Naoki Hamaguchi, director of the Final Fantasy VII Remake trilogy, believes that criticism about pacing and “wasted time” in the games should be seen from another point of view.

The first Final Fantasy VII Remake expanded the original game’s first eight hours into a roughly 30-hour RPG epic. While it included some forgettable side quests, these additions enriched the story, deepened relationships between characters, and strengthened the player’s emotional connection to the world. The expanded narrative made the experience more impactful and immersive overall.

By contrast, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth took the second act of the original game and stretched it into more than fifty hours of open-world RPG content. It wasn’t just the optional tower climbing or chocobo stealth missions that made the game feel longer than necessary — even the main storyline featured segments like Cait Sith’s box-tossing minigame, an overly long final dungeon, and sequences where players were literally crawling forward.

In an interview with Screenrant, Naoki Hamaguchi addressed these criticisms directly. Regarding the pacing, especially in Rebirth, he said he doesn’t believe the game was longer than it needed to be. Instead, he feels that modern players have too many distractions and too many games to play, which makes them feel a constant need to finish everything quickly. “When we were younger, we might have been more patient about wasting time, but that’s not necessarily the case today,” he explained.

Still, Hamaguchi acknowledges the feedback and says the development team is taking it seriously. As they work on the final part of the trilogy, they aim to find a better balance between storytelling and gameplay pacing, so that the concluding chapter feels tighter and more focused.

The Final Fantasy VII Remake project is also expanding beyond a single platform — Square Enix is now preparing releases not only for the PlayStation 5 but also for the Nintendo Switch 2 and Xbox Series consoles.

Source: PCGamer, Screenrant