Gears & GambitsI want to add a different twist Final Fantasy 7 Remake Part 3 will rethink how it implements mini-games, says director Naoki HamaguchiThe as-yet-untitled Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth sequel is going to change things up a bit, as Hamaguchi vows to rearrange things slightly.Image credit: VG247 Article by Dom Peppiatt Editor-in-chief Additional contributions byAlex DonaldsonPublished on Nov. 21, 2024 There sure were a lot of mini-games in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, huh? By my count, there are 21 different activities you can experience as Cloud and his company venture out from Kalm and across the planet.Some are fantastic - Queens Blood probably rivals Final Fantasy 8s Triple Triad in terms of being one of the series best additions - but some pale in comparison. Glide de Chocobo? 3D Brawler? Cactuar Crush? Crunch-off? It feels like a lot of them were just there as filler, with less thought and polish than the obvious, keystone diversions.A cursory look online will show you that the proliferation of mini-games split the audience in two; some loved the variety, the challenge, the nonsense of it all, and some hated it. Pfft, its just busywork, they cry, needless time-wasting. Well, it turns out Square Enix has been paying attention to all you loud-mouth malcontents, and for Final Fantasy Remake Project, Part 3, the developer is keen to do things slightly differently.To see this content please enable targeting cookies. Just talking about Rebirth, I think I'm very happy with the volume and the balance of mini-games we have in that game, says Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth director, Naoki Hamaguchi, in an exclusive interview with VG247. And I think we very much achieved what we set out to do with the mini-games, as well. I'll explain what that was.I play a lot of games, a lot of open world games, and something I feel whilst playing a lot of these games is that you've got the core mechanics - or their fighting systems - and most of the content you'll encounter, most of the places you can go, most of what you'll be doing, can get repetitive. [These games] just use the same mechanics. There are no real changes, theres nothing new to experience around the different regions of these worlds.Hes right. Youll often see open world titles these days simply have all the various mini-games on offer available to you throughout the world; think of Far Cry, or Assassins Creed, or even The Witcher -- the various mini-games on offer populate the map, theyre not really locked to any one region. The world at large enjoys Gwent, or Orlog, or whatever else; it doesnt necessarily vary, region-to-region. Queen's Blood is the highlight of FF7 Rebirth - but will Part 3 have something similar? | Image credit: VG247But in making Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth feel like a whole planet rather than just one big open area, the development team made the conscious decision to put different mini-games in different regions. Not everyone, everywhere, enjoys the same thing, right? The downside is that some players thought there was simply too much to do, and a gulf of quality between the best of the best, and the worst of the worst.Obviously, theres a great battle system in Rebirth - and theres a lot of fun to be had in fighting the various different monsters in each region - but I wanted it to feel like a breath of fresh air when you entered each different region, continues Hamaguchi. That you feel like theres something new and exciting to do when you enter a new area. That you can experience something different with the mechanics. Thats why we wanted to put so many different mini-games in, and I feel we really managed to achieve our goal with that. Its simply a breath of fresh air in an open world (or open field, as we call it for Rebirth).But hes aware that doing the same thing again and again isnt necessarily going to get good results. Theres a law of diminishing returns, after all, and Final Fantasy is - and has always been - known for its desire to innovate and not rest on its laurels.So are we going to continue with this same balance going forward? Have we reached perfection? I think if we did just do the same thing again for the third game in the series, then it wouldnt really be very new or exciting anymore, he says. I want to add a different twist, rearrange things slightly for the next game, and have a slightly different look to things.We dont just want to make more of the same, we want to make new and exciting experiences. Not just a load of balls, as they say. | Image credit: Square EnixThere is very little information about Part 3 out there at the moment - we dont even know its name yet - but this is refreshing to hear. Its clear that Hamaguchi, alongside (assumedly returning) creative director Tetsuya Nomura and producer Yoshinori Kitase, want to keep things fresh for the third game. It needs to be a satisfying climax, after all, and were not going to get that simply by retreading old ground, are we?Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is out now on PS5, and looks even better on the PS5 Pro (if you can afford one). Final Fantasy Remake Part 3 has no release date, but we may get it sooner than we thought.