An interview with the directors and producer. Here’s a few snippets that I found interesting.

• With reports that the Remake game sales underperformed, are there plans to change the console exclusivity window for the next installment of Final Fantasy VII remake trilogy?

KITASE: Regarding the strategy of the [console] release, there's sort of nothing we can comment on regarding that. But overall, we are looking forward to more players enjoying and playing this title. So we wish for that to happen.

• Is there another cinematic sequence in Rebirth that takes the crown for the greatest challenge?

HAMAGUCHI: So actually, the most difficult scene in Rebirth, I believe, was Rufus's Inauguration Parade.

I'll go into why. First, we had to look for a person that understands parade formations. [Someone with that experience] was very rare to find. Then, we had to find actors who could perform these various sequences. So, with both of these [requirements], we had to look and have all of them before we started motion capture. It took a while to find these people.

An interesting story I'd like to share is that in that scene, all the soldiers, including Cloud, have guns in their hands while they're doing the parade. To mimic this, we created real gun models for all the actors to hold while doing the sequence. But then what happened is the gun models we made were so heavy, and it was impossible to move, you know, twirling around and doing all of those motions. So it became a problem. In the end, even though they made those models, they used umbrellas.

• What is the wildest fan theory you've seen about the trilogy so far?

[Everyone laughs.]

HAMAGUCHI: After the panel yesterday, we were chatting with the voice actors over dinner, and this exact topic came up, funnily enough. We were talking about Chadley, which is that character who supports Cloud in Rebirth. And we were talking about how, like, some people think that he's actually evil and will turn out to be the last boss in the final title. We were cracking up about that.

Audrey Lamsam - aka @aitaikimochi shared on Twitter the full setlist for the Final Fantasy VII Rebirth Concert in Yokohama. I thought people here might enjoy and want to see the list.

A number of tracks are medleys so how they appear in this list is not how they appear in OST track listings.

Part I

• The Unknown Journey Continues
• FF7 Rebirth Opening
• FF7 Main Theme Battle Edit
• A New Journey Begins, Grasslands, Junon, Mt. Corel
• Crossing the Planet, Corel Desert, Gongaga, Nibel
• Queen's Blood
• Stamp - Rebirth Medley
• Rufus's Welcoming Ceremony - A New Leader
• Costa del Sol - Fun in the Sun
• Custom Valkyrie
• End of the World Medley
• Cosmo Canyon - Sanctum of Planetology

Part II

• Bare Your Soul
• Welcome to the Gold Saucer
• LOVELESS Symphonic Suite - Gift of the Goddess
• No Promises to Keep - LOVELESS Version
• Galiant Beast
• J-E-N-O-V-A- Lifeclinger
• Sephiroth Reborn Symphony

ENCORE

• One Winged Angel - Reborn
• Aerith's Theme - Return to the Planet

If you’ve been following discussions over the past couple of days you’ll know that there are no characters, or even references to Final Fantasy in yesterdays released Astrobot.

I honestly think it’s a miss that we’ve not been able to see this representation in the game. Astrobot is a celebration of PlayStations 30 year history, and in those 30 years Final Fantasy has been a mainstay of the consoles history. We even had the Buster Sword reference in Astros Playroom, which again was a celebration of PlayStation (in addition to a controller/tech demo).

I don’t know why we’re not seeing FF in the game, whether it’s down to Square Enix, Sony or Team Asobi. But having played the game it achieves what it sets out to be, so it’s a shame that part of its history is not represented.

An interesting video detailing some of the history of a neigh impossible challenging the started life out as a “No Sphere Grid” challenge and transformed into something utterly bonkers.

The challenge combines all of these in a single run -

• No Sphere Grid
• No Summon
• No Customization
• No Overdrive
• No Escape
• No “No Encounters”
• No Blitzball

This applies to the Portal app specifically, not FFXIV.

I can’t find a public link to the announcement. You can find it in the Final Fantasy Portal app on both iOS and Android. It’s dated 26/08/2024. However for convenience, here’s a full copy of the announcement text.

Thank you for using the FINAL FANTASY Portal App.

Regrettably, service for the Triple Triad game within the app will be ending on November 25, 2024 at 6:00 PM PST/November 26, 2024 at 2:00 AM GMT. (Service for the FINAL FANTASY Portal App itself will not be ending.)

The team would like to apologize to everyone who uses the app for ending this service.

Ever since introducing the Triple Triad game to the FINAL FANTASY Portal App on August 20, 2015, we have continuously strived to improve the quality of the service. However, it recently became clear we would not be able to maintain the same standards going forward, and as a result we have decided to remove the game from the app.

We would like to sincerely thank all of you who have enjoyed playing Triple Triad till now and apologize for having to end this service.

■End of Service Schedule ・Triple Triad End of Service Announcement (This Notice) 8:00 PM Sunday, August 25, 2024 (PDT) 4:00 AM Monday, August 26, 2024 (BST)

・End of GIL Sales (Same Time as this Notice) 8:00 PM Sunday, August 25, 2024 (PDT) 4:00 AM Monday, August 26, 2024 (BST) (Any GIL users currently possess can be spent until Triple Triad is removed from the app.)

・End of Service 6:00 PM Monday, November 25, 2024 (PST) 2:00 AM Tuesday, November 26, 2024 (GMT)

■ Item Exchange for Triple Triad Cards We will lower the required number of points to 0 for all Triple Triad cards accessible via the “Triple Triad” option under “Item Exchange” within the app until the end of service. (Please confirm that the number of points listed on the exchange screen is also “0” when exchanging points for cards.)

There is not much time left until the end of service on Monday, November 25, 2024 (PST)/Tuesday, November 26, 2024 (GMT), but we hope you continue to enjoy playing Triple Triad until then.

Sunday, August 25, 2024 (PDT)/Monday, August 26, 2024 (BST) FINAL FANTASY Portal App Team

Asked if future Final Fantasy games may see a day-one release, Takai says "I think it's possible – probably even likely," before adding, "That said, the team in charge of each project gets to decide its own policy, so this is just my personal opinion."

While Takai's thoughts are his, they align with what Square Enix has said throughout various financial briefings throughout the year. At the company's financial results for the last fiscal year, the developer spoke of a "shift from quantity to quality" as it "aggressively pursues a multiplatform strategy."

Not my footage but thought SteamDeck owners might be interested in seeing this.

Unexpected but looks like some bad frame rate dips here and there with around 20fps in most scenes where there’s a few things going on.

I’m seeing some discussions on the this in various different places and thought it would be interesting to ask the same question here.

Personally I think there’s some great Quality of Life improvements that can be made but having recently finished playing through XIII earlier in the year (albeit on Steam Deck) I don’t think it has aged all too terribly. Visually it still holds its own and improvements for me would largely sit within battle mechanics, such as allowing the team leader to be swapped when there is a KO, or even remaking Paradigm Shift animations.

I’d love to see more to do on Pulse, and maybe more opportunities for lore discovery by way of NPC interactions. But I’d expect the latter to be story breaking given how it unfolds and direction it takes.

What would you improve or change?

Audiobook created by The Lifestream, an unofficial translation of the original in Japanese. It relates the events occurring in the lifestream from Aerith Gainsborough's point of view since her death up to the ending of Final Fantasy VII.

This goes for mobile too (was just browsing mobile FF games and realized they're 20% off). Yay!