'Final Fantasy 7 Revelation' Interview: Hands-On Preview - Deadline

Looks like those seven seconds are coming to an end.

At Gamescom 2026, Final Fantasy VII Revelation offered a glimpse at the enormous final chapter of Square Enix’s remake trilogy, which concludes Cloud and his activist friends’ journey as they race against time to stop Sephiroth, who is close to attaining god status in his quest to harm the planet.

The preview dropped us into Chapter 4 aboard Cid’s iconic Highwind aerial ship with Yuffie, Barret, Cait Sith and Vincent, as the group explores the islands for resources or makes a beeline for Wutai, which has been significantly expanded for the finale. Meanwhile, Tifa and an unwell Cloud remain separated from the group, leaving the rest of the party to chart their own course through a world that has grown considerably since Rebirth.

For Square Enix game director Naoki Hamaguchi, who has guided the project through Final Fantasy VII Remake and Rebirth, that expansion is one of the biggest challenges—and opportunities—of the finale. The Highwind opens the skies, while flying chocobos and parachuting offer new ways to traverse familiar territory. Junon bears the brunt of Weapons’ attacks in defense of the planet, parts of Gongaga have been flooded, and the grasslands look remarkably different from above.

After Remake’s more linear structure and Rebirth’s open-world expansion, Revelation takes that scale to a planet-wide level. Hamaguchi said the Highwind provides “a feeling that no other open-world game gives,” while Mai and the game’s side content help guide players through the sprawling landscape without making exploration too stressful.

During the timed playthrough (and despite all the exploratory distractions), I caught a hopeful glimpse of a finale geared towards delving deeper into the lore of its iconic cast of characters. Hamaguchi told Deadline that the team painstakingly cemented Vincent and Yuffie into irrevocable mainstays while also giving Zack (not available in my preview) an increasingly important role in the trilogy’s larger time-boggling mystery.

Below, Deadline spoke further with Hamaguchi about bringing the ambitious remake project to its conclusion, expanding its world and characters, Cloud’s emotional journey, and whether Final Fantasy VII could eventually leap to television.

DEADLINE: This is it. You’re in the process of finalizing one of the biggest remake projects of a legendary game for Square Enix. What is the general vibe and emotionality going through your minds right now at headquarters?

NAOKI HAMAGUCHI: As you say, it is a legendary game. It’s so well-loved by so many people out there, with really high expectations, and I’m remaking that. And in doing the final work, it’s really setting in that we’re about to release the climax. There’s a feeling of great satisfaction, and I’m feeling that now. I can still remember when we put out Final Fantasy VII Rebirth; the big challenge with that game was that we wanted to take that classic Final Fantasy feel and bring it into an open-world structure. And I think we felt that we did that really well, and thankfully, there was a very positive reaction to that.

So, with Revelation, what we’ve tried to do is take that even further and expand out. And it sits on a planet-level open world, with verticality, and the whole environment is now available for adventure. And I’m very confident that we’ve done that. And really, there’s no open world out there at this scale in any other game.

DEADLINE: With that said, I know Final Fantasy VII Remake faced backlash for being too linear. Then Rebirth opened up a lot as you’ve stated. And now this one’s even bigger. Are you worried about an unwieldy narrative or fans’ response to this?

HAMAGUCHI: Whatever kind of game you’re making, you can have 100 people and show them the game; you’re never going to get anything where all 100 of them like it. There’ll always be someone who doesn’t like it, who complains about it. You can’t reduce those voices to nothing, so we don’t even try.

What’s important is that you have a solid concept and do your best to achieve it. With Revelation, I really am confident that we managed to do that. So, again, you guys played the demos and had this experience, but that feeling of just the size of the world and that scale of open world, when you get up in the Highwind and you set out into the skies, I don’t think there’s any other open-world game out there that will give you that feeling. So, I want to share that feeling with as many people as possible and show what we’ve achieved here.

DEADLINE: Does this mean we can expect the chicken with the tin can in Gongaga to appear again?

HAMAGUCHI: No, I was thinking about what to do with that for a long time. We’ve taken a slightly different approach [laughs]. But we’ve got a lot of quests like that, with that distinctive Final Fantasy humor in it. Look forward to loads of that.

