Summary
- Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth will continue the story of Final Fantasy 7 Remake and won't require players to import a save file from the previous game.
- The characters in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth will start at the average level that players had them at when they left Midgar in the first game.
- While there will be some kind of bonus for players with a Final Fantasy 7 Remake save file, the experience and progress won't transfer directly to Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth.
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth will continue the story of 2020’s Final Fantasy 7 Remake, and some of the upcoming sequel’s developers have answered lingering questions about whether players can import a save file from the last game or have to start their characters over from level 1. A full-blown reimagining of the highly-influential Final Fantasy 7 was on many gamers’ wish lists for a long time before Square Enix released Final Fantasy 7 Remake, which not only retold the legendary story of Cloud Strife and his party of allies, but expanded greatly on it with new content and a few surprising plot twists.
Final Fantasy 7 Remake built on the story of the original so much that it will not be contained within a single game. Sure enough, the first entry in this Final Fantasy 7 Remake trilogy only covered Cloud and company’s early adventures in the dystopian city of Midgar in the opening hours of the original Final Fantasy 7. Next year’s Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth will pick up from there, detailing Cloud and his friends’ search for the rogue SOLDIER Sephiroth in the lands beyond Midgar’s borders and reportedly ending with their faithful encounter against the villain in the Forgotten Capital.
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth Developers Reveal Where The Game Ends
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth's development team opens up about the upcoming sequel and reveals how much of the original game's plot it will cover.
Naturally, fans have wondered if Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth will allow them to import a completed save file from Final Fantasy 7 Remake, similar to BioWare’s original Mass Effect trilogy. In a recent interview with ThisIsGame Thailand (as translated by The Gamer and Twitter user ShinraArch), Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth creative director Tetsuya Nomura, director Naoki Yamaguchi, and producer Yoshinori Kitase revealed that this wouldn’t be the case, as they wanted all three Final Fantasy 7 Remake entries to be standalone experiences that anyone can jump into without having to play the ones before them.
This doesn’t mean that gamers who have already cleared Final Fantasy 7 Remake will be starting from a clean slate in Rebirth, as the developers also revealed that the game’s cast won’t be starting at level 1. Instead, Cloud and the rest of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth’s playable party will begin their next chapter at the average level that players had them at when they left Midgar at the end of the first game. For reference, Final Fantasy 7 Remake’s experience system capped at level 50, and recent Remake screenshots showed the cast at around level 21.
Tetsuya Nomura and the rest of the Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth developers interviewed assured fans that there would be some kind of bonus for players with an old Final Fantasy 7 Remake save file, but didn’t specify what. Perhaps this will be some sort of extra summon or piece of equipment that Cloud or another party member can use at the start of the game. What’s known at this point is that the experience players built up in Remake won’t necessarily transfer over into Rebirth - though Cloud and his friends won’t be starting over from square one either.
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth will launch on February 29, 2024 for PS5.
Source: The Gamer, ThisIsGame Thailand