Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth’s director chooses his favorite RPG The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt as the baseline for the upcoming JRPG.
Motomu Toriyama, co-director of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, was asked about his favorite role-playing games outside of the Final Fantasy series, to which he supposedly named CD Projekt Red’s seminal fantasy game without hesitation.
Although the witcher’s third adventure wasn’t just a favorite of Toriyama’s, it also had a hand in how Final Fantasy Rebirth’s side quests were to be approached and executed. Toriyama goes on to explain, “Regarding titles like The Witcher 3, which has that open world role-playing type element, we did some extensive research into these types of titles .” The third installment of The Witcher series was then studied “as a baseline” for the Final Fantasy Rebirth’s side quest approach.
There’s no doubt The Witcher 3 Influenced or inspired numerous open-world, action RPG titles since its debut eight years ago, even though the little side quests are just that they were just as impactful as the main quests were allowing players to experience more than just the main story, which in the long run helps build the world just a little bit more. It’s thanks to this that Square Enix would want to take on this approach and produce meaningful side quests, as this was a main focus of criticism of Final Fantasy 16.
Overall, the manifestations of this approach in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth should manifest with the returning world map from the original installment of the classic back in 1997, along with Sephiroth reportedly showing in bigger ways within the environment itself.
The remake/sequel will also be adding a new city that has never been featured in the original. This should at least come in handy as the extra exploration space would add to the collection of cards in the new deck-building minigame