DEADLINE: Who was the character you understood more by the end of the game’s journey?

HAMAGUCHI: Vincent and Yuffie because they were two characters in the original who were optional characters. And because of that, they weren’t featured within the main story as strongly as all the other cast. So, as a very conscious decision for the Remake series, they’ve been made compulsory parts of the team, and they’ve really been fleshed out more and given the background and the deeper dive into them as characters. So, I think those are probably the two the fans will appreciate most and that have been fleshed out the most.

Also, Zack is the other one because he plays a very interesting role in the story’s setup. He gives the impression of, “Well, this is the [game] differences, this is what is going on.” Similarly to Rebirth, in terms of showing not telling, he will also have a role like that in Revelation. So players can very much expect to see a lot more of Zack and dig even deeper into him. He plays a very massive part in this last finale of the series.

DEADLINE: Which character then was the most difficult to flesh out and bring to the forefront?

HAMAGUCHI: That’s a tough question. In some ways, Zack was quite a difficult one. Because first of all, he’s quite well covered in terms of background material from the compilation. There’s a lot of information about him where he features quite heavily, so there’s stuff we have to include. And at the same time, the way he’s used in the story, he’s part of that very special metaphysical phenomenon that’s going on. So, how he’s portrayed in that, and how he interacts with others and the environment, have to be handled very carefully so that we don’t give too much away. Getting that balance right with Zack was hard, especially in adding more detail about him.

But thinking about this question again, and all the characters, they’ve got really dedicated fans. You make one wrong decision for any of them, I’m probably going to get shouted at by a lot of people [laughs]. So, I think picking one as more difficult than the others is quite difficult in itself.

DEADLINE: In the preview’s Chapter 4, Cloud is already suffering from mako poisoning. But it was interesting to me that Mai mentions the Lifesprings may be involved in restoring or improving his mental state? What can you tell us about this new development? My boy is suffering.

HAMAGUCHI: So first of all, everyone wants to enjoy that in the game. I want you to enjoy that in the game. The best way to experience that is by not telling you. I can’t tell you [laughs]. But what I will tell you is that, like in any film, any really good film, you’ll get the rhythm of things, the ups and downs of the story and how [the story] progresses like that. And in terms of that rhythm in Revelation, that was one of the areas we put so much care and attention into the story of how Cloud finds himself and recovers and gets his sanity back.

Some of the voice actors have said in interviews that there’s so much emotional payback in that scene, and everyone’s going to have so many complicated emotions about the really beautiful scene. And it was the English voice actors who said that if you didn’t cry in Rebirth, you’re going to cry in Revelation. So that’s why I really wanted people [at the demos] to see and experience that as soon as possible.

DEADLINE: Looking ahead to 2027, it’s going to be a big year for Square Enix between Kingdom Hearts IV and Final Fantasy VII Revelation. But I’m thinking more specifically about Tetsuya Nomura going to D23 and the announcement of the Kingdom Hearts animated series for Disney+. Does Final Fantasy VII lend itself to a TV series adaptation?

HAMAGUCHI: In terms of Square Enix and 2027, our President, Takashi Kiryu, says that next year is the big fight back for us, where everything turns around. And obviously, between Final Fantasy VII Revelation and Kingdom Hearts IV, those are massive titles that are going to push that. And both are being developed in my own studio, Creative Studio 1. So yeah, I’m really pumped up now for that. That’s really all on my watch now, so I’m going to be the guy who’s pushing all that forward.

But in terms of adaptations, even a live-action adaptation or an animated adaptation, we’re always thinking that these properties, things like, again, Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy VII … not just Final Fantasy VII, even just Remake. Across all of the Final Fantasy properties and IPs, we’re always looking for the best way to bring them to the audience and for opportunities like this with them. So yeah, it’s definitely a possibility. We want to be very proactive in looking into opportunities like that.

Final Fantasy VII Revelation will release on April 8, 2027 simultaneously on PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch 2, Xbox Series X|S, Steam and Epic Games.

This interview, edited and condensed for clarity, was conducted through an interpreter.

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