Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is juggling an impossible number of balls. In one fell swoop it’s aiming to remake the original’s shattering second act, continue where its 2020 predecessor ended, and set up an inevitable third game. But to make the burden bearable, the game’s development team is turning to a classic Star Wars sequel for some inspiration: The Empire Strikes Back.
"There is a lot you can learn from that film in terms of how to do a second part of a trilogy well," producer Yoshinori Kitase says in an interview with GamesRadar. "You've got the setup, the setting, the characters, who they are, all explained in the first part. The real role of a second part of a trilogy is to deepen that, explore it further, go into the relationships between the characters and how they relate to each other a lot more, which is very much what we focused on here." Those interpersonal relationships are partly why every character combo will also have a special team-up attack.
Kitase continues to explain that Rebirth (and Empire Strikes Back) had to include the “big twists, the unexpected aspects” that surprise fans enough to come back for the finale. In Star Wars, that twist was - spoilers - the ‘Luke, I am your father’ revelation. Rebirth probably won’t reveal that Sepiroth has been Cloud’s secret daddy for two decades, but the development team has continuously teased fans about remixing the original’s most heart-wrenching scene.
Director Naoki Hamaguchi - who’s graduating from co-director after Remake - has a slightly different philosophy when creating the middle chapter. “The big trap here is that people… get expectations of what the third part is going to be like. You don’t want [expectations to become lower.” Hamaguchi explains that Rebirth ramps up everything present in its predecessor, resulting in a “bigger and wider experience,” that will keep fans guessing about what’s next in the trilogy. “I feel that’s my mission as the director now, to really ensure that that’s where the game goes.”
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