Final Fantasy VII Rebirth was released a few months after Final Fantasy XVI, with many assuming that the latter would take ideas from the former. It turns out that isn’t the case for Rebirth, but it could be the case for the third game, whatever that ends up being called.
Speaking with IGN SEA, Director Naoki Hamaguchi was asked if the 16th entry in the franchise inspired Rebirth in any way but that isn’t the case. Hamaguchi says both games were developed at around the same time and though he did like some ideas from XVI, they weren’t implemented in the final product.
"It is very often so that,even if there are other titles in which the timelines of development align or overlap, it can be pretty challenging to actually implement things from another title into our own simply because the overall structure is already constructed or determined early on," Hamaguchi says. "So yeah, looking at the Active Time Lore or some of the cinematic elements of expression they deployed in Final Fantasy XVI, there were certainly a lot of elements that were inspiring or very intriguing...but it was quite difficult to implement."
Based on the interview, it seems like the Final Fantasy VII Rebirth Director did like some of the ideas XVI presented. Even if he wasn’t able to use them in Rebirth, there’s a very good chance that these more cinematic elements could appear in the final game.
One could argue that Final Fantasy VII Remake inspired XVI quite a bit since both are linear JRPGs with excellent battle systems. Fans also had mixed opinions when it came to these two games since the former was more like a linear action game while the latter was too much like Devil May Cry. What matters is that they’re both good Final Fantasy games.
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Both Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and Final Fantasy XVI are readily available on the PlayStation 5. Square Enix also confirmed that XVI is coming to PC, so here’s hoping that Rebirth follows that trend.