Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth: 10 Things You NEED TO KNOW

(whimsical music) - "Final Fantasy VII Remake's" second installment is looming close. There's a demo, you can get a feel for what to expect and wow, I am excited. Hi folks, it's Falcon and today on "Gameranx," 10 things you need to know about "Final Fantasy VII" Rebirth. Starting off with number 10, it's not open world, it's open zone. Now, no complaints about open zone. Open zone can be great. The fact that we're even saying the words, "Open zone" Indicates that Sega was pretty successful with

"Sonic Frontiers," but the follow up to "Final Fantasy VII" Remake is so much bigger than last time. The first game kept you trapped in the small densely packed areas. I mean, that is the nature of Midgar and how it's set up. It makes sense. The Midgar section of the first game was pretty darn guided and linear. I mean, even compared to the rest of the game, which is still fairly linear, but it looks like this entry is going in the opposite direction, giving you a gigantic open world map to expl

ore. It doesn't look like the game is going full open world. It's splitting the game world into separate sections you can travel to, explore and then move on from. And this section of the original game was mostly about the journey, so that's probably the best way to do things, but at least they did tell us you're gonna be able to return to places you've already been, so you don't have to do everything in a chapter before moving on like in Remake. You can come back later. The state of play traile

r is where the actual size of the maps becomes a lot more clear. They look absolutely huge. They're full of points of interest and side quests. They're gonna keep players busy. Just from the trailer we got a good look at a pretty significant chunk of the game. They showed off the grasslands, which contains the town of Calm, the Chocobo farm. There's the Junon region that has the fortress town in the under city. Kind of like a smaller Midgar-ish thing going. There's the Corel region with the town

of Costa Del Sol and the golden saucer out in the desert, which means the area's probably gonna be really big because that's a big chunk of the world map from the original game. There's the Cosmo Canyon region, the Nibel region, the Gongaga region. There's even a sea region called the Meridian Ocean, which is pretty crazy to me. Can you freely travel between all these areas, from the sea or does it work differently? I don't really know. The takeaway is that Rebirth looks absolutely massive and

in the same way the original was a technical achievement, it looks like this one may be as well. Just looking at the trailers, they have some of the best looking open world/zone environments I've ever seen and I cannot wait to start exploring some of these iconic locations. And number nine, there's a ton to do in every area. The state of play trailer gave us the most information yet on what we're gonna actually be able to do in the game, and it seems like it's gonna be an obscene amount. Each re

gion seems to have various points of interest around the map where you can go do stuff like wrinkled choker pose or engage in some kind of moogle catching mini game. Doing these sort of things earns you intel which can be used to buy special new material from Chadley, the data collection guy from Remake. There's also these towers that are used to reveal stuff on the map. They're straight up Ubisoft towers, might I add. They do look less tedious, at least. It looks like you basically walk up to '

em, hit a switch and boom, you're done, rather than, you know, the whole rigmarole. I don't hate that, it's all right. Another example of things you can do in the open world is this divine intel, which seems to be connected to summons. I don't know if this is how you unlock new ones in this game. The thing in the trailers that's related to this mechanic is absolutely the Alexander summon, like, zero questions there, so it it might, but one of the more bizarre surprises of the trailer is this par

t where the characters appear in their low poly PS1 forms, or at least close to their low poly PS1 form. I'm sure that's the basis of these models. There's a little more to 'em obviously. Apparently this is related to something called a Proto Relic, which are extra quest lines in each region that seem to have some kind of goofy or weird things that I don't really know. They might be connected to Gilgamesh, the multi-armed guy scene in the trailer for a few seconds. This recurring final fantasy e

nemy never appeared in Final Fantasy VII originally, so if he's actually in this game, that's pretty amazing. I can't wait to hear their version of battle at the Big bridge. There's also side quests, obviously, it's an RPG, you gotta have those, and from what I've seen in the trailers, it looks like they're trying to make 'em a little more interesting than the first games. Open World Games can fall into this traveler having a bunch of boring side quests. Even Final Fantasy XVI fell into that tra

p. So hopefully Rebirth actually tries to make these things interesting. And number eight is new party members. "Final Fantasy VII Rebirth" Expands the cast on the previous game by nearly doubling the amount of party members you can use. Red 13 becomes a full fledged party member. Finally with his own combat abilities. Uppi joins the team as well. You're probably already familiar with her if you played the intermission. And then there's also Cait Sith, the most bizarre party member from the orig

