It's nothing short of impressive how Square Enix has been able to turnaround an entire Final Fantasy trilogy in the span of just seven years, when for many studios, that's fast becoming the standard timeline for just one game. And the reason for that efficiency is something that has unfortunately become a lost art in the games' industry: keeping the team together. Final Fantasy 7 Revelation has retained 95 percent of the devs from Rebirth, fostering a mutual trust and tight-knit dynamic while skipping the usual rigmarole of gathering team members and determining their roles that typically pinpoints the beginning of development.

It might sound simple, but as Naoki Hamaguchi explained in an interview with Bloomberg, typically, after development ends, the team disbands and the whole process starts over again. The question now is, what happens to the Final Fantasy 7 remake troupe when Revelation launches? They've spent over a decade together building an entire trilogy, laying the groundwork for faster turnarounds on games that retain that same quality. It would be a shame to throw all of that away. And while Hamaguchi wants to keep working together, he isn't sure whether it's the right move, or indeed if it will even happen.

"I have an incredible amount of respect for all my team members," Hamaguchi said. "I'd very much love to leverage the know-how and insights we've gained from working on the FF7 remake series. But when we think of it from a bigger perspective, the company, Square Enix as a whole, I do have to be mindful. Thankfully, the company puts a lot of trust into me and Naoki Yoshida, but if we were to have all the resources in my team, and Naoki Yoshida's team, that staggers and hinders the growth of the company and the development team members as a whole. I do want to be mindful of that and give different opportunities to the talented development members that we have in our company. Personally, I would love to work with my team again for the next project. But we'll see how it turns out."

Hamaguchi Never Considered Keeping The Team Together Before FF7 Remake Trilogy

Interestingly, Hamaguchi said that he had never considered keeping the team together on projects like this, as it isn't standard at Square Enix outside of Final Fantasy 14. And while he believes that keeping developers beholden to one team may not be entirely fair, as he doesn't want to monopolize talent at Square Enix, he also admitted that it's "something that we should be mindful of as a company [...] Because this did bring out a really huge benefit in terms of speeding up and having an efficient development timeline."

"The benefit is that everyone is naturally aware of what they need to do," Hamaguchi explained. "Most of the time at Square Enix, when the development of a title ends, the development team just disbands. Even if we need to transition to a different title, we have to start over with the process of gathering the team members and determining what their roles are going to be. The big benefit of the Final Fantasy 7 remake series is that we never had to go through that process, so the transition was extremely quick.

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But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Revelation isn't out until 2027, and Hamaguchi has teased that he is open to bookending the trilogy with expansions based on the older spin-offs, like Dirge of Cerberus, should there be enough interest. Beyond that, it'll be fascinating to see if this team sticks together, and what they might do in the future unshackled from an existing game.

Final Fantasy VII Revelation Like Follow Followed RPG Action Adventure Systems Released 2027 Developer(s) Square Enix Publisher(s) Square Enix Prequel(s) Final Fantasy VII Remake, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth Franchise Final Fantasy Number of Players Single-player 21 Images Close Genre(s) RPG, Action, Adventure Powered by Expand Collapse