Final Fantasy VII Rebirth’s vast maps might be many kilometers wide 

Square Enix announced that Final Fantasy VII Rebirth will launch in early 2024 and released a new trailer for the game on June 8. One interesting little tidbit from the trailer that has drawn notice is that the tracker displayed at the top of the screen at one point showed a destination that was over 10 km away. 

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is the second game in the Final Fantasy VII remake project. The project is expected to comprise three instalments, the first of which was the 2020 released Final Fantasy VII Remake.  

It was known that the story of FFVII Rebirth would follow the protagonists after they escape from the city of Midgar, but further details remained shrouded in mystery. However, on June 2, the game’s official Twitter account began releasing various information about the game via several developer comments that answer questions from players. Finally, the new trailer unveiled full-blown gameplay footage as well as some cutscenes.  

The trailer includes both battle gameplay and field exploration, and shows the characters, including Red XIII and Yuffie, pulling off flashy cooperative attacks. But there was one inconspicuous tidbit in the trailer that has caught the attention of players. During the fight scene with Yuffie at around the 2 minute 29 second mark, the tracker displayed at the top of the screen shows a destination marker that is over 10 km (over 6 miles) away. 

The tracker indicates both the direction and distance of your destination and was also included in the UI of the previous game, FFVII Remake. Alongside the mini-map, it’s a useful function that helps players make smooth progress through the game. The tracker seen in the trailer for FFVII Rebirth displays a blue “!” mark in addition to several other icon types.  

In FFVII Remake, the world was separated into smaller areas, each with its own map. But even when your destination was located across multiple areas, the tracker would show a distance of a few hundred meters at most—nothing like the 11,000 m seen in the FFVII Rebirth trailer. It’s unclear whether FFVII Rebirth will break up its world into separate areas like its predecessor, but based on what we’ve seen so far, locations seem to be more expansive. The distance of destinations can also be much further away, sometimes an order of magnitude greater—literally.  

One of the developer comments posted to the game’s official Twitter account states that players of FFVII Rebirth “will be able to journey across the wide and multifaceted world with a high degree of freedom, experiencing a myriad of different stories along the way.” It looks like you will be able to travel through vast areas in a world of such scale that your objectives may at times be around 10 km or even further away.  

It’s also likely that the game will provide some convenient method of getting around these big locations. In the trailer, the characters can be seen riding chocobos, which doesn’t feel particularly reassuring as chocobos have previously not really proven themselves fast enough that 10 km would be an easy trip. In the original PlayStation version of Final Fantasy VII, the small scale of the world map allowed chocobos to travel across it very quickly. In lieu of this kind of solution, perhaps some other transport method will be introduced to allow players to travel quickly across the vast map. 

Incidentally, the physical version of FFVII Rebirth will be released on two discs, and since PlayStation 5 game discs can hold up to 100GB each, the game could possibly weigh in at somewhere between 100-200GB. Judging from this large volume, we can expect the game to be packed with vast and diverse locations. 

Written by. Marco Farinaccia based on the original Japanese article (original article’s publication date: 2023-06-13 19:20 JST)