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Everyone and their brother (and specifically my daughter, who sat through two hours of Summer Game Fest just for this) was expecting the third game of the Final Fantasy VII Remake series to show today. And if you weren’t confident, seeing Naoki Hamaguchi come on stage for Tifa in Street Fighter 6 probably cemented it for you.

And that’s just what happened; we got a lot of information about the final game today, including the subtitle, trailers for both scenery and gameplay, and a release window. Here’s what I saw, but correct me where I’m wrong.

The initial action drops straight into the Highwind with the party on board, with a parachute mechanic to get where they’re going. Some brief glimpses of Wutai and Midgar appear first, with a bit of combat from new party members Vincent and Cid - nothing unexpected there. Some scenes revealing the Weapons (who seem based on the voiceover work to possibly not be optional bosses any more), the tiniest glimpse of Tifa in a new costume blasting magic, and a scene of the party surrounded by Whispers and Aerith’s flowers… and the name reveal of Final Fantasy VII Revelation. That’s all in the reveal trailer below; check out the thumbnail, which has a very Renaissance-era Biblical quality to it that you might expect from the name:On stage at Summer Game Fest, though, it continued, with Matt Mercer, voice of Vincent, coming on stage with Hamaguchi to talk through a few more details. Hamaguchi explained that the theme of the game to him is “Resolve,” which is interesting because that could have also been a subtitle for the game. Mercer describes the general scenario for the game, covering the Highwind, the arrival of Meteor, and the new locations you’ll see including Mideel and Wutai. They imply pretty heavily that there will be a more open world with less linearity, which makes sense.

From there, they show more combat; the combat system looks every similar to Rebirth, though it appears that characters can have multiple summons available now. Square Enix were willing to show Ifrit being summoned, but eagle-eyed watchers can see Magic Pot and Titan also in the menu.

We got to see more combat detail for the new fighters, including Vincent turning into the Galian Beast mid-battle and even apparently having Synergy abilities to use while in that form; we also got to see Cid’s rapid strikes with his lance and Dragoon-style combat traversal, as well as an area of effect attack.

The biggest combat reveal, though, was Function Integrated Tactical Suitwear, or FITS. This came absolutely out of the blue, but it appears to be a job system for everyone, giving different movesets and costumes for all the playable characters. The characters can stay as “Freelancers,” apparently retaining the combat abilities we’ve gotten used to over the last two games, but can change into specialties as well. The only two seen in the stream are “Warrior” and “Black Mage,” so it’s unclear both what other ones might exist and whether each character only gets a few of them or if they are available globally. In the video, Cloud has access to Warrior and Tifa has Black Mage, with Cait Sith shown in some other sort of mage robes and Barret in heavy technical-looking armor.

The pair on stage cut to one last video: Sapphire Weapon attacking Junon. It looks fantastically powerful, as one would expect. It was the last glimpse before the release window: Spring 2027. So, sadly, we won’t have it for Christmas this year, but we certainly look to be getting it day-and-date for all platforms.So there you have it, the Revelation Reveal. I hope you’re as excited as everyone in my house was!

Nintendo's Direct for Switch 2 ran for about an hour, ending just a few minutes ago. This Direct was previously assumed to be mostly about first-party games, particularly those available near the launch window; under that assumption, the number of games presented by third parties was pretty significant.

For Square Enix fans, two titles in particular would be of interest, but neither are new. Bravely Default Flying Fairy was presented as a launch title for Switch 2 on the release date of June 5, 2025; this, the first game of the series, released for the 3DS in 2012. The remaster for Switch 2 will upscale the game and adjust the UI to suit, as well as add some new minigames. The online features from the original have been ported in as well.

Additionally, Squenix confirmed the long-standing rumor that Final Fantasy VII Remake would arrive on the Switch 2. This was not presented as a launch title, as far as I'm aware - the stream had some technical difficulties right before the announcement and I have not yet seen the complete video from that portion, just the audio. The version to be released will be the Intergrade version released for PlayStation 5 and PC, meaning it will include the additional Yuffie content. This of course implies that Rebirth may eventually come to Switch 2 as well, but that was not addressed in today's Direct.

