If the final chapter, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, launches as planned next April, the Final Fantasy VII Remake trilogy is set to be completed in roughly seven years. Foreign media outlet Gamesradar believes that such a development pace is unlikely to be replicated in today's environment, where large-scale game development cycles are lengthening.
Final Fantasy VII Remake was unveiled in 2015, when PlayStation had a lineup of exclusive titles and was strongly supporting indie games; even so, the remake's announcement left a deep impression on the author. The project, which originally appeared as a PS3 tech demo, later expanded into a trilogy for the PlayStation platform.
Gamesradar initially questioned whether the original game's content was sufficient to support three major titles. After playing Final Fantasy VII Remake and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, they changed their view and now look forward to how the final chapter will present the subsequent story. By their estimate, if the final chapter launches on time, the three games combined will offer approximately 200 hours of gameplay.
In an interview with Bloomberg following the announcement of the final chapter, Game Director Naoki Hamaguchi attributed its roughly three-year development cycle to the trilogy retaining its core development team and maintaining a consistent creative direction. The author believes this approach also resulted in some open-world designs that now feel outdated, but the expanded scenes and narrative remain aspects he values.
Gamesradar discusses the trilogy's progression speed in the context of industry-wide studio closures, layoffs, project cancellations, and rising development costs. They argue that Final Fantasy VII, with its years of foundation, possesses conditions that other new titles may not have, making it hard to imagine another trilogy of similar scale being completed at such a pace.
Naoki Hamaguchi previously stated during a PAX West panel that one of the trilogy's goals was to introduce Final Fantasy VII to a new generation of players, and the team already has plans to further expand upon this work. For now, whether the trilogy can be completed on schedule still depends on whether the final chapter launches as expected.