Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is juggling an impossible number of balls. In one fell swoop it’s aiming to remake the original’s shattering second act, continue where its 2020 predecessor ended, and set up an inevitable third game. But to make the burden bearable, the game’s development team is turning to a classic Star Wars sequel for some inspiration: The Empire Strikes Back.
"There is a lot you can learn from that film in terms of how to do a second part of a trilogy well," producer Yoshinori Kitase says in an interview with GamesRadar. "You've got the setup, the setting, the characters, who they are, all explained in the first part. The real role of a second part of a trilogy is to deepen that, explore it further, go into the relationships between the characters and how they relate to each other a lot more, which is very much what we focused on here." Those interpersonal relationships are partly why every character combo will also have a special team-up attack.
