It's impressive how Square Enix was able to turn the entire Final Fantasy trilogy around in just seven years. For many studios, this is quickly becoming the standard timeline for just one game. And the reason for that efficiency is what has unfortunately become a lost art in the gaming industry: keeping the team together. Final Fantasy 7 Revelation retained 95% of Rebirth's developers, fostering mutual trust and a tight-knit dynamic, while skipping the usual tie-ins of gathering team members and determining roles that would normally dictate the start of development.
It may sound simple, but as Naoki Hamaguchi explained in an interview with Bloomberg, typically at the end of development, the team is disbanded and the whole process starts again. The question now is what happens to the Final Fantasy 7 Remake troupe once Revelation releases. Together they produced the entire trilogy for over a decade and laid the foundation for faster turnaround of games while maintaining the same quality. It would be a waste to throw it all away. And while Hamaguchi wants to keep working together, he's not sure if it's the right move or if that will actually happen.
“I have tremendous respect for all my teammates,” Hamaguchi said. “I want to utilize the know-how and insight I gained from working on the FF7 Remake series, but when I think about it from a bigger perspective, there are things that we as a company, Square Enix as a whole, need to keep in mind. Thankfully, the company has a lot of trust in me and Naoki Yoshida. However, if we were to pour all our resources into our team and Naoki Yoshida's team, it would hinder and hinder the growth and development of the company. With that in mind, I want to give other opportunities to the talented development members of our company. Personally, I would like to work with my team again on our next project, but we will see how it turns out.”
Hamaguchi never considered keeping the team together before the FF7 Remake Trilogy.
Interestingly, Hamaguchi said he'd never considered keeping the team together on a project like this because it wasn't standard at Square Enix outside of Final Fantasy 14. And while he doesn't think it might be entirely fair to keep developers on one team because Square Enix doesn't want to monopolize talent, he acknowledged that “it's something we have to keep in mind as a company.” […] “This has really brought us huge benefits in terms of speeding up and ensuring efficient development schedules.”
“The advantage is that everyone naturally recognizes what they need to do,” Hamaguchi explained. “At Square Enix, the development team is often disbanded once the development of a title is finished. Even if you need to switch to a different title, you have to start all over again by gathering the team members and deciding what their roles will be. The biggest advantage of the Final Fantasy 7 Remake series is that you don't have to go through that process. So the transition was very quick.
But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Revelation doesn't come out until 2027, and Hamaguchi teased that if there's enough interest, the trilogy could be bookended with expansions based on older spinoffs like Dirge of Cerberus. Beyond that, it will be interesting to see if this team sticks together and what they can do in the future when they are freed from the shackles of the old game.
- released
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2027
- number of players
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single player
