This year’s The Game Awards was an exhilarating ceremony, crowning some of the best titles released over the year. However, one particularly large fanbase left extremely happy, and that was the Final Fantasy fanbase, despite the winner of the Most Anticipated Game being Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, a remake of the iconic Final Fantasy VII (1997). However, with Square Enix making the Final Fantasy VII Rebirth map into an open world, many are wondering how they’re going to scale the map to fit into one big open-world map.
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Developers Reveal 1:1 Scaling in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth Map
You read the heading correctly, and yes, this is confirmed news straight from the devs at Square Enix. Developers have said that while the original Final Fantasy VII was a narrative-based, single-player game, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth will introduce an open-world map with tons of new combat interactions and possibilities of exploration.
Noaki Hamaguchi said this in a press interview. He mentioned that they wanted to retain the essence of Final Fantasy VII for returning players instead of creating an entirely new map to explore. For this, they took the original map from FF7 and created a 1:1 scale for the Final Fantasy VII Rebirth map. This means that all your past favourites like Kalm, Fort Condor, Junon, and the Chocobo Farm will be present in the exact size ratio they were present at 26 years ago.
Many Final Fantasy followers were quite worried about how the Final Fantasy VII Rebirth map would turn out when they heard about the scaling. However, after some gameplay footage and players checking out various resources, they confirmed that the map would be filled with content instead of a barren wasteland, an issue faced by Final Fantasy XV.
The earlier remake, Final Fantasy VII Remake, only included the Midgar section of the original map, which was another cause for concern, but fortunately, that’s not the case with the latest upcoming title.
Lack of Playable Content Concerns
Each game series has long-standing problems, especially when it’s a series as big as Final Fantasy. The one major issue players faced, especially in the newer editions of Final Fantasy, i.e. FFXV and FFXVI, was the lack of playable content throughout the vast maps they had. Many players complained that the 750 miles of map in FFXV was poorly utilised and a smaller yet more packed map size would’ve been better.
Now, this was a concern for the Final Fantasy VII Rebirth map as well, as we mentioned above. But with the scaling ratio now set in place, the chances of that happening are slim. Since the original Final Fantasy VII’s map was not that large, the open-world map for this title shouldn’t seem untraversable. However, confirmation regarding this will only come when the game launches next year.
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FFVII Rebirth: A Fitting Next Step to Remake
We mentioned before that Final Fantasy VII Rebirth isn’t FFVII’s first remake. The first one was ironically called Final Fantasy VII Remake, which only encompassed the land of Midgar from the original map. Final Fantasy VII Rebirth map, however, is quite complementary to its predecessor in the way the game unfolds.
Players who were included in the early access of the game mentioned how the story in FFVII Rebirth picks up where they left off in FFVII Remake. There are no discrepancies as the plot unfolds, and the graphics and gameplay are much the same. Of course, with Final Fantasy VII Rebirth map being open-world, you’ll definitely notice some difference.
It also takes control of the thematic setting of Final Fantasy VII, which was a political world overrun by government propaganda and military establishments. You see these in various parts of the map as you travel through small towns and gaze across the horizons. The smaller map size and scaling have helped Square Enix define many characteristic points throughout the Final Fantasy VII Rebirth map, which doesn’t seem dead or barren at any point.
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The Takeaway
Square Enix is definitely taking a leap of faith by applying a one-to-one scale to the Final Fantasy VII Rebirth map. However, given the game’s long-standing experience with multiple game settings, we’re sure it will live up to the hype. With extra anticipation after The Game Awards, the clock is ticking for FFVII Rebirth’s release.