Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth made Yuffie more Asian-looking, according to devs 

A recent feature on the development of Square Enix’s Final Fantasy VII Rebirth by CGWORLD explores various subtle and not so subtle changes that were made to the characters in the second installment of the remake trilogy. In order to maintain continuity with 2020’s Final Fantasy VII Remake, most changes were related to increasing polygon counts and making textures more realistic – but there were some design-related adjustments too. 

One such design-related change involves Yuffie Kisaragi. Yuffie initially did not make an appearance in Final Fantasy VII Remake – she was introduced in the INTERmission DLC that came out in conjunction with the game’s enhanced version for the PS5, titled Final Fantasy VII Remake INTERGRADE. 

In other words, unlike the rest of the cast, Yuffie was modeled with the PS5 in mind from the start, and the dev team considered her to be a “touchstone” for character creation on the PS5. As such, she did not go through a complete rebuild for Rebirth (like Cloud Strife did). However, about 70% of her design was reworked by Tetsuya Nomura, who touched up design elements around her arms, waist and loose knee socks. 

Interestingly, it seems Yuffie’s face was also updated with the aim of giving her a more Asian look – making her eyes and nose less pronounced. While there is no such continent as Asia in Final Fantasy, Yuffie has a Japanese surname, and she comes from Wutai – a location and culture inspired by real-life far east Asia. Thus, it seems the developers are trying to set her ethnicity apart from say, Aerith Gainsborough, whose features are more European. Yuffie already had a distinctly Asian look to her in the first part of the trilogy, but it seems the developers wanted to further emphasize this in the sequel.

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is available now on PS5.