Whether you enjoyed it or not!
In case you missed it and don’t have a PS5, Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade came and went, and offered up a side story featuring Yuffie. It was bite-sized but fun, giving us a glimpse into the personal life of the character that we didn’t really get before. And according to co-director Naoki Hamaguchi, pieces of Intergrade will spill over into Part 2: whenever that comes out.
Speaking to The Washington Post, Hamaguchi notes that the team-up mechanic, at the very least, will make it into the next part: “there’s another element introduced: combo [moves] where Yuffie and Sonon team up … which makes for a different feel in battle strategy. I would like to leverage these, including other elements we tried out in Intermission [Intergrade], in our next story”
Co-director Motomu Toriyama also chimes in and says that this is still planned to be a “culmination” of all previous FFVII works in the past, which is why Nero and Weiss (from Dirge of Cerberus) appear in Intergrade. He clarifies: “For unfamiliar enemies like Weiss or Nero, I think being able to convey that they have a kind of deep darkness about them is plenty. At the same time, those who are familiar with them can make a stronger connection to the overarching Final Fantasy VII world by having them appear in the narrative as they are in their respective source material.”
Toriyama says that in the end, he hopes to make a “more suspenseful story” but injecting these new elements in, like Wutai’s bigger role in fighting Shinra, which was a focus of Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade. While some people are always going to prefer the original, I think they’ve done a good job at differentiating, and justifying, the Remake. As we all know, how they stick the landing years (a decade?) from now is really going to count for a lot.
