The grand finale of Summer Game Fest was… Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth

When host Geoff Keighley started the two hour long Summer Game Fest, on Thursday night, he described it as having a ‘very special grand finale’, which suggested some sort of eagerly awaited first reveal or previously unknown mega game. In the end though it was just Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth.

Not that Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth isn’t an exciting prospect – and it did look very good in the footage shown – but we’re pretty sure that wasn’t on anyone’s bingo card for the show’s final reveal, even if Square Enix had been teasing some kind of announcement over the last few days.

Although there was a teaser trailer last year this was the first time anyone has seen extended gameplay footage, which showed a very impressive looking open world environment. The bad news though is that the game definitely won’t be out this year and is now down only as ‘early 2024.’

As previously announced, the original game is being split up into three separate titles, with the first one focusing almost solely on the city of Midgar, which while it did have some open world areas was pretty constrained by modern standards.

This middle section of the story is much more expansive though, as befits that part of the original game which had an overworld map and allowed you to explore a much wider area.

Fans will no doubt be carefully dissecting the trailer as we speak but you can clearly see Cosmo Canyon, the Kalm chocobo ranch, Nibelheim, the Turks, and a boss fight against Jenova.

There’s also mention of what seems to be a five year time skip since the last game, which we don’t remember being part of the original story (although it has been a while), and a curious bit at the end where Sephiroth appears to kill a young Tifa.

It’s not clear at what point the story will end, since Midgar was only a small percentage of the original and certainly not one-third of it, but then the plot is expected to diverge even more from what originally happened, as explained in-game by all the talk of defying fate.

Rebirth will clearly be a pretty hefty chunk of video game, as it’s coming on two separate Blu-ray discs. So if you’re playing the physical edition you’ll actually have to get up and swap discs halfway through, just like the old days.

Rebirth wasn’t the only Final Fantasy announcement at the Summer Game Fest, with a trailer for mobile title Final Fantasy 7: Ever Crisis.

Square Enix doesn’t have a great track record with Final Fantasy mobile games but this one seems pretty neat, with its battles looking very similar to Remake and Rebirth but the dialogue sequences mimicking the ultra-low polygon models of the PlayStation 1 original.

The original idea was that the game would be released episodically and retell the entire store of Final Fantasy 7, including all the spin-offs, which we assume is still the case.

Although whether that means the Final Fantasy 7 parts will be the same as Remake, or something different again, isn’t clear. However, the line stating that, ’We still don’t know Sephiroth’ certainly suggests some new revelations.