inal that a lot of people thought they would just cut from this game entirely, but why did you think that? The first one showed how committed they are to the bizarre stuff, and it's here whether you like it or not. The trailer shows the last two party members, Vincent and Sid, but I guess they're not actually playable in this game. They're gonna be in part three, I guess. It's kind of disappointing but maybe we'll get playable Vincent in the DLC like we got Playable Ufi in Integrade. I mean, why

not? It seems like the business model they took worked the first time around 'cause they obviously made the second one and they spent what looks like a lot more money on it. Each new character has their own gimmick when you control 'em too. Red 13 can climb walls, Uppi can swim across gaps. Cait Sith can pick up stuff and throw it. So all these guys give you new ways to explore. It's really promising. And number seven is new mechanics. Remix Battle System has this perfect combination of old and

new, but Rebirth is kind of mixing things up. I don't wanna say it's like a total change. Like, it seems like the basic combat mechanics are mostly the same, but they've added some new wrinkles to spice things up. The biggest addition I've seen are combat synergies. These kind of special team up attacks where two party members work together and do some serious damage. It reminds me of double attacks from Chrono Trigger. So your party composition is gonna be even more important in this game. You

unlock these synergies using this new level up mechanic called the Folio. You can spend points to upgrade nodes that upgrade your chosen character in various ways, and thankfully you're free to reset your points whenever you want so you can experiment with character builds, and that's the right way to go with something like this. You also get Folio points from another new mechanic, which is called Party Level. It's independent from your standard experience level and seems to rank up from explor

ing the world and doing activities rather than just from combat, so I don't hate that, like, they actually reward you for doing the stuff that like, you want to do in a Final Fantasy game. Not a bad idea. Nothing revolutionary, doesn't change the formula, but I'm glad they didn't start from scratch 'cause I absolutely loved the combat in the original Remake, which the original Remake is a funny thing to say. But iteration on a proven formula is absolutely the right path here. And number six, the

re are a whole lot of mini games. If you go back and play the original "Final Fantasy VII" One thing really sticks out is how many mini games there are. And it looks like Rebirth is not playing around. It seems like there's just as many if not more, seriously, in the recent showcase they showed many of the mini games just at the start. There's dolphin riding, which is not something from the original game I expected to return here. There's the Parade marching mini game, the minecart shooting segm

ent and of course the many, many mini games from the golden saucer. Pretty much all the mini games that were in the saucer seemed to be back in some form. The 3D brawler is here, the motorcycle game, G-bike, Chocobo racing is in as per the developers, there's the arena. No submarine game unfortunately, like, that must be something they're saving for part three, but that's not even the end of it. They showed off this soccer mini game with Red 13. There's a bunch of returning mini games from Remak

e like the box smashing one and a lot more. The "Final Fantasy VII Rebirth" Team saw all the mini games from Yakuza 8 and they were like, "Hold my beer." I'm surprised there isn't a Hold My Beer mini game. They have gone completely mini game mad. There's even an entire card game. The Final Fantasy Series basically invented the card game mini game with Triple Triad in Final Fantasy VIII, and in Rebirth we're getting a game called Queen's Blood. I've spent a ton of time looking at this board and f

rom what I can tell, it looks kind of like a cross between Triple Triad and Gwent. It's the lanes that give me the comparison. I enjoyed Triple Triad and I enjoyed Gwent probably more than Triple Triad honestly. So I can't wait to put off saving the world to play some children's card game in Rebirth. and number is bonds of friendship. So the original "Final Fantasy VII" had this hidden mechanic that was basically there to determine which character cloud would go on on a date with in the golden s

aucer. It was mostly pointless, so there's no way they're bringing that back, right? In this Remake of it. That's just not gonna happen, right? The team's commitment to sticking to the original game's vision is really impressive if nothing else. Rebirth doesn't just keep the system, they actually expand it by giving cloud different responses to each party member when you talk to them. And depending on what you say, it'll affect your bonds of friendship. From the trailer, this whole elaborate thi

ng is just there to determine who you go on a date with just like the original, but I have to imagine the actual dates are gonna be a little more fleshed out here. The story's playing out differently also so maybe there'll be new characters you couldn't go out on a date with before, you can go out with them now. This might sound very pointless to some of you out there, but diehard "Final Fantasy VII" fans are probably gonna think this is pretty great. I kind of assumed they would give you an opt

ion to go with a certain character like boobs, hair or gay. But no, the Rebirth team is just pulling all the stops and you gotta give 'em respect for that. And number four, there are many forms of transportation. The previous game struggled to get characters to move at even a normal walking pace so I assumed you'd be basically walking everywhere at best in Rebirth, but I was pretty wrong about that. There's a lot of transportation options in this game and I really couldn't be more excited to see

