Square Enix has confirmed that the division of the Final Fantasy VII remake into three installments was not a whim, but a technical and narrative necessity. According to director Naoki Hamaguchi, the original material is so dense that a single part would have been unfeasible. Even the Midgar section, despite being brief in the 1997 game, contains a volume of information that required extensive development with current technology.
The technical challenge of expanding Midgar without losing the essence 🎮
Recreating Midgar with modern techniques involved building every sector, alley, and building with a level of detail the original did not allow. Hamaguchi explained that the team had to balance fidelity with hardware and development time constraints. Every secondary character, every conversation, and every scenario were redesigned to offer a coherent experience, but that required a volume of assets and scripting that only a trilogy could support without compromising quality.
Spoiler: yes, they also needed to sell more games 💸
In other words, to tell the story of a town called Midgar, they needed an entire game. At that pace, the Chocobo race scene will deserve its own paid DLC. And if the lake of memories appears in the third part, they might stretch it into a fishing RPG. But hey, at least we won't complain: as long as they keep coming out, we can debate for another ten years whether the remake is better than the original.