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

Why FF7 Revelation's Director Believes Classic RPG Remakes Belong in Trilogies

When Square Enix announced that the Final Fantasy VII remake project would span three separate games, many fans raised their eyebrows. Three full titles to retell a single story seemed ambitious at best and commercially motivated at worst. But with FF7 Revelation now bringing the trilogy to its conclusion, director Naoki Hamaguchi has stepped forward to offer a clear, thoughtful explanation of the philosophy behind that decision — and why he believes the trilogy format is not just acceptable for remaking beloved classic RPGs, but arguably essential.

In a wide-ranging interview, Hamaguchi touched on everything from the studio's approach to DLC and the evolution of the game's combat system to the surprising challenge of making the iconic Highwind airship feel right, and even what the team borrowed from the world of battle royale games. What emerges is a portrait of a development team deeply committed to honoring the original while pushing the boundaries of what a remake can be.

The Trilogy Philosophy: Depth Over Brevity

At the heart of Hamaguchi's argument is a simple truth about the original Final Fantasy VII: it is an extraordinarily dense game. Its world, characters, and emotional arcs were built over dozens of hours of gameplay in 1997, and any attempt to compress that into a single modern release would require painful sacrifices. According to Hamaguchi, the trilogy structure was never about stretching content thin — it was about giving each chapter the room it needed to breathe.

"When you are working with a beloved classic, the fans carry enormous expectations," Hamaguchi explained. "Every moment matters to them. If you rush through iconic scenes or condense character development to hit a runtime target, you break the thing people came to experience in the first place."

This philosophy extends beyond just Final Fantasy VII. Hamaguchi suggests that any classic RPG with a sufficiently rich narrative and world deserves the same respect when being remade for a modern audience. A trilogy allows developers to treat each major story arc as its own complete experience while still maintaining the connective tissue that makes the larger narrative work. It also gives the team time to innovate mechanically between entries, something that has been clearly visible across the FF7 remake project as a whole.

Combat Evolution and What Battle Royale Games Taught the Team

One of the more surprising revelations from the interview is the degree to which Hamaguchi and his team studied battle royale games during the development of FF7 Revelation. While the two genres seem worlds apart, Hamaguchi points to specific design lessons — particularly around moment-to-moment player decision-making under pressure and the importance of resource scarcity — that proved directly applicable to refining the hybrid action-RPG combat system that the remake series is known for.

The combat in FF7 Revelation builds significantly on the foundations laid in the previous two entries. The team wanted players to feel the weight of every encounter, to think strategically about ability usage and party composition in a way that rewards engagement without overwhelming newcomers. The battle royale influence manifests most clearly in how the game manages tension, ensuring that even experienced players cannot coast on autopilot through major encounters.

• Enhanced ATB mechanics that reward aggressive play while punishing recklessness
• Reworked enemy stagger systems with greater visual clarity and strategic depth
• New synergy abilities that emerge naturally from party composition choices
• A refined difficulty scaling system influenced by how battle royale games modulate tension over time

The result, according to early impressions, is a combat system that feels like the most polished and purposeful iteration in the entire remake trilogy.

Making the Highwind Work: A Bigger Challenge Than Expected

Ask any longtime Final Fantasy VII fan which moment made them feel like the world had truly opened up, and many will point to the moment they first took control of the Highwind, the massive airship that transforms the map from a series of connected locations into a fully explorable world. Integrating that experience into a modern game built around dense, cinematic environments was, by Hamaguchi's own admission, one of the most technically and creatively demanding problems the team faced.

The challenge was not simply visual. The original Highwind gave players freedom in a way that the grid-based world of 1997 could accommodate easily. Translating that sense of freedom into a seamlessly rendered three-dimensional world required the team to rethink how exploration, fast travel, and world structure all intersected. Hamaguchi describes months of iteration before the team landed on a solution that felt true to the original experience without exposing the seams of the modern engine underneath.

DLC Plans and the Future of the FF7 Universe

Hamaguchi was also candid about the team's approach to post-launch DLC for FF7 Revelation. Rather than using downloadable content as a vehicle for story content that should have been in the main game, the team has focused on expanding character-specific storylines that complement rather than complete the core narrative. This approach, he argues, respects both the players who skip DLC and those who want to go deeper.

The broader question of what comes next for the FF7 universe remains open, but Hamaguchi's comments suggest that Square Enix views the trilogy not as an endpoint but as a proof of concept — evidence that with the right structure, the right team, and the right philosophy, even the most beloved and intimidating classic in the RPG canon can be remade in a way that satisfies both longtime fans and an entirely new generation of players.

Lessons for the Future of Classic RPG Remakes

If there is a broader takeaway from everything Hamaguchi shared, it is that remaking a classic RPG is fundamentally an act of stewardship. The trilogy format, the careful combat evolution, the painstaking work on the Highwind, the thoughtful DLC strategy — all of it reflects a team that understands it is not just building a game, but preserving and reinterpreting a cultural touchstone for the future. As the gaming industry continues to revisit its back catalog at an accelerating pace, the approach modeled by the FF7 remake project may well become the gold standard for how to do it right.