Square Enix’s Hamaguchi: “Our Goal Is to Carry FF7 Into the Future”

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The story

At PAX West 2026 in Seattle, a developer panel for “Final Fantasy VII Revelation” took place. Director Naoki Hamaguchi and battle director Teruki Endo took the stage to unveil the combat styles of new party members Cid and Vincent, and spoke about the FF7 remake trilogy, saying “our goal is to carry this work into the future.” On 5ch, opinions were split over whether splitting the story into a trilogy makes sense, how high a barrier it creates for newcomers, and where the series goes from here.

At PAX West 2026 in Seattle, a developer panel for “Final Fantasy VII Revelation” was held, with director Naoki Hamaguchi and battle director Teruki Endo taking the stage to showcase the combat styles of Cid and Vincent, who join the battle party in this installment.

Distinct from the existing cast, yet each brings fresh appeal

This title is the finale of the “Final Fantasy VII” remake trilogy, depicting the conclusion of Cloud and company’s journey as they roam the world freely aboard the airship Highwind.

Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here

What people said

2AnonymousSep 7, 2026 12:38
What's the point of only carrying FF7 forward?
4AnonymousSep 7, 2026 12:39
You let it become such a has-been that it can't even post sales numbers anymore, and now you're talking about 'the future'?
6AnonymousSep 7, 2026 12:40
Working on FF7 has slowly turned Hamaguchi into a Square Enix drone too.
7AnonymousSep 7, 2026 12:40
We don't need remakes.
Make a new game already.
8AnonymousSep 7, 2026 12:41
So 'carrying it into the future' means FF17 will end up being a sequel to 7?
72AnonymousSep 7, 2026 14:21
Re: #1
Stuff like this is exactly why Square Enix itself might disappear.
The FF series is already washed up, and once Horii's gone from Dragon Quest, its fans will vanish too.

Re: #8
That's not what it means.
It means passing down what they consider their masterpiece, FF7, to future generations.
9AnonymousSep 7, 2026 12:41
They had that as their stated goal while making it a PlayStation exclusive at launch?
Are they okay?
10AnonymousSep 7, 2026 12:41
The remake is obviously aimed at people who already played the original.
How exactly is that 'carrying it forward'?
11AnonymousSep 7, 2026 12:41
Splitting it into a trilogy already makes it way harder to carry into the future.
You need real commitment just to play through it, so newcomers won't touch it.
12AnonymousSep 7, 2026 12:42
By 'carry forward' they mean 'cash in,' basically (繋ぐ, "carry forward," doubles here as a jab at just milking the IP).
There's zero thought given to new players anywhere in this.
13AnonymousSep 7, 2026 12:43
It only got hyped up because it was the first 3D entry — the content itself isn't that special.
14AnonymousSep 7, 2026 12:44
If the goal was carrying it into the future, they should've made the remake one single game
and done any epilogue material as DLC, don't you think?
Splitting it into three and abandoning the people who bought it on PS4
seems pretty messed up.
15AnonymousSep 7, 2026 12:45
They already made the 'one game' version — it's called the remaster.
16AnonymousSep 7, 2026 12:46
If you're gonna waste money on a dead franchise, make a new IP instead.
20AnonymousSep 7, 2026 12:50
They finally drew their trump card and found out it had rusted through — just give up and toss the junk sword already.
27AnonymousSep 7, 2026 12:59
Re: #20
If it were just rusty that'd be one thing, but it's been split into three pieces on top of that…
35AnonymousSep 7, 2026 13:08
For some reason they're talking like this was a success.
The only one you could actually call a success is the very first PS4 entry.
42AnonymousSep 7, 2026 13:26
Re: #35
The reason they force it to be treated as a success is
so they don't scare off new players or give the company an excuse to cancel the project.
38AnonymousSep 7, 2026 13:09
They'll probably remake Dirge of Cerberus and Advent Children too, and those might outsell the main game.
After all, there are tons of people who love Kadaj and Vincent without even knowing the original.
47AnonymousSep 7, 2026 13:39
Re: #38
That's guaranteed to flop.
41AnonymousSep 7, 2026 13:23
I think it's rotten that Square Enix won't hold anyone accountable when FF7 Revelation is basically guaranteed to flop.
If they'd just made it one game across PS4/PS5 plus Steam, with a later Switch 2 port, it could've sold 5 million copies and kept the IP alive.
They've done real damage to the company.

