Square Enix says you don’t need to play Final Fantasy 7 Remake before Rebirth

Square Enix has said players won’t need to have experienced Final Fantasy 7 Remake in order to enjoy its follow-up, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth.

“We have made preparations so that players who did not get a chance to play the first game can fully enjoy Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth,” co-director Motomu Toriyama said in an update published on Monday.

Toriyama’s comment is the latest in a series of daily updates about the game which Square Enix kicked off last week.

“Development is progressing smoothly and according to plan,” producer Yoshinori Kitase said in the first update.

The second entry in the Final Fantasy 7 remake trilogy was announced in June 2022. At the time, Kitase, who also directed 1997’s original game, said Rebirth would be “released next winter”, meaning in late 2023 or early 2024.

In Square’s second daily developer update on Saturday, director Naoki Hamaguchi commented on how players will traverse the world outside of Midgar.

“Players will be able to journey across the wide and multifaceted world with a high degree of freedom. Experiencing a myriad of different stories along the way,” he said.

“Players will witness a chain of narrative developments that lie at the very heart of the Final Fantasy VII story while discovering each character’s destiny,” story and scenario writer Kazushige Nojima offered on Sunday.

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Unlike Final Fantasy 7 Remake, which was released for PS4 in 2020 before making its way to PS5 and PC the following year, Rebirth won’t be available for Sony’s last-gen console.

The next mainline entry in the series, Final Fantasy 16, will be released for PS5 on June 22.