Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is an upcoming action role-playing game developed and published by Square Enix, scheduled to release for PlayStation 5 on February 29, 2024. It is a sequel to Final Fantasy VII Remake (2020), and the second in a planned trilogy of games remaking the 1997 PlayStation game Final Fantasy VII.
As with its predecessor, the gameplay will combine real-time action with strategic and role-playing elements. Set immediately after Remake's events, players will control the mercenary Cloud Strife and a party of characters principally comprising the eco-terrorist group AVALANCHE, who band together to embark on a journey across the Planet to prevent the megacorporation Shinra from exploiting its life essence, the Lifestream, as an energy source, and to defeat their former elite soldier Sephiroth, who intends on becoming one with the Planet to achieve greater power.
The game entered production in November 2019 prior to Remake's release, and was announced in June 2022. All of the lead staff returned after the previous game in the same positions, with the only difference happening with Tetsuya Nomura who returns as creative director instead of director, and Naoki Hamaguchi who returns as director instead of co-director.
Gameplay
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is the second in a planned trilogy of games remaking the 1997 PlayStation game Final Fantasy VII. It begins after the events of Final Fantasy VII Remake (2020), following the party's escape from the metropolis of Midgar.
Players will primarily control Cloud Strife, a former Shinra soldier who joined the eco-terrorist group AVALANCHE to fight the Shinra Corporation, who had been draining the planet's life energy and is now drawn into a conflict with the legendary SOLDIER Sephiroth, who was thought to be dead. Like Remake preceding it, Rebirth reimagines multiple elements of the original game as well as significant expansions to character development and the overall narrative structure.
Exploration and combat scenarios both take place in real-time, with the game's overworld also expanding into a comparatively more open-ended environment compared to the linear progression of Remake's Midgar. Objective markers appear in the heads-up display at all times, highlighting main story quests and various ongoing sidequests to complete along with their respective distances from the party in the overworld. In addition to walking on foot, the party are able to hitch rides on Chocobos as a means of faster traversal by equipping the specialized Chocobo Lure Materia. Rebirth builds on the hybrid of action-focused melee combat and the Active-Time Battle (ATB) system introduced in Final Fantasy VII Remake, involving players assuming control of a party composed of characters that can be freely switched between at any point in gameplay, and using a mix of conventional physical attacks during combat, as well as casting magic and consuming dedicated items for offensive, defensive and resuscitative purposes, from a dedicated menu while the gameplay is suspended around them. The "Synergized" mechanic first featured in the downloadable content (DLC) "Episode InterMISSION" campaign for Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade (2021) is integrated into Rebirth's battle system, enabling party members to sync up their attacks at the expense of the speed at which an ATB bar fills.
Plot
Setting and characters
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is a direct continuation of the overarching narrative first introduced in Final Fantasy VII Remake (2020), and reimagines the plot, world and cast of the original Final Fantasy VII (1997). The game takes place on a non-descript world simply known as "The Planet", and centers on the journey of the principal characters as they seek to both end the tyranny of the Shinra Electric Power Company, who control the megalopolis of Midgar with their weaponization of the ethereal power source known as the Lifestream, and defeat the once-thought-dead Sephiroth, a legendary veteran of Shinra's elite SOLDIER unit of enforcers, who is attempting to summon the destructive magic known as Meteor and wound the Planet, to an extent that he may join with the Lifestream and attain godhood. Rebirth will span the events of leaving Midgar to "The Forgotten Capital" from the original game, though the order in which locations are explored is not the same as the original game. For example, the visit to Wutai will be saved for the third installment.