Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth’s Battle Director Reveals Which Character Was the Toughest To Design
Finding the spark.
Remaking a game like Final Fantasy 7 is a nearly impossible task. How do you redefine one of the most important games ever made, and make sure it brings in new fans without alienating the old? When the Remake trilogy was announced, it was an unprecedented project, something we’d never seen in video games. Now, in retrospect, we know the successes and failures of what Square Enix has done with two games.
One factor there’s almost no debate on, though, is Remake and Rebirth’s universally beloved battle system. It’s a masterful modernization of the series’ iconic combat, and a passion project for battle director Teruki Endo – who always wanted to work on a Final Fantasy game. During the Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2025, Endo gave a presentation on crafting the innovative combat system, and Inverse had an exclusive interview to learn even more.
“I didn’t really look at different Final Fantasy titles, as I felt like if I leaned too much on them, it would prevent me from pushing the envelope. I tried to look at it from a very sort of flat and non-biased way,” Endo tells Inverse, “I wanted to take the feeling of fun of a command-based battle, that feeling you get, not necessarily the system itself. So I built the system from scratch, and it might have been a coincidence that parts of it felt similar to other games [like Final Fantasy XIII].”
Despite the similarities to past games, like the Stagger system, Endo says he was more focused on harnessing the “feeling” of fun and satisfaction the original’s command battles had.
Endo was hired by Square Enix early in the Final Fantasy 7 Remake project. It was already decided that the game would use an action-based combat system, but past that, there was no real definition to what that system would look like. Before joining Square, Endo worked on planning for the Monster Hunter series, including as lead game designer on Monster Hunter: World. During that time, he says he accumulated knowledge working on the various action elements of Monster Hunter that worked to his advantage, and when combined with Square’s technology and unique skills, it created a “chemical reaction.”
But that core question of how to create something innovative that still held true to the original game was at the heart of everything – both in terms of the challenges and opportunities. Of course, one of the unique aspects was that this Remake trilogy was being split into three different games, and that meant the combat system would need to be dynamic enough to grow across each game.
Endo says he wanted players to feel like Summons were fighting alongside them, which is why they’re present in battle and not a single-use spell, like in the original.
But ironically that wasn’t at the top of Endo’s mind, as his style instead focuses on the immediate. That even applied to the game’s Materia system, as Endo wasn’t concerned with keeping more powerful Materia for later games, but rather what would result in the best experience for Final Fantasy 7 Remake at that time, and then again with Rebirth.
“I don’t really give too much thought in terms of long-term planning, but put my all into whatever I’m working on. If I think too much about what’s supposed to come ahead, I get too tied up in that thinking, feeling like whatever I put in the moment will be incomplete,” Endo says, “I want to put my full focus into whatever project I’m on, then add to it and build from there. I think that will eventually lead to a better conclusion, and a similar approach was used for the Materia system.”
But before Materia could be properly integrated into the combat system, there was a key piece that needed to be solidified, one that Endo says was the hardest element to get right – Active-Time Battle, better known as ATB in the decades-long franchise. In the original Final Fantasy 7, it signified the idea that it’s not a typical turn-based game, but rather a gauge that each character fills up, and when full, initiates their turn.
According to Endo, this is where he spent the most time redesigning combat, as getting the right balance of elements was incredibly difficult.
“You need to look at, for example, how much the ATB gauge accumulates. Because you might be taking damage, and still having it accumulate. Or blocking. You need to balance how the gauge fills up, and how the player uses ATB charges,” Endo says, “In the trial and error experimentation, at one point, it got too easy to fill the ATB gauge. You’d get hit, the gauge would fill up, and you’d retaliate. It felt very simple and repetitive, and I had to tweak and adjust it.”
Teruki Endo worked at Capcom for years before joining the Final Fantasy 7 team, on titles including Monster Hunter Tri, Monster Hunter 4: Ultimate, Dragon’s Dogma Online, and Monster Hunter: World.
That tweaking and tuning of the system played out across development before the release of Final Fantasy 7 Remake, and then created a solid base that could be built upon for the release of Rebirth.
During the initial planning, it was decided that each playable character would be given a specific role to fulfill within the party, which then determined their abilities. Barret was meant to be a tank and protector, Cloud an all-around damager, Aerith a healer and magic booster, and Tifa would focus on increasing stagger quickly.
These roles haven’t deviated from the initial planning phase of Remake, as Endo notes he’d rather completely build a character from scratch than change how their role functions within the larger combat system. Of course, that complicates the role that Rebirth’s new characters play in the party, and Endo says Cait Sith was easily the hardest playable character to design.
“With Cait Sith and that element of luck being a very strong component, versus this being an action-based combat system – those two elements seem almost contradictory to each other,” Endo says, “No matter how well you do the actions, luck changes the outcomes. So it’s typically not a good idea to put those elements in. But that said, luck is a core component of Cait Sith. So my challenge was trying to figure out how I can incorporate the element of luck without making it unfair to the player.”
The implementation of Cait Sith in Rebirth seems to mostly achieve that, giving Cait Sith a completely distinct combat style that often focuses on support and buffs – but can benefit from the luckier you are. Equally interesting is that it sounds like the plan for when characters are introduced has pretty much remained the same from the very start.
At least so far, Cait Sith wast the most difficult party member to design.
In a post-interview follow-up, director Naoki Hamaguchi says, “All of the playable characters implemented for both Remake and Rebirth were structured according to the initial directions we set for titles.”
Hamaguchi confirms Red XIII and Cait Sith’s placement as playable characters matches those initial plans, and apparently there weren’t ever any plans for additional playable characters in either Remake or Rebirth.
That’s a testament to how solid of a foundation was set with Remake, that Endo and the rest of the team were able to nearly seamlessly build on what was there and enhance it for Rebirth. In previous interviews, Hamaguchi has also talked about how beneficial it was to have the same development team between both games.
But that’s not to say elements of Rebirth didn’t change heavily during development, and one of those, in particular, was the final sequence of boss battles at the end of the game.
“We wanted players to have that sense of a finale, but at the same time, we have to provide a sort of hurdle to overcome. It was a balance, because we don’t want to interrupt the battle and prevent the players from pouring themselves in emotionally,” Endo says, “There was some thinking behind making the difficulty a bit less that a typical boss battle, but as we were building it and receiving feedback, there were comments that we wanted more bit. So it ended up becoming difficult.”
Endo adds that he thinks it’s important to have extra challenges outside of the story, for players who want a bit more. That’s why ultra-hard additions like Weiss from Episode Intermission were made, for players who “want to enjoy the game for as long as possible.”
The finale of Rebirth was initially meant to be easier, to not interfere with the emotion — but after feedback Endo and the team adjusted it to be more challenging.
After hearing more about Endo’s approach to design, it’s abundantly clear how Rebirth reinforces the idea of continuously building a system. The foundations of the combat system remained the same, but there were meaningful expansions and tweaks added – like the Synergy abilities, additional Materia, and new abilities.
While the team, including Endo, are still cagey talking about what’s coming in the third game, it does give some sense of what we might see. The system that’s in place is already incredible, but Endo’s approach to singularly focusing on his current project holds a lot of promise for the finale of the trilogy. And in retrospect, Endo feels satisfied with how things have already come together, and like the threads of what the team set up are finally paying off.
“Looking at it from a career perspective, I would always love to make something more original,” Endo says, “But looking at it from the Remake project, I feel like we started out with Remake and then what we did with Rebirth, everything finally kind of meshed properly. So from that perspective, it went well.”