Unfortunately, no announcements for anything Final Fantasy IX today, as many were hoping for - but there's still a few months before we hit that 25th anniversary.

The Game Awards 2024 have been up and running for under an hour as this is written, but a Square Enix announcement happened early on. Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, always expected for a Windows release, got a date that is coming very soon: January 23, 2025.

The game will be released on both Steam and in the Epic Games Store on that day, and preorders are meant to start in the next few hours. Squenix are advertising on socials that preorders will have a discount of "up to 30%" so if you have a pretty strong gaming rig and no Playstation 5, it's your time.

Naturally, I had important family engagements last night just in time for the Final Fantasy VII Rebirth State of Play showcase from Sony, so after catching only the trailer last night I had to get up a little early to catch up. So, here's a quick recap for all of you as well, if you missed it or only saw the "short" trailer so far. Spoilers abound if you're looking to go into the game completely tabula rasa, so this post will simply end with the State of Play video and the rest will follow in thread.

Sony's recently-announced State of Play just wrapped up a few minutes ago, with Square Enix serving as the penultimate spectacle. After a brief bit of Foamstars (open beta coming in two weeks, release early 2024 if you're here for that news), the stream jumped straight into Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. Before I break down the trailer, though, you can get the release date: Leap Day 2024. That's a bit later than I'd hoped, but at least it gives me more time to catch up on games before it releases.

Based on these three minutes, there is going to be a lot packed into this game, and this is going to be completely spoilery if you haven't gotten around to playing Remake and Intermission. The trailer starts with Zack carrying Cloud through a wrecked Midgar, showing yet again that there are some sort of timeline or universe shenanigans at play. It then cuts straight to Rufus ordering the Junon cannon to fire, and some brief snippets of combat, including some with Red XIII in the primary battle party. Cait Sith returns from his brief cameo in the prior game, complete with accent and giant Moogle, and the first confirmation that he will indeed be available for combat too.

The buggy appears, as well as some of our favorite colors of chocobo; REUNION gets some focus, as well as Midgardsormr and the Bottomswell boss under Junon. Yuffie shows off a partner technique with Barret, and Aerith does one with Cait Sith, and then we get a little bit of Cloud and Sephiroth fighting... as teammates. A couple quick cuts show us new summons, namely Alexander and Odin, and then we get a longer sequence of Gold Saucer, with everyone's favorite minigames.

We then get another brief shot of Zack, this time dropping off the still-unconscious Cloud with, of all people, apparently Kyrie? The strange shenanigans continue anon. Finally, a couple more big reveals - Emerald Weapon, Vincent, and at last, Sephiroth speaking of REUNION... "When worlds merge."

Sorry if this sounds a little breathless, but frankly, it is a bit. There was a lot packed into three short minutes, a lot more than I expected to see today. And preorders are open now.

After the mild disappointment of the Sony Showcase, in which we got no Final Fantasy VII, the Summer Game Fest stream that just ended gave us a little bit more of what we're looking for: a brand-new trailer for Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.

This had been expected for the last week or so, when the official Twitter accounts in both Japanese and English started posting semi-cryptic updates about the progress of the game, and users noticed that they started exactly seven days before Keighley's SGF. Bad news out of the way, first - the trailer locks in a mostly-assumed bit of news, that the game is delayed now until "Early 2024." That same title card has some surprising news, too - the game is shipping on two discs. This obviously means that it's going to be a larger game than the first one, which shipped on a single disc for Playstation 5 even including Yuffie's Intermission. I'm going to do something odd for CoN news here and put my impressions of the trailer in a separate thread so they can be more easily avoided for users who want no chance of spoilers. For this post, I'll just suffice to say that my kid got very excited very quickly.

The other Final Fantasy VII game that's on the way, Ever Crisis, also got a new trailer and updated release information. In this case, the new information is that players can pre-register for the game now; additionally, players on Android devices can sign up to get into a closed beta starting today and running until just about the end of June. It seems like this game should make it to Switch, eventually, but unfortunately that was not part of today's announcment.The way I see it, if you're not completely sold on Final Fantasy XVI yet, there is at least a lot of good Final Fantasy VII coming... but probably not soon enough.