If you’ve already completed the first disc of the Final Fantasy 7 Remake, you’re probably encountering one of the downsides of episodic gaming. You might want to play more, but you have no idea when the next part comes out or how many parts there will even be. We can probably expect to see an FF7 Remake Part 3 at the minimum, so get ready to wait for quite a while.
“We have a general idea of how the story will play out, but we haven’t decided exactly [how many parts], nor can we confirm anything,” FF7 Remake Producer Yoshinori Kitase reportedly said according to VGC. “There’s speculation that it will be three parts, but we’re just doing things one step at a time.”
Why would there be an FF7 Remake Part 3? One of the reasons behind that is simple: the discs.
Three discs, three parts
The original Final Fantasy 7 was a big game for its time, so much so that it released on three CD-ROMs. However, the situation with FF7’s three discs is not quite as simple as it might seem.
Players working their way through the original game on the PlayStation would eventually find themselves prompted to switch to another disc. Technically, all of the game is on all three discs; it’s the massive file size of the cutscenes that required multiple discs and prompted the switches.
That said, these disc switches still more or less split the story into three parts. As a general rule, most stories are split into three parts, too — the beginning, the middle, and the end. Part 1 has shown us the beginning of Cloud’s adventure with his friends. Presumably, Part 2 would cover the middle bits, and Part 3 would feature an epic conclusion.
FF7 Remake Part 3 won’t be the same as Disc 3
The splitting of the story into three parts seems simple enough, but there’s one other problem: we’ve already gone a little off track. There’s still areas from the first disc of the original Final Fantasy 7 that we haven’t yet seen in the FF7 Remake.
For example, we don’t visit the Temple of the Ancients or the Forgotten Capital/Forgotten City in FF7 Remake Part 1; both of these locations are visited via the first disc of the original Final Fantasy 7 game. If we use the discs as a measuring stick, we’re already falling behind.
However, the third disc of the original game doesn’t cover quite as much as the other two. In fact, it really only has three major parts:
- The final dungeon
- Various sidequests for the end of the game.
- The final boss battles.
Part 1 is missing Disc 1 content, and Part 2 will likely be missing Disc 2 content. That said, there will be plenty of room to make up for these shortages in the FF7 Remake Part 3, even with any story additions that Square Enix may make in the end. A fourth or even fifth part is still possible, mind — I just don’t think it’s very likely.
