Final Fantasy 7 feels both like a time capsule from the late ’90s and a timeless story about corporate greed and its negative impact on the environment, and the upcoming Final Fantasy 7 Revelation is set to tie the knot on the remake trilogy’s modern retelling. So far, the story has stayed largely faithful to the original game, and series boss Naoki Hamaguchi
In Edge Magazine issue 429, Hamaguchi says it hasn’t been easy remaking a game as beloved as Final Fantasy 7 as three separate entries while staying true to the spirit of the original.
“We haven’t altered the core of the story based on reactions at any given time. It feels as though we’ve built up each title one by one without wavering from the central theme we established at the very start of the Remake series,” Hamaguchi says. “It wasn’t easy. I felt it was absolutely essential to avoid turning a masterpiece like FF7 into something that felt like my own personal fan project.”
Of course, the Final Fantasy 7 remakes aren’t without their creative liberties, even introducing a meta narrative device to make major changes to the original story via the Whisper entities. Hamaguchi says the development team didn’t struggle with individual alterations; rather, they struggled with the remake series’ whole identity among the Final Fantasy pantheon.
“The real challenge wasn’t simply incorporating elements that differed from the original or introducing new interpretations. It was constantly asking ourselves whether what we were creating could truly be called FF7R,” says Hamaguchi.
With Final Fantasy 7 Revelation due out April 8, 2027, you still have plenty of time to catch up on the story as told before the sequel picks up, whether that’s a replay of Remake and Rebirth or the original 1997 JRPG. Hamaguchi himself recently told GamesRadar+ that the original story “is very much enshrined within the story [and] the narrative of the Remake series as a thing in the world,” but that newcomers can also jump right into the remakes and still have a great old time.