Highlights from all interviews
Restart:
- Black materia activated at the beginning of FF7RV
- Chadley has a base & conducting research on Meteor
- Chadley has an important part related to main story
Gamespot:
- V Able to transform beast mode anytime + range attacks (a bit similar to Yuffie but unique on its own)
- Cid a bit similar to Nanaki, Cid excellent in aerial/airbase attacks
- Building upon the existing foundation and then evolving on what we've created; ability to customize & play character as the player wishes
- Minigames optional, more light
- epic homage WEAPONs how to present and scale them
- Remake Series Concludes with Revelation
- We heard fans wanting to explore the side stories of other characters and/or other parts of the story, it's interesting but we wanted to conclude this as soon as possible and efforts are focused on that.
Automaton #1:
- Trailer focuses much more on the game's systems and what we're trying to express through the game itself. What you can do in the game and how deep the gameplay goes.
- "Open-world" spanning the entire planet, depending on what a player chooses to engage with first, the way their adventure unfolds can differ significantly.
- Entire world is connected from the start. Fly Highwind anywhere.
- Hamaguchi games to reference/draw inspiration: The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt, Hogwarts Legacy, Horizon series, Crimson Desert
- FF7RV includes all of the continents from FF7RB
- Each area contains its own unique activities, gameplay mechanics, and interactive elements
- Depending on where player choose to go first, their experiences can end up being quite different
- Weapons has caused major changes across the world: due to that old maps are different from the previous game (even though visual identity, atmosphere and setting remain familiar and world map is preserved)
- You'll travel alongside Pico, your Chocobo companion. As Pico grows, the way you explore the world changes as well
- Parachute from the Highwind and interact with the environment in more vertical ways
- Job-inspired FITS System: allow players to customize the characters, for example turning Cloud into a more mage-oriented character; outfits available since start
- No restriction on game design due to multiplatform
- Weapon battles as a natural extension of the regular combat system
Automaton #2:
- Trilogy's finale theme: Resolve and Choice
- More sections in the game where players' choices are so crucial that they can alter not only how they progress through the game but even the direction of the storytelling itself
- Experience changes based on your choices, yet things ultimately converge toward a single conclusion
- Experiences that could completely differ from one player to another
- Definitive conclusion, no multi-ending game
- Choices players make on the journey toward the conclusion will affect their individual experiences as well as the stories told through side content
- You don't have to engage with minigames if you don't want to
- Minigame rewards are now largely unrelated to combat progression, instead they offer things like character skins & customizations options
- Minigame difficulty settings added
- Battle progression and the like are tied more closely to combat-oriented side content
- You obtain the Highwind fairly early on, and from that point yo essentially go wherever you want and play however you like
- You might wander into a place out of curiosity and immediately get demolished by powerful enemies
- North Crater becomes inaccessible for a period of time because a Weapon has appeared there
- There are still locations you can't access because of story-related reasons
- Vertical exploration
- You might pick up a quest in one location the travel to another area to progress it
- If you've already visited an area you can use fast travel to reach it
- Final polishing stage
