Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth Finally Revealed, But There's A Long Wait Ahead

Last week, we predicted that the "Final Fantasy 7" 25th-anniversary broadcast would result in some sort of announcement for a sequel to the critically acclaimed "Final Fantasy 7 Remake," which was widely lauded as a return to form for Yoshinori Kitase, Tetsuya Nomura, and the rest of the "Final Fantasy 7" development team over at Square Enix. As it turns out, our prediction came true, and we were shown even more than we initially expected. Not only was the second part of the "Final Fantasy 7 Remake" trilogy announced in the form of "Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth," bu Square Enix also delivered a few minutes of gameplay footage from the entirely unexpected "Crisis Core: Final Fantasy 7 Reunion," which is giving the "Remake" treatment to a lesser-known albeit narratively crucial fan favorite that explains the backstory of protagonist Cloud Strife and his mentor, Zack Fair.

Before now, ardent fans were only given breadcrumbs of new information from which to draw conclusions about the future of the series, so it makes sense that gaming Twitter went completely wild over the announcement. Some creators, such as popular musician Alex Moukala, took to Twitter to show off their own tributes to the "Final Fantasy" series. Moukala shared his own bass cover of the infamous Victory Fanfare theme; the one which notably plays whenever the adventuring party defeats a band of monsters in "Final Fantasy 7," as well as in other games in the "Final Fantasy" series, saying, "Final Fantasy VII fans won big today. So here's Victory Fanfare."

Without spoiling anything from the original "Final Fantasy 7" or "Final Fantasy 7 Remake," there is a lot of open space for Square Enix to experiment with the story beats of "Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth". Some elements from the trailer, shown below, make it very clear that all is not as it appears, and fans are already speculating about what some of the narrator's cryptic statements could imply.

Square Enix is usually talented at obfuscating story elements in its trailers, and there's little doubt that we're being willfully misled to some degree. Even the name "Final Fantasy 7 Remake" was designed to throw fans off, as lawyer Richard Hoeg pointed out on Twitter.

@HoegLaw/Twitter

Tetsuya Nomura offered more details about the upcoming sequel on the official "Final Fantasy 7" Twitter account, which can be found in a series of tweets. From the transcripts presented alongside the announcement, it sounds like development on all four upcoming "Final Fantasy" games has accelerated across Square Enix. Nomura clarified that "Rebirth" will be approachable even to newcomers of the "Final Fantasy 7" series, who will evidently not be required to play the previous games (even "Remake") in order to understand what's going on in the story. 

"Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth" is set to arrive as a PS5 exclusive sometime in winter 2023, "approximately three years after the original Final Fantasy 7 Remake released" all the way back in April 2020. Meanwhile, "Crisis Core: Final Fantasy 7 Reunion" is slated to release across all modern PlayStation and Xbox consoles plus Nintendo Switch and PC at some point near the end of 2022.