Hamaguchi has seen it all. 

Having started as a real-time visual effects renderer back in 2006 with “Final Fantasy XII,” Hamaguchi has since spent the last 18 years at Square Enix, slowly rising through the ranks — promoted installment after installment, working as the lead cutscene programmer, main program, project leader and finally co-director of game design/programming of “Final Fantasy VII Remake,” alongside Tetsuya Nomura and Motomu Toriyama. 

Hamaguchi was heavily inspired to make games after playing “Final Fantasy VI,” wanting to create a game of its quality. In 2003, he graduated from HAL Nagoya College of Technology & Design and entered the games industry in the same year, eventually working at Square Enix. 

Now, he’s helming the second installment of the FFVII remake series with “Final Fantasy VII Rebirth,” which has already been met with rave reviews, plowing ahead with a 92 Metacritic “universal acclaim” score ahead of its release and is being hailed as “so good, it nearly wrecked my life,” by The Washington Post games critic Gene Park. 

Final Fantasy is an internationally known RPG series and one of the best-selling video game franchises of all time, having sold more than 180 million units worldwide and grossed an estimated $18 billion as of June 2023. It is the best-selling Square Enix franchise (above Dragon Quest) and the second-best-selling RPG franchise (below Pokémon).

“Working as a programmer really allowed me to communicate with a wide range of people in different roles within the company, including designers and planners, and through that experience, I was able to gain this very in-depth knowledge of the overall workflow in terms of game development,” Hamaguchi said through a translator. “I think this really allowed me to have this top-notch understanding of overall game design through communicating and exchanging information through those roles.” 

“Rebirth,” which was released exclusively for the PlayStation 5 on Thursday, is the second game in the “Final Fantasy VII” remake project, which seeks to reimagine the original 1997 RPG of the same name in three distinct, standalone parts. 

In this second installment, protagonist Cloud Strife and his companions explore a massive world outside Midgar, the first game’s setting, as they pursue Sephiroth, who’s become an iconic antagonist in video game lore. The heroic team journeys and battles through an expansive world filled with lush environments and explorable locales.

The original PlayStation game comprised three discs, with the first installment of the remake trilogy expanding upon the original game by expanding the first several hours into an epic 40-hour adventure. Rebirth will close off at the end of disc one of the original game, culminating in one of the most iconic chapters of the entire Final Fantasy series, the party’s journey to “The Forgotten Capital.” 

This chapter determines the fate of one of the series’ most beloved protagonists and playable characters — Aerith Gainsborough — and fans are eager to see what changes, if any, were made to the story. 

When asked why the team decided to end this game’s story at that point, Hamaguchi said, “It was very much determined at the early stages of development. We were unanimously in agreement that people who are awaiting this game are anticipating seeing Aerith’s fate. There’s no way we couldn’t include that in the second title of this trilogy.” 

“Now, we anticipate having various conjectures about this ending and many different interpretations from players as this game is released, which will create some healthy debate,” Hamaguchi continued. “I will also be observing the players’ responses, which will allow us to perhaps feed those into, you know, as we look to create the third title as well.” 

Rebirth boasts massive expansions to the remake project and the series as a whole. The expansive, open regions of the world provide ample opportunities to explore its rich history, play a variety of mini-games and tackle side quests. Players can travel on foot, utilize fast travel, ride series favorites Chocobos (with regionally defined special abilities) and employ various vehicles. 

“Combat Synergies” introduce team-based abilities that profoundly impact battle dynamics and influence Cloud’s relationships with allies. Through “Item Transmutation,” players gain control over crafting items and accessories tailored to their party’s combat preferences, and the introduction of a new “Dynamic Difficulty” mode adjusts enemy levels to match player progression — ensuring a consistent challenge for experienced players. 

Yuffie, Red XIII and Cait Sith join the playable cast, expanding the roster alongside Cloud, Barret, Tifa and Aerith, and though original FFVII characters Sid and Vincent are notably absent as playable characters in Rebirth, Hamaguchi teases plans to incorporate them later on. 

Here, Naoki Hamaguchi sits down with Variety to talk about his time at Square Enix, the challenges and successes of directing “Rebirth” and what fans can expect from the next installment in the trilogy. 

You started working at Square Enix in 2006 as a graphics renderer for one of the early Final Fantasy games. Take me through your history with the company and how you rose through the ranks to where you are now as director. 

Naoki Hamaguchi: So initially, I started out in a sort of engineer role, and I had joined the development of the titles from “Final Fantasy XII” and had gone on to be involved in development with 13 as well. In the time I’ve been working through these titles, I have touched on a variety of elements, including character cutscenes and programming. This gave me a good chance to interact with various developers. In that way, I was able to sort of accumulate this wealth of knowledge in terms of game development as a whole that I was then able to take with me when it was decided that Rebirth would be developed in studio and that I’d be tasked with directing it. 

What was the biggest challenge you faced in helming this project? 

Hamaguchi: My team that worked on Rebirth was composed of people who had worked on “Final Fantasy” 10 and 13, both of which were more narrative-focused games. They’re people who are quite experienced in working on this type of narrative, this enriching, deep story type of experience. But now, in “Rebirth,” the goal was to have kind of this world map view in mind, delivering a solid story through the experience of journeying and adventure in this vast open world and scaling locales, and this was sort of a first-time challenge for us as a team in that in that regard. 

And then we ran into those classic struggles: what content should be offered in a realm like this? How big should the world map actually be? And then, of course, we also have to ensure that the programming environment is aligned so that the content and roadmap we wish to create is even possible. 

What was the guiding philosophy behind this remake series, specifically “Rebirth”? The goal from the get-go was never to create a one-to-one recreation, so what was that driving tenet? 

Hamaguchi: The overall concept of the remake project was that we never wanted to do a one-to-one recreation. I do think, to some degree, it would be surprising seeing these, you know, blocky icons that we were used to back in the day now transformed into this very realistic, you know, CG expression — that would be pretty surprising and maybe appealing to the players. But of course, if we were to continue, aligned with the original story precisely, going into the second title. I do think that’s when players’ interest would drop off and decline because they would see that we’re just trying to do the same thing. 

My belief was that it’s necessary to create and add original elements along the way in order to sustain this interest and pique the curiosity within players. To keep everybody guessing and thinking, “Hmm, this is a little different from what I remember, but I’m curious to see how it’s going to pan out.” That’s part of creating this very enticing story within the series as well, and that was definitely a core philosophy within us as we were embarking on this project. 

Vincent and Sid are notably missing from the roster of playable characters. Do you have plans to include them sometime? 

Hamaguchi: While I don’t have any clear DLC information to share with you, we know it’d be very exciting for players to have new playable characters going into future titles. We didn’t want to release everything all at once and wanted to keep the excitement and anticipation going for these two characters.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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