Final Fantasy VII Remake director Naoki Hamaguchi has revealed during an interview with YouTuber Josephyr that the team took inspiration from Sony juggernauts like God of War and The Last of Us for the project, which is he notes was a narrative-driven affair.
Hamaguchi-san went on to explain that open-world games served as key inspiration for the follow-up, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, which greatly expanded on the game world with multiple regions explorable by the player, not to mention packing them with heaps of side quests and activities.
The first game in the series, Final Fantasy 7 Remake was a very story-driven game. So, I’d say things that inspired me in terms of how that was done was things like other story-driven games, like God of War, for example, or The Last of Us. However, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, the next game, is much more open-world in its design. So the kind of games that I was inspired by for that one were more open-world games; things like The Witcher 3, for example.
Related Content – Upcoming PS5 Games 2025: The Best PS5 Games Coming Soon
Final Fantasy VII Remake is heading to Nintendo Switch 2 and Xbox Series X/S in January 2026, with Final Fantasy VII Rebirth following at a later date. Beyond that, Hamaguchi and team are obviously hard at work on the concluding chapter to the FFVII Remake trilogy, which he recently stated is ‘going well‘ although no release date has been confirmed yet.
In related news, Hamaguchi also said that the team will definitely be looking to move onto something else after Part 3 is done and dusted, but as for what that will be – such as a new IP or something new within the FF universe – remains undecided.
[Source – Josephyr on YouTube via GamingBolt]