Square Enix Answers 6 Burning Questions About Final Fantasy VII Rebirth

gameinformer.com:

After playing Final Fantasy VII Rebirth for the first time (check out my full impressions here), I then spoke with director Naoki Hamaguchi, producer Yoshinori Kitase, and creative director Tetsuya Nomura to seek answers to some burning questions. That includes how much narrative ground Rebirth covers, the decision behind splitting it between two discs, and if there’s any form of data transfer between Remake and Rebirth.

Rebirth launches on February 29, a couple of months shy of Remake’s fourth anniversary. According to Hamaguchi, Remake’s development cycle was around four years, making the turnaround for Rebirth, a much larger game, seem relatively quick. It’s especially impressive since Square developed and released the PlayStation 5-exclusive Intermission story expansion and Intergrade upgrade in between. 

Hamaguchi credits working on Intermission/Intergrade for the smoother dev cycle, as it allowed the designers to become more intimately familiar with the PS5 (which Rebirth is exclusive to) and finish Rebirth within a similar timeframe despite its larger scope.  

“But at the same time, we were able to keep the development time [down] and be able to release in sort of this normal or standard time while having this immense volume of content,” Hamaguchi says through a translator. “So that's something that we're very confident about and very proud of.”

When I asked what Rebirth’s stopping point will be, Tetsuya Nomura confirmed the story runs up to the end of the Forgotten Capital (a.k.a. The City of the Ancients). However, as anyone who finished Remake should know, Nomura stresses that Rebirth will not follow events in the same order or manner as the original game. 

Square Enix also confirms there will be no shared