Final Fantasy VII Rebirth director Naoki Hamaguchi understands why some players felt exhausted by the RPG’s enormous amount of optional content. While Rebirth offered a richly detailed world filled with quests, minigames, and exploration, its reward structure sometimes made skipping those activities difficult.
In brief
- Hamaguchi acknowledged that some players became tired of Rebirth’s world map content
- Valuable rewards such as materia made optional activities feel necessary
- Some players may have stepped away from the game because of its overwhelming amount of content
- Square Enix is considering this feedback while designing the trilogy’s final chapter
Speaking in an interview, Hamaguchi said one reason players became “a little bit tired” was the sheer amount of content available across Final Fantasy VII Rebirth’s world map.
The director also suggested this fatigue may have caused some players to step away from the game entirely. Rebirth encouraged exploration by placing useful rewards behind optional challenges, but that approach created an unintended problem.
“Sometimes you’d get rewards like materia if you finish that content,” Hamaguchi explained. Players who wanted those rewards could feel pressured to complete certain minigames, even when they did not enjoy them.
So, the main problem was not simply that Rebirth contained too much content. Instead, the main issue was that supposedly optional activities could feel essential because valuable progression items were tied to them.
Square Enix is now considering open world fatigue while developing the third and final game in the remake trilogy. Hamaguchi has separately confirmed that the next game’s world will be even larger, making clear guidance and a balanced structure more important than ever.
The development team wants players to understand what they can do without taking away their freedom to explore. Hamaguchi said Square Enix was “very careful” about applying that design philosophy to the next game.
Hamaguchi did not explicitly promise fewer side quests. However, his comments suggest Square Enix is working toward a better balance where activities feel worth completing without turning exploration into a checklist.
