FF7 Revelation Director Explains Why Remaking Classic RPGs Needs to Be in Trilogies

Why Naoki Hamaguchi Believes Classic RPG Remakes Belong in Trilogies

When Square Enix first announced that Final Fantasy VII would be remade not as a single title but as a multi-part series, fan reactions were sharply divided. Years later, with FF7 Revelation now completing the ambitious triptych, director Naoki Hamaguchi has opened up in a wide-ranging interview about the philosophy driving every major creative decision — from the trilogy structure itself to combat design, the long-awaited Highwind sequence, downloadable content, and surprising inspiration drawn from the world of battle royale games.

For anyone invested in the future of AAA RPG remakes, Hamaguchi's insights offer a revealing look at how a development team weighs reverence for source material against the demands of modern interactive storytelling.

The Case for the Trilogy Format

Hamaguchi is direct about one thing: a single game simply could not have done justice to the original Final Fantasy VII. The source material is not just long — it is layered, emotionally complex, and packed with locations, characters, and narrative threads that each deserve room to breathe. Compressing everything into one release would have forced the team into a position of constant sacrifice, cutting content and depth to meet a practical runtime.

According to Hamaguchi, the trilogy model solves this problem structurally. Each entry functions as a self-contained experience with its own dramatic arc while simultaneously advancing the overarching story. This approach also allows the development team to expand and reinterpret specific sections of the original game without making the overall project feel bloated or incoherent. The breathing room afforded by three titles means that subplots, side characters, and world-building moments that would have been cut from a single game can instead become meaningful chapters in a larger whole.

There is also a business reality baked into this philosophy. Developing a sprawling RPG of this scale is an enormous undertaking. Structuring it as a trilogy gives Square Enix the ability to iterate on feedback between releases, refine systems, and keep the audience engaged over a longer window of time. Hamaguchi frames this not as a commercial convenience but as a genuine creative advantage — each game informed the next, allowing the team to grow in ambition and execution across all three entries.

Combat Evolution and the Battle Royale Connection

One of the more surprising revelations from Hamaguchi concerns combat design in FF7 Revelation. While the hybrid action-command system introduced in FF7 Remake remained the foundation, the team looked to an unlikely source of inspiration when refining and expanding it: battle royale games.

The fast-paced decision-making, spatial awareness, and moment-to-moment prioritization demanded by games in the battle royale genre translated in unexpected ways to the combat philosophy of FF7 Revelation. Hamaguchi explains that watching players navigate high-pressure, multi-target scenarios in those games helped his team understand how to make FF7 Revelation's larger battles feel genuinely dynamic rather than choreographed. The result is a combat system that rewards aggressive positioning, resource management, and quick thinking — qualities that will feel familiar to anyone who has spent time in a competitive online shooter, filtered through the lens of a classic JRPG.

This cross-genre thinking is a testament to how broadly the development team cast its net when looking for solutions to design problems. Rather than looking only at comparable RPGs for reference, they were willing to learn from entirely different play spaces.

Making the Highwind Work

Few elements of the original Final Fantasy VII carry as much nostalgic weight as the Highwind, the massive airship that becomes available in the late game and transforms how players explore the world. Replicating that sense of freedom and scale in a modern engine — while also making it feel mechanically fresh — was one of the team's most significant challenges.

Hamaguchi discusses the careful balance required to make the Highwind sequence feel earned and expansive without overwhelming players or undermining the narrative momentum of the game's final act. The solution involved a combination of technical work and deliberate pacing — ensuring that gaining access to the airship genuinely felt like a moment of triumph rather than a menu option unlocked by a story trigger.

The DLC Philosophy

Hamaguchi also addressed downloadable content, acknowledging that post-launch support is now an expected part of the lifecycle for a major RPG release. His stated philosophy is that DLC for FF7 Revelation should feel additive rather than extractive. The goal is to expand on stories and characters that players already care about rather than gating content that would feel incomplete at launch.

This approach reflects a broader industry conversation about the ethics of DLC design. For a game built on decades of fan loyalty, the stakes of getting this wrong are particularly high, and Hamaguchi appears keenly aware of that responsibility.

What FF7 Revelation Means for the Future of RPG Remakes

The completed FF7 trilogy represents one of the most ambitious remake projects in gaming history. Whether or not every creative decision landed perfectly, the project proved that beloved classic RPGs can be reimagined at scale without losing their soul — provided the development team has both the vision and the format to execute that vision properly.

Hamaguchi's trilogy philosophy may well become a template. As publishers look at their own libraries of beloved older titles and consider how to bring them to contemporary audiences, the argument for structured, multi-part remakes over single compressed releases has never been more compelling. FF7 Revelation does not just close a chapter — it opens a conversation about what ambitious, respectful reimagining can look like going forward.