As Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth moves towards a grander adventure for the follow-up to Remake, players will have more ways to build their party of heroes as they take on greater challenges. But with the sequel, the creative team behind the game has also revealed that players will have more ways to customize the look of their squad as well.
Reported by French website Final Fantasy Dream, Rebirth game director Naoki Hamaguchi and producer Yoshinori Kitase stated during a recent appearance at Paris Game Week 2023 that Rebirth will have more costumes for your favorite FFVII characters to try out as they explore the world beyond Midgar.
“There will be more [costume] choices than in the previous game, so if you like to spend time changing the character look, you’re going to have a good time,” said Hamaguchi while talking about planned content for Rebirth. Game producer Yoshinori Kitase followed up by teasing, “[…]there may be some that are very well hidden in FFVII Rebirth.”
So far, we’ve seen just a small sampling of the different costumes in recent trailers for the game. One short sequence saw Cloud wearing beachwear while exploring the seaside resort town Costa del Sol on a segway-like vehicle. It’s an odd scene, but given that Rebirth and Remake have been all about expanding the world of Final Fantasy 7 and allowing the cast of characters to really explore and mingle within it, there’s sound logic for letting characters try out different outfits.
One of the 2020 remake’s most memorable moments involved a costume change in reimagining the infamous Honeybee Inn sequence. During that chapter, protagonist Cloud Strife had to infiltrate an enemy base hidden within an entertainment hall by dressing in drag. While the original 1997 game presented this sequence as something of an extended gag, the 2020 remake made it into a surprisingly heartfelt and endearing event that celebrates modern drag culture and self-acceptance, and it quickly became one of the favorite crowd-pleasing moments in the game.
In our recent Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth preview, GamesRadar’s Iain Harris stated: “The project’s massive narrative swing brings everyone together to theorize over the mystique of what’s next – a community clamoring that might not have happened if the Remake project had remained entirely faithful. Despite all the changes that are likely to come, then, previewing Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth reassures me that the game won’t be morphed into something unrecognizable. And now, I’m keener for the unfamiliar; what it brings.”