it. Of course there's chocobos, the classic Final Fantasy mount, and you could use 'em to get around faster here, but the trailer showed a lot of chocobo variants like the black chocobo, which can climb cliffs, another chocobo that can bounce in the air, and one that can basically fly, which I didn't think we'd see. There's multiple vehicles as well. There's a segue like standing scooter you can use in Costa del Sol. There's the buggy from the original game for getting around the desert, which,

why would that be there? But it is. I'm guessing the desert section's gonna be pretty huge if they've got a context dependent vehicle for it. The biggest surprise for me was that the tiny bronco's here. In the original game, it was basically just kind of a boat. It allowed you to travel around in shallow water and it does the same thing here. This is how you navigate the Meridian Sea and it looks great. The trailer does show the actual airship, The High Wind in the distance on Junon, but I don'

t feel like you're gonna get full control of it here. I honestly don't even know how that would work in a game like this. But they're surprising me with the buggy and the bronco so I guess anything's on the table at this point. And number three, the story is going to conclude around the end of Disc one in the original game. There is very little we know about the story, at least in regards to what is new. The end of Remake promised that Rebirth would be a journey into the unknown, but we don't kn

ow exactly what that means. One thing we do know is that they are going to end the story around the climax of Disc one from the original "Final Fantasy VII". Now, ending the second part of your three part story with the end of the first disc of a three disc game might sound a little off, but if you remember the structure of "Final Fantasy VII", it kind of makes a little more sense. Disc one and two contain probably most of the story for the game, and Disc three is kind of in a lot of ways end ga

me content. I mean, it's not really end game content, that isn't really how they looked at things in those days, but I think it kind of makes perfect sense. And also the story kind of goes off the rails a bit. Not saying that as a bad thing, but it gets nuts, so this kind of feels like a good stopping point, and that means this game is going to end on the moment, and if you have ever played Final Fantasy VII or have been on the internet before, you have to know exactly what that means and that's

what's on everyone's mind regarding this. So number two, Aerith's fate. I'm gonna try to avoid spoilers here as much as possible, but the thing is, everyone wants to know, what is Aerith's fate? You know what happened in the city of the ancients in the original game, but with Rebirth, things can change. That was kind of the whole point of the ending of Remake. The chains of fate are broken, so basically anything is on the table. The developers knew this was the thing that everybody wants to kno

w. In the state of play trailer, they say that they've taken painstaking care to depict how the group bonds during their journey. One that ultimately decides Aerith's fate. They wouldn't say that unless they were going to do something different this time, right? Or maybe they're faking this out and it all plays out the same way. I think honestly, very clever move because we've known what happened to Aerith for like 17 years now, ish, somewhere around there. But apparently the devs are worried th

at the ending of the game is gonna be controversial. But let's be real here, they're right. No matter what happens, people are gonna have strong feelings about it. And it's also kind of the elephant in the room when you're talking about Rebirth. It may be the thing that ends up defining the game when it's all over. Personally, I am super curious to see what they end up doing, and I don't know that one way is better than the other, and it's more about how they go about either choice they make, or

if they give you both choices and how that works. I don't know, I'm just really curious to see what they end up doing, and we're obviously just along for the ride at this point. And finally at number one, release date and other info. Easily one of the biggest games of this year, it's coming exclusively to the PlayStation 5 on February 29th. Just like with Remake, it's a timed exclusive, so it's safe to say it's gonna be eventually on PC, but hard to say when. Remake came out on April 10th, 2020

, but didn't show up on Windows until December 16th, 2021, so not quite two years, but not exactly one either. There's a demo of the game with a pretty big chunk of chapter one to play, and there's really no downside to playing it, 'cause if you complete the demo, you could just skip the segment of the game when it finally comes out. There's also some bonuses you get for having saves from Remake and Integrade. They're not major, like, you're not making the game worse for yourself if you don't ha

ve these saves on your system, but if you've got a Remake save, you've got the Leviathan summon at the start of the game. And if you've got an Intergrade save, the Uppi DLC story, you get the Remove summon. It's easily one of the most anticipated games of the year, and it looks like it's gonna be absolutely huge. I mean, I've been rambling for ages and it seems like I'm only scratching this surface of what's going on in this game. But what do you think? Leave us a comment, let us know. If you li

ke this video, click like. If you're not subscribed, it's a great time to do so. We upload brand new videos every day of the week. Best way to see them first is of course a subscription, so please subscribe. Don't forget to enable notifications, and as always, we thank you very much for watching this video. I'm Falcon, you can follow me on Twitter at Falcon The Hero. We'll see you next time right here on "Gameranx".