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Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is undoubtedly this year’s strongest Game of the Year candidate as years of expectations paid off sweetly with the game garnering an overall super positive reception. Recently, at Indonesia Anime Con (INACON) 2024, our sister site GamerWK earned another sweet opportunity to catch up with the developers of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.
In this interview, we got to speak with Motomu Toriyama, the Co-Director of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, and Teruki Endo, the Battle Director for the game. This happened to be the first time both developers came to Indonesia, where they both took part in a Q&A session to greet fans at INACON 2024.
Interview was slightly edited for clarity.
For the Old and the New
The original Final Fantasy VII has resonated with a lot of players since 1997, and as a remake, fans no doubt have a certain level of expectations for Rebirth.
Regarding the responses, Motomu Toriyama said “When it comes to the old fans, we want to make sure that they can enjoy the storyline from the start, especially since this project is based on the original Final Fantasy VII from 1997. As such, we need to pay attention to the original story and keep the old fans engaged with the new take.”
“On the other hand, we also brought in a lot of new elements to make sure new fans are also able to enjoy the game.”
New Features
Speaking of new elements, Rebirth has introduced plenty of features that were never present in any of the past Final Fantasy games.
Elaborate on it, Toriyama pointed out the new features, “The one standout of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is the more interactive open-world experience, which is new for the franchise. To avoid the experience becoming repetitive, we improve on the Chocobo system – when exploring while riding on your Chocobo, you may find hidden items, or glide through the Cosmo Canyon. The freedom to explore the world in various ways is an experience we aim to offer as part of the first true open-world game of the series.”
When it comes to remaking a game or putting a new spin on an existing game, it is not uncommon to stray a little far from the original identity. For boundaries to avoid straying too far, Toriyama said “The biggest borderline we set is that the story cannot change too much from the original game.”
“Since the original was packed into one single game, while Rebirth is the second game in a trilogy – the middle portion of the whole story and that each story changes per chapter, we look back on what was lacking in each chapter and expand on it in Rebirth.”
Minigame Design
There is an amazing variety of minigames in the Rebirth and each of them is memorable in its ways. In terms of the factors that the development team considers while designing the minigames, Toriyama said, “As you may know, there are tones of minigames on the scale.”
“We just want to make sure that there are minigames for each area and that players should not get tired of them. I think that’s the key that we take into consideration when creating these minigames.”
On the topic of minigames, we were curious about which one was the developers’ favorite.
Toriyama answered “Queen’s Blood” as his favorite, and explained that “Each minigame was created by each main staff member. Their roles are to check those as well, so it would be their personal favorite as they were playing by themselves. I’m not very good at action games and prefer strategic gameplay more, so my personal favorite is Queen’s Blood. When playing the minigame, I was surprised at how much strategy was needed, and thus that’s why it became my favorite.”
As for Endo, he expressed his enjoyment of the piano minigame. “This is completely personal, but I liked the piano minigame because I used to play the original game back then and I loved the music. Being able to recreate that inside Rebirth was something that I truly enjoyed.”
Combat System
There has been quite a lot of improvement to the combat system from Final Fantasy VII Remake to Rebirth. When asked about parts that the team feels can be improved further, or were there any scrapped ideas, Teruki Endo explained, “There aren’t any particular ideas that were scrapped. We had the idea of the Synergy Attacks, action, and abilities right from the start.”
“We wanted to build it onto the system that was already created in Remake and blend it in, so it does not become unnatural. That is what we aimed for from the start, so there was no idea we scrapped. We were simply working to create a battle system that blends in with the new Synergy system.”
One of the most captivating aspects of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth‘s combat is the distinctive fighting style each character has. Talking about diversified combat styles, Endo noted, “In this game, there are a lot of different characters and we want to make each one of them unique, especially the new members that are finally joining the crew in Rebirth.”
“Since we already have their unique characteristics in the original game, we looked at how they were unique back then and tried to re-create the same feel in combat playstyle in this game.”
As a battle director, Endo sure has a lot of development memories regarding the combat mechanic. For him, the Synergy system is something he found particularly memorable.
