Final Fantasy 7 Revelation director says it was ‘absolutely essential’ not to turn remake into ‘my own personal fan project’

The end of Final Fantasy VII Remake left many fans wondering just how much the new trilogy would change the story of the original PS1 game. Renaissance proved how faithful developers at Square Enix were to the original source material, while also throwing a few curve balls towards the end of the second game to keep players guessing.

As it all ends in Revelationthere is no longer any need to glance at the road. How much will the remake trilogy ultimately change a story that fans have loved for decades?

“We didn’t change the core of the story based on the reactions of the moment,” Naoki Hamaguchi recently said. Edge magazine (via Gamesradar). “It feels like we built each title one by one without straying from the central theme we established at the very beginning of the Remake series.”

He continued: “It wasn’t easy. I thought it was absolutely essential to avoid transforming a masterpiece like FFVII into something that felt like my own personal fan project.

Although the remake trilogy has added a large meta dimension to the narrative with ghosts called Whispers attempting to hold the timeline to its intended destiny, and there have been many additions to the overall world-building, there are no major plot points so far that deviate from the original.

“The real challenge was not just incorporating different elements from the original or introducing new interpretations,” Hamaguchi said. “We constantly asked ourselves if what we were creating could really be called FFVIIR.”

The fanfiction answer, on the other hand, would be to give fans what they’ve been hoping for for a long time: a way to save all of the game’s main characters and get a much more “happily ever after” ending than the somewhat dark and unresolved way things are left in the original. Games these days just don’t end FFVII made on the PS1.

How well can Hamaguchi and the team resist this urge? We’ll find out when the game arrives early next year.