And for a normal publicly traded company, not being able to cut Horii loose even though he hasn't put out a Dragon Quest in over 10 years is pretty messed up too.
43AnonymousSep 7, 2026 13:29
Re: #41
Releasing it as one game would blow up the dev time and budget to an insane degree, so it's just not feasible.
They need to split it up to recoup development costs along the way.
77AnonymousSep 7, 2026 14:33
Re: #41
5 million units domestically? There's no way a mere remake sells that much.
Even Pokémon, which is way bigger, has never hit 4 million domestic on a remake.
58AnonymousSep 7, 2026 13:50
As someone who doesn't even play FF, this basically sounds like 'we want to keep coasting on FF7's popularity forever!' Is that really okay?
62AnonymousSep 7, 2026 13:55
Re: #58
It's like Nintendo endlessly milking Ocarina of Time.
63AnonymousSep 7, 2026 13:59
'To carry it into the future, we're splitting it into three, piling on tons of minigames, and stuffing in spin-off material to make the story more confusing!'
Are they idiots?
69AnonymousSep 7, 2026 14:11
Re: #63
There are way too many minigames and they're all mandatory — I genuinely don't get what they were thinking.
Honestly the minigames might as well be the main game at this point, it's that bad.
Who actually wants to play the motorcycle minigame?
83AnonymousSep 7, 2026 14:45
Overseas devs proved you can build a rock-solid indie market just by reworking old Japanese game design, so the whole 'Japan is a design galapagos' theory is dead.
Claiming you have to throw out old Japanese game design to have a future is just selling the country short.
88AnonymousSep 7, 2026 14:57
Re: #83
Overseas gamers caught on to that, so their playerbases can join in and help turn old things into something new for the future.

Japanese gamers, meanwhile, have stopped caring about any of that and only care whether they can see a new cute girl's thighs or panties,
which is how the market ended up like this.
91AnonymousSep 7, 2026 15:00
If they'd just kept Aerith alive, they could've kept building on the story.
92AnonymousSep 7, 2026 15:01
Re: #91
Exactly. I don't get the point of bringing in the Whispers and stirring up all that chaos.
107AnonymousSep 7, 2026 15:15
Re: #91
Don't worry.
She'll probably show up all over Revelation through flashbacks or as a vision only Cloud can see.
They can carry the story forward that way too.
Basically, whether she's dead or alive barely matters anymore.
94AnonymousSep 7, 2026 15:03
Well, for FF17 they should just let Nomura have a reasonable amount of creative control.
People complained a lot about the designs, but it's still better than 16, which nobody even remembers.
98AnonymousSep 7, 2026 15:05
Re: #94
Nomura wasn't actually involved in 16, though… lol
95AnonymousSep 7, 2026 15:04
Because the models were low-poly, manga-flavored character designs and dialogue felt natural (same goes for the pixel-art FFs).
But do that in photorealistic graphics and it suddenly reeks of otaku stuff.
The dev team never seemed to notice how off that feels.
110AnonymousSep 7, 2026 15:21
Re: #95
16 had that 'realistic-looking but anime-flavored' vibe going on.

Rebirth, on the other hand, goes so hard into jaw-droppingly goofy, over-the-top scenes that it's easier to overlook.
103AnonymousSep 7, 2026 15:09
Re: #98
No, that's exactly what I meant —
16, which Nomura had nothing to do with, is the one nobody remembers.
106AnonymousSep 7, 2026 15:14
Re: #103
FF9, which Nomura had zero involvement in, still has plenty of strong, popular characters, so it's not really about Nomura one way or the other.

16 just had an incompetent team behind it, plain and simple.

Background and Points of Debate

The FF7 remake trilogy began with “Remake” in 2020 and “Rebirth” in 2024, and now concludes with “Revelation.” The decision to split it up stems partly from the fact that combining a large-scale, fully-voiced, high-fidelity remake into a single game would balloon both development time and cost — a point some in the thread acknowledged. At the same time, many voiced concerns about how high a barrier this creates for newcomers unfamiliar with the original who’d have to play through an entire trilogy, and questioned whether enough consideration was given to PS4 owners being pushed to repurchase on new platforms. Official sales figures have been released for each installment, but the numbers vary, so it’s worth noting that characterizations like “flopped” in the thread are speculation rather than confirmed fact. The discussion also expanded into debates over character design and comparisons with “FF16,” suggesting opinions are split not just over sales but over the series’ entire approach to development.

*This article is compiled and summarized from the 5ch (Hardware/Industry (Geha)) thread “Square Enix’s Hamaguchi: “The Remake Project’s Goal Is to Carry FF7 Into the Future”.”

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