In the long arc of revisiting beloved worlds, something is always lost and something gained. Final Fantasy 7 Revelation returns players to Midgar — the mythic industrial city at the heart of a 1997 classic — but director Naoki Hamaguchi has chosen restraint over abundance, scaling the city down to fit an open-world structure and deliberately thinning the content that overwhelmed players in its predecessor. It is a quiet argument that meaning and mass are not the same thing.
Final Fantasy 7 Revelation scales down Midgar for open-world exploration
The city will retain its iconic identity, but the geography available for exploration has been reduced.
Mark
So Midgar is coming back, but smaller. How much smaller are we talking about?
Mimi
Hamaguchi didn't give exact percentages, but he was clear that you won't be able to visit all the slums or streets from Remake. It's been stripped down to fit the open-world format.
Luke
That's vague enough that we don't really know the scope. Is it 30 percent of the original Midgar? 50 percent? We're working from "a little different" and "some areas removed."
Mark
Why does it need to be smaller at all? Couldn't they just make it explorable?
Mimi
Linear corridors don't work well when you can parachute in from above and move freely. The architecture itself would feel wrong. You'd have invisible walls everywhere.
Luke
True, but that's a design constraint they created by choosing the open-world format. It's not inevitable—it's a choice they made.
Mark
Is the parachute scene from the original game actually happening, or is that speculation?
Mimi
Hamaguchi confirmed it directly. He said they're following the original's narrative moment where the party raids Midgar, and we know Revelation has parachuting mechanics.
Luke
He confirmed the narrative moment happens. He didn't confirm the parachute part—that's inference based on the game's mechanics.
Mark
What about the minigames? Are they just gone?
Mimi
Some are being removed or reduced. Rebirth had too many, players complained, and Revelation is trying to be more selective about what it includes.
Luke
Again, "some" and "reduced" don't tell us much. We don't know which minigames survive or how many are cut.
Der Puls
- Midgar, one of gaming's most iconic cities, is returning in Revelation — but stripped of the dense corridors and layered slums that defined its Remake incarnation.
- The tension is real: fans who spent dozens of hours memorizing every alley of Remake's Midgar will find a smaller, more selective version waiting for them.
- The redesign was forced by physics — Remake's linear corridors simply cannot coexist with an open world where players drop from airships by parachute.
- Rebirth's bloated map of minigames and checklists drew sharp criticism, and the development team is directly answering that backlash by cutting rather than adding.
- The goal is curation over density — a world where exploration feels like discovery, not obligation, and where what remains carries more weight because less surrounds it.
In the long arc of revisiting beloved worlds, something is always lost and something gained. Final Fantasy 7 Revelation returns players to Midgar — the mythic industrial city at the heart of a 1997 classic — but director Naoki Hamaguchi has chosen restraint over abundance, scaling the city down to fit an open-world structure and deliberately thinning the content that overwhelmed players in its predecessor. It is a quiet argument that meaning and mass are not the same thing.
Final Fantasy 7 Revelation will return players to Midgar, but the city they find will be a leaner, reshaped version of the one they explored in Remake. Director Naoki Hamaguchi confirmed the redesign was necessary to make the iconic location work within the game's new open-world framework — a structure that simply could not accommodate Remake's intricate, corridor-driven geography.
The narrative reason for the return mirrors the original 1997 game: the party raids Midgar to confront the scientist Hojo, parachuting into the city from above. Since Revelation already allows players to leap from their airship and descend by parachute, the developers had a natural way to recreate that classic moment. But the city waiting below will be noticeably smaller — some slums and streets from Remake will be absent, even as Midgar retains its visual and thematic identity.
The decision reflects a deliberate course correction from Rebirth, the previous entry, which drew widespread criticism for overwhelming players with side quests, minigames, and collectibles. Hamaguchi's team took that feedback to heart. Rather than filling Revelation's world to capacity, they are scaling back — removing or reducing minigames and resisting the impulse to pack every corner with optional content.
The philosophy is simple but meaningful: less can invite more. By being selective about what exists in the world, the developers hope exploration feels rewarding rather than exhausting. Midgar's redesign is the clearest expression of that idea — a city still recognizable, still significant, but made more purposeful by what has been left out.
Final Fantasy 7 Revelation will bring players back to Midgar, the walled city that defined the original 1997 game, but the version they encounter will look and feel fundamentally different from what they explored in Remake. Director Naoki Hamaguchi confirmed in an interview that the iconic location is being substantially redesigned to work within the game's new open-world structure—a shift that required stripping away much of what made the city feel dense and layered in the previous installment.
The return to Midgar will follow a narrative beat from the original Final Fantasy 7, where the party launches a raid on the city to confront the scientist Hojo. That sequence, which in the original game involved the crew parachuting into Midgar from above, will happen again in Revelation. Given that the new game allows players to leap from their airship and descend by parachute into the world below, the developers have a natural framework for recreating that iconic moment.
But getting there required difficult choices about what to keep and what to cut. Remake's version of Midgar was built almost entirely around linear corridors and narrow pathways—a design philosophy that worked perfectly for a game confined to a single location but becomes a problem when you're trying to let players explore freely from an airship. Hamaguchi acknowledged this head-on, explaining that the explorable Midgar in Revelation will be noticeably smaller. Players won't be able to visit all the slums or traverse all the streets they could in Remake. The city will retain its iconic visual and thematic identity, he said, but the actual geography available for exploration has been reduced.
This redesign reflects a broader shift in how the development team is thinking about open-world design. Rebirth, the previous entry in the remake trilogy, drew significant criticism from players who felt overwhelmed by the sheer volume of content scattered across its map—side quests, minigames, collectibles, and activities that could feel exhausting rather than inviting. Hamaguchi and his team took that feedback seriously. Rather than packing Revelation's world with as much as possible, they're deliberately scaling back, aiming for an experience that feels more curated and less burdensome.
The minigames that populated Rebirth are being reconsidered for Revelation. Some will be removed or reduced in number, a direct response to player complaints that the open world had become too cluttered with optional distractions. The goal, Hamaguchi explained, is to make the act of exploration itself feel rewarding rather than like a checklist to complete. By being more selective about what content exists in the world, the developers hope to create breathing room—moments where players can simply move through the landscape without feeling like they're missing something.
Midgar's redesign is a microcosm of this philosophy. The city will still be recognizable, still carry the weight of what it represents in the Final Fantasy 7 story, but it will be a leaner, more purposeful version of itself. What remains will matter more because there's less of it. For players who spent dozens of hours navigating Remake's intricate corridors, the change will be noticeable. For those coming to Revelation fresh, it may simply feel like a world designed with intention rather than density.
Bemerkenswerte Zitate
You won't be able to visit all of the slums or all the streets you were able to go around in. It's going to be a bit different in Revelation.— Director Naoki Hamaguchi
We faced that same criticism for Rebirth, particularly with the minigames. We tried to address and alleviate their concerns, so we are putting some changes in Revelation so that the open-world experience becomes more enjoyable.— Director Naoki Hamaguchi
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