Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth reintroduces fan-favorite Zack in an "immensely important" and "crucial" role

gamesradar.com:

Zack Fair will have an "immensely important" role in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth.

One of the huge surprises with Final Fantasy 7 Remake back in 2020 was (spoiler alert!) that Zack Fair is alive and kicking. The Crisis Core hero, very much not dead, was confirmed for certain in a recent trailer for Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth when he turned up at Midgar with an injured Cloud and in pursuit of Aerith.

Now, Rebirth's co-director has teased Zack's role further. "We have used the character Zack to depict the combined view of [writer Kazushige Nojima, creative director Tetsuya Nomura, and producer Yoshinori Kitase] - the original creators' - intents of how this world of Final Fantasy 7 came to be and its policies and rule governing this world," Naoki Hamaguchi says in the latest issue of Game Informer.

"This is going to be depicted through the character of Zack," Hamaguchi continues. "As much as the Whispers within the story, Zack is an equally, immensely important, crucial, key character to this story that I believe fans will enjoy in Rebirth," the Rebirth co-director adds.

For those unfamiliar, the 'Whispers' were a force in Final Fantasy 7 Remake meant to be battling against Cloud and company to align the Remake's story with that of the original game. They were very much Hamaguchi and Square Enix's way of pushing back against audience expectations, fighting to establish their own take on Final Fantasy 7 with the Remake trilogy.

It sounds like Zack's role in Rebirth - which will be a direct departure from the original Final Fantasy 7 storyline - will be heavily involved with the world around him. Hamaguchi's comments make it sound like he'll be dealing with authoritarian bodies like Shinra, or the Midgar government, or even Wutai.