There\u2019s a moment in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth<\/em><\/a> \u2014 one I won\u2019t spoil but will say it\u2019s not That Moment<\/a> \u2014 where I could hardly breathe. The story had taken a slight detour away from the events of the original\u2019s continuity but not so much to be wholly different. Characters were in the same places and had the same attitudes as they did before but were remixed just so. I had no idea how everything was going to shake out, which stressed me out because up to that point, I was deeply invested in predicting how Rebirth<\/em> would depart from its predecessor.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n That anxiety is exactly what Naoki Hamaguchi, director of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth<\/em>, wants players to feel \u2014 along with a few other emotions.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cBy implementing these changes,\u201d Hamaguchi says, \u201cwe bring about this new sense of wonder and excitement and anxiety in a positive sense that I believe is key to a work of entertainment.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In an interview with The Verge<\/em>, Hamaguchi and veteran Final Fantasy<\/em> producer Yoshinori Kitase, who worked on the original FF7<\/em> and Remake <\/em>\/ Rebirth<\/em>, speak about the balancing act between honoring the 1997 original while creating something new.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cWe bring about this new sense of wonder and excitement and anxiety in a positive sense that I believe is key to a work of entertainment.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Modern reinterpretations of \u201cclassic\u201d games isn\u2019t a new trend, but Rebirth<\/em> is unique in that it falls between a straight-up current-gen refresh like the <\/em>Resident Evil<\/em> remakes<\/a> and complete reboots like the Tomb Raider<\/em> trilogy of the 2010s<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n There is a lot of opportunity in that middle space and Hamaguchi says for Rebirth<\/em>, there were two key points he and his team kept in mind to maintain balance between updating the old and making something wholly new. The first was expression.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cSo much more detail is possible in what we\u2019re able to portray and express in much of these scenes,\u201d Hamaguchi says through an interpreter. \u201cWe\u2019re now able to show certain [moments] that perhaps the original creators intended to but could not with the technology at the time.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Utilizing technology in service of expression allowed Rebirth<\/em>\u2019s developers to deepen existing canon events such that they feel new without being new.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cAllowing players this sort of new discovery in experiencing these details was the first point we took care of.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The second point was recognizing that FF7<\/em>\u2019s story had to be changed somehow and figuring out where to implement those changes effectively. Hamaguchi and Kitase worked to create a sort of guessing game with Rebirth, <\/em>designed to keep players on their toes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cIf the story that we follow for Rebirth<\/em> is exactly the same, players\u2019 overall excitement would decrease,\u201d Hamaguchi explains. \u201cZack, for example, was a character who died in the original game. But by bringing him back in the Remake<\/em> series, we\u2019ve created this sense of wonder and excitement in players that believe perhaps this is something different.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Zack\u2019s presence in Rebirth<\/em> was indeed something that kept me wondering. He\u2019s a pretty popular character, starring in Crisis Core<\/em><\/a>, one of FF7<\/em>\u2019s prequel games, and I thought perhaps his inclusion was a bit of fan service \u2014 especially considering he\u2019s supposed to be dead.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But Kitase says Zack\u2019s resurrection wasn\u2019t done in response to his popularity but because bringing in characters from across the FF7<\/em> universe, popular or obscure, was always the plan.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Zack and other characters like Cissnei, also from Crisis Core<\/em>, add \u201cspice,\u201d Kitase says.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u200b\u200bIn my years of loyal service to the Final Fantasy<\/em> series, I\u2019ve kept abreast of most of FF7<\/em>\u2019s lore spread across multiple spinoff games that either star<\/a> or feature music from<\/a> one of my favorite J-rock artists<\/a>. And the one defining throughline is that it can get pretty confusing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n This wasn\u2019t too much of a problem in Remake<\/em>, but things get a lot more complex as Rebirth <\/em>starts. I wondered if\u00a0resurrecting someone canonically dead while introducing copies of Cloud and Aerith might complicate what was already a complicated story \u2014 especially for players who didn\u2019t go through a Gackt phase.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Hamaguchi didn\u2019t quite promise that the story wouldn\u2019t get too unwieldy to follow, but did say you wouldn\u2019t need my level of FF7<\/em> lore understanding to follow along.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThere\u2019s nothing that [a player] wouldn\u2019t understand because they haven\u2019t played the spinoff titles,\u201d he says. \u201cEverything you need to know will be addressed in Rebirth<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n One of the major criticisms of Remake<\/em> was that certain sections were too much of a departure from the original. Moments like Remake<\/em>\u2019s Wall Market section, which once represented 20 minutes to an hour\u2019s worth of gameplay, spiraled out into hourslong slogs that unnecessarily padded relatively inconsequential sections of the game<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cEverything you need to know will be addressed in \u2018Rebirth.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Hamaguchi acknowledges the criticism, explaining that he felt it wasn\u2019t so much the side stories themselves that were the issue, rather that players weren\u2019t able to decide whether to pursue them. I was indeed touched by the tragic backstory of one of Don Corneo\u2019s henchmen, but supremely didn\u2019t appreciate fighting through yet another sewer dungeon to hear it. (Or catching ghosts, or tracking down somebody\u2019s lost wallet.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Hamaguchi says those kinds of side stories are still present but shouldn\u2019t be as disruptive as they were for Remake<\/em>. \u201cFor Rebirth<\/em>, the volume of side contents is quite massive,\u201d he says. \u201cBut a key difference here is that players are now able to choose when they play the side contents.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Some of the \u201cside content\u201d you can choose from is well worth the detour. The protorelic quests \u2014 a series of treasure hunting quests in search of a collection of mysterious artifacts \u2014 in particular surprised me with all the different activities you participate in. In the grasslands area, you have to stymie the efforts of a bunch of thugs. In Corel, to win the protorelic housed there, you fight waves of cactuar to rack up points; while in Junon, Cloud and the gang are returned into their polygonal forms from 1997 to play the Fort Condor tower defense mini-game.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n