Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth Won't Start Players At Level 1

Square Enix has confirmed that Cloud and the rest of the party won't start at Level 1 in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, and they will instead start at the average level that players were when they left Midgar in Final Fantasy 7 Remake.
Splitting Final Fantasy 7's story between three games might make sense considering how deep its characters, lore, and world are, but it does cause some difficulties when it comes to the gameplay side of things. One of the biggest examples of this is character levelling, as progress has previously been confirmed not to carry over from Remake, leaving many fans wondering if Cloud and the Midgar gang will start Rebirth at Level 1 again or if they'll start at Level 50, which was Remake's cap.
Although Square Enix hasn't yet given a name to the eventual third entry in the Remake trilogy, it has confirmed that it'll follow the same naming conventions, causing fans to guess that it could be called "Resurrection" or "Rewritten".
Well, it looks like we don't have to worry about starting from the beginning any more. Although we still don't know what the starting level is going to be, we do at least know how it's going to work this time around. As pointed out by Twitter user ShinraArch and originally reported by ThisIsGame Thailand, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth's starting level will be based on the average level that most players were when they left Midgar in Final Fantasy 7 Remake.
This was revealed during an interview between ThisIsGame Thailand and Tetsuya Nomura, Naoki Yamaguchi, and Yoshinori Kitase. During the interview, the three are asked why Rebirth isn't going to support save file transfers, and they (it isn't specified who is talking by ThisIsGame) reveal that they always planned for the three games to be standalone experiences, which meant they didn't want some players to be left behind if they didn't play one of the previous games.
Although Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth won't feature save-file transfers, it has been confirmed that those who played Remake will get a bonus of some kind. There's your motivation, if you haven't already.
They said, "The reason is because we originally intended that all three remakes of Final Fantasy VII would be standalone experiences, so there would be no sequential numbers. Therefore, every player must not feel left behind. All party characters in this section do not have a starting level of 1 like other games. But it will be averaged from the average player at what level they came out of Midgar."
We might not know what level Cloud and the rest of the Midgar crew are going to be when they start Rebirth, but screenshots from recent demos have shown them all at Level 21, so it seems like it's either that or a level that's very close to it.
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