“When we were developing Rebirth, the biggest change was the addition of Synergy Ability. Although I had a vision, an image of what it would look like in the actual game, actually seeing the camera work in-game and all the effects coming together got me very excited – and I was looking forward to seeing how this would apply to every character. The first time watching the synergy between Cloud and Barret was one of the most memorable moments for me as a developer.”
Favorite Characters
Talking about their favorite character, Endo expresses how much he likes Cloud and that working on his favorite character was a lasting memory for him. “My personal favorite used to be Cloud and that hasn’t changed even when I got to develop him as a developer. Being able to create a character that was my favorite was a very moving experience for me.”
For Toriyama, Red XIII is his favorite character. “In the original, there are scenes where Red XIII was depicted as a child, and some he was more mature. For the remake project, we were worried, or at least one of our concerns was that adding a voice would not blend well with the character. But thanks to the voice actor and the team, I think we were able to create something natural – the RED XIII as a child but also as an adult. I believe we were able to create something very close to what players were imagining him to be.”
Side Quests
With its scale, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth offered quite a sizeable amount of side quests to keep the world exploration fresh. About the challenges faced when creating the side quests, Toriyama explained, “For each quest, you can tell that the playable characters are different, the characters that may join you in the quests are also different. We want to make sure that each character that is featured in the quests is made so that you can see them. First of all, there needs to be a variety, and you can see the good parts of each character; like how unique they are and what makes each quest interesting based on which characters joined the quest.”
“In terms of boss quests, it hasn’t changed since Final Fantasy VII Remake, but we tried to make sure that the boss battles are all made very rich and luxurious, and their cutscenes balance out well with the actual battle and flowed naturally.”
Balancing Performance and Graphics
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is a very beautiful game and one that performs pretty smoothly considering the scope.
Talking about optimization, Endo explained “The combat is based on an action system instead of turn-based. Not only battle, but everything else is also depicted in real-time, such you walking in the field. In order to increase the immersion, we need to aim for high-quality graphics. However, some players might refer to having a higher frame rate and experiencing smooth movement.”
“We wanted to balance out both aspects because we know some players want to play in different modes. We also facilitate it so that players can select whichever mode they would like to play with. Looking at it in a total sense, the balancing aspect was the most difficult part, especially when judging where to draw the line between the two.”
The Most Iconic Moment in Gaming
In Rebirth, we got to experience the return of one of the most iconic moments in gaming again, but this time, ended up leaving many people with more questions and some of them are not sure how to feel about the new direction.
Regarding this moment, Toriyama said, “Obviously, many fans’ most anticipated moment was the emotional scene of Aerith and we understand that many would have more questions after watching that scene.”
“In the final part of the remake project, we’ll be able to see all the answers players are wondering. Not just regarding Aerith but also who Zack is and what kind of existence he truly is. We’d like to provide all these answers and create a game with a more dramatic ending than the original game. So, we’d like you to look forward to it.”
Impressions of Indonesia
Since it was the first time the developers visited Indonesia, we asked how did they find the country.
“This is my first time in Indonesia, and I was surprised to see the quality of events and cosplays here are of very high quality,” replied Toriyama. “Before I went up on stage, there was a full property collection for cosplay, and I was impressed with the cosplay scene and its quality in Indonesia. It’s something that left a big impression on my visit here. I also saw Final Fantasy XIII cosplays and kind of wished that it was a real character.”
As for Endo, he said, “It’s also my first time coming to Indonesia. I’m grateful for the experience of interacting with fans and I’m touched by how friendly and enthusiastic they are, which encouraged me.”
Message for Fans
As the interview was concluding, we asked if there were any messages to fans especially those looking forward to the continuation of the story.
To that, Toriyama said, “For Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, there are open field elements like an open world where you can immerse yourself in each area. We wanted to create more freedom for Rebirth and allow you to experience it as one big world with complete freedom, including how players experience the story and move forward as a whole.”
Endo also left a message, “I want to try to make a game that is the most beautiful when combining the two. I’m thinking of continuing to work on that in the next game, to keep the important parts of the RPG genre, like choosing how we want to play the game. We want to design systems so that both of them balance out very well, so that’s what we’ve been doing for the previous games and that’s what we want to do for the next part as well.”
That concludes the interview. We would like to thank Motomu Toriyama and Teruki Endo for taking the time to answer our questions and share their insights into the development of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.
