Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth director Naoki Hamaguchi has been going on a world tour speaking at Tokyo Game Show, Brasil Game Show, and more — including sitting down for an exclusive interview with Inverse. There’s been a deluge of information about the Remake trilogy in the last couple of months, but some of Hamaguchi’s most interesting comments hint at how the “trilogy” could expand. While Square Enix is solely focused on Part 3 at the moment, with the series expanding to more consoles like Xbox and Switch 2 — Hamaguchi is apparently open to expanding the series with DLC, or even an entire game, after the trilogy ends.
Hamaguchi’s comments come from a new Wccftech interview, where he reconfirms that, at one point in time, there were plans for Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth DLC. But Hamaguchi says that what the development team thought fans wanted the most was to get Part 3 as soon as possible, so the entire focus was shifted to accommodate that desire. But that fact doesn’t mean DLC is off the table in the future.
“With that being said, once we release the third installment, there is the possibility of having a DLC for that third installment. With the conclusion of the Final Fantasy VII Remake trilogy, there’s probably going to be a much wider audience for Final Fantasy as a whole,” Hamaguchi says, “Whether we bring another new DLC or a full title, that’s something we are actively considering.”
These comments actually echo what Hamaguchi said during our interview with him at The Game Awards 2024, where he also discussed DLC.
“Whether or not I wanted to create something similar to Remake Intermission, there was definitely that desire within me. But considering the sort of circumstances that many of our fans are just waiting and anticipating the third title, we thought about how best to focus our developments or resources when pondering that,” Hamaguchi told us, “Rather than creating Rebirth DLC, we wanted to meet that desire and anticipation by focusing on and delivering the third title as soon as we can. So, of course, I had that desire, but I restrained it, and said, Okay, let’s focus on the third.”
Looking at this and his most recent quote, I find it particularly interesting that Hamaguchi drops the term “full title,” alongside the potential of DLC. It’s abundantly clear the director has had ideas on how to expand the Final Fantasy 7 series outside of the Remake trilogy — even if we don’t know what the plan was for any Rebirth DLC. But it’s clear the director had hopes to expand the story further, and it’s unlikely he and the development team won’t want to deliver on those hopes in some way.
Episode Intermission focused entirely on Yuffie, before she was playable and fully integrated into Rebirth. My sneaking suspicion is that the Rebirth DLC was intended to do the same thing with either Cid or Vincent, or both. But Vincent seems like the most likely candidate there, because of how important he is to the overarching narrative of Final Fantasy 7, and the PS2 spinoff shooter Dirge of Cerberus.
The development team of the Remake trilogy has stated multiple times that one of the major goals was to integrate all of the expanded universe content for Final Fantasy 7 and make the overall world and story more cohesive. We know for a fact that it includes Dirge of Cerberus, due to both Weiss and Nero (key villains in the PS2 game) being prominently featured in Episode Intermission. A Vincent DLC likely would have carried this thread forward even more.
To that end, if we are going to get another “full game” in the series, my money would be on either something entirely Vincent-focused or something that bridges the gap between the end of Final Fantasy 7 and the film Advent Children. Creative director Tetsuya Nomura has previously said the Remake trilogy will “link up” with Advent Children. We’re still waiting to see exactly what that means, and Dirge of Cerberus, of course, takes place after Advent Children.
But if Square Enix is really trying to make this Remake series comprehensively cover the whole of Final Fantasy 7’s narrative, there’s a lot of lore to dig into with Dirge of Cerberus concerning the Turks, Deepground, and the entity called Chaos.
Final Fantasy 7 Remake Part 3 already has to cover Vincent and Cid’s backstories, Rocket Town, Wutai, finding Cloud in the Lifestream, and wrapping the whole thing up. That’s a lot of ground to cover in a single game — meaning a spinoff DLC or game would be the perfect way to wrap up some of the lingering plot threads and lore bits, or even ways to reintroduce certain fan-favorite characters.
But the major point here is that Hamaguchi is considering something, and with the trilogy now set to come to every major modern platform, it seems practically guaranteed that Hamaguchi’s hopes will be paid off in some way. If you wanted even more Final Fantasy 7, that’s a pretty good thing to hear.
