By Jacob Miller | Aug 01, 2026
Hamaguchi elaborated on his thinking during an interview at the Final Fantasy 14 Fan Festival in Berlin in late July 2026. He acknowledged that Rebirth's approach, which did not clearly communicate what rewards each side quest or optional activity offered, led some players to feel obligated to complete content they had no genuine interest in simply to avoid missing something important. In some cases, that sense of obligation contributed to burnout, with certain players abandoning the game before finishing it rather than pushing through content that felt unrewarding to them personally.
How the New Reward System Will Work
The solution Hamaguchi described is straightforward in concept but meaningful in practice. Each side activity in Revelation will offer a reward that directly corresponds to the nature of the content. Combat-focused challenges and optional battles will award items or enhancements that improve a player's effectiveness in fights. Queen's Blood matches, the card game that returns in Revelation with some adjustments, will award new Queen's Blood cards rather than anything relevant to combat. The intention is that players who are primarily interested in combat can pursue combat activities and feel confident that they are not missing essential upgrades by skipping the card game. Players who enjoy the card game can do the same in reverse.
Hamaguchi did not indicate any plans to reduce the overall amount of optional content in the game. The goal is not to make Revelation shorter or less dense but to make players feel more informed and more free in how they engage with what is available. Knowing what you are going to get before committing to an activity changes the psychology of open-world exploration significantly, removing the sense that any skip could result in a missed upgrade that makes the game harder later on.
Broader World Design Changes Coming in Revelation
The reward structure change is part of a wider set of improvements aimed at making the open world feel fresher and less repetitive than Rebirth's approach. Square Enix is adding more vertical terrain throughout the world, introducing the ability for players to dive directly onto the map from the Highwind airship, and including flying Chocobo traversal as a movement option. Together, these additions are intended to make exploration feel more dynamic and give players more ways to move through the world beyond standard ground traversal. The overall scale of the open world is also confirmed to be larger than Rebirth's, meaning the improvements to how it functions are particularly important.
Final Fantasy 7 Revelation is currently scheduled to launch in spring 2027 across PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC. Whether Square Enix succeeds in applying the new reward system consistently across all of the game's activities, particularly in allowing combat-focused players to bypass mini-games entirely without feeling penalised, will ultimately be judged by players once the game arrives. But the direction Hamaguchi has described suggests a development team that listened carefully to feedback from Rebirth and is genuinely trying to address the friction points that prevented some players from reaching the end of that game.
