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Final Fantasy VII: Revelation
The development team feels "confident" in their approach to the project.
When a game receives a remake, it's generally assumed that the narrative will remain largely unchanged, given how sacred certain works are considered. That's likely what many anticipated for the Final Fantasy 7 Remake trilogy, until those troublesome Whispers appeared, introducing alterations here and there. Rebirth continued this trend in some areas while staying true to the original in others, and Revelation is set to launch next year with a fixed ending. According to director Naoki Hamaguchi, that conclusion has been planned from the very beginning, more or less.
"Obviously, I can’t share actual details on how this story is going to end, but in terms of how we envisioned the conclusion, we did have some sort of an idea of what we wanted to do at the end," Hamaguchi explained in an interview with VGC. "So we did have a kind of direction from the early days of development. The same goes for the producer, Yoshinori Kitase. He had his visions as well, and some of that is applied in the conclusion that we’re telling in FF7 Revelation."
Hamaguchi also noted that the team is "pretty confident" with the ending they've crafted, expressing excitement about how audiences will respond. Of course, there's still no indication as to whether the trilogy of remakes will opt for an alternative conclusion to the original. At least the remakes won't suffer from the same issue as Kingdom Hearts, where everyone believes creator Tetsuya Nomura is making it up as he goes (as if that isn't just storytelling in general anyway).
In the same interview, Hamaguchi also discussed how he responds to public feedback, which seems to follow a general ethos of "not much, really." He explained that trying to address the "median average" of feedback might not lead to a "better product," stating, "if you were to address all the negative feedback, and even take the positive feedback into account, sometimes it’s a case that you’re seeing two sides of the extreme opinions, and by applying all of that, it’s possible that you come up with a product that doesn’t really have any character. It’s just a blank state that doesn’t really have any strong appeal."
This is a perspective I appreciate, given my history as a defender of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth's minigames. As a reminder, many people disliked how packed with minigames Rebirth was, and Hamaguchi says Revelation will feature just as many, if not more, reinforcing this sense of character he mentions. Refinement is overrated! Though video games are a bit too lengthy these days, so I'm still hoping Revelation won't take me 10,000 hours to complete.