Stop the Lie: Final Fantasy VII Rebirth Demands Prior Games

Square Enix has a problem with the truth. When asked whether players could enjoy Final Fantasy VII Rebirth without first playing Remake, co-director Motomu Toriyama gave a definitive answer: yes, the studio had made preparations so newcomers could have a complete experience. After finishing the game, that claim reads like a spectacular lie.

Rebirth is not a standalone entry point. It is the second installment of a three-game story, structured as an unbroken narrative that demands you know what came before. The "preparations" Square Enix mentions amount to a recap menu—insufficient for understanding a game that builds directly on Remake's events and assumes familiarity with nearly three decades of Final Fantasy VII lore. To play Rebirth cold is to walk into the middle of a conversation and pretend you've been there from the start.

This isn't a new problem in gaming. The pattern repeats across franchises: developers claim their sequels are accessible entry points, marketing teams amplify the message, and players who take the bait end up confused and frustrated. BioWare did this with Mass Effect 3, even building dialogue variations for players without imported saves from earlier games, yet the third game still felt structurally dependent on choices made in the first two. Dragon Age positions itself as an anthology while leaving narrative threads dangling between entries. Assassin's Creed cycles through protagonists and settings but maintains a present-day storyline so fractured that characters disappear without resolution, leaving newcomers and veterans alike feeling shortchanged.

The business logic is transparent: companies fear telling potential buyers that their new game requires dozens of hours of prior investment. A $70 purchase feels less appealing when you learn it demands catching up on previous titles. But this fear has consequences. When developers design sequels to theoretically work as standalone products, they water down the storytelling. Characters and plot threads get underserved because the game must operate under the assumption that some players may not know they exist. Consequences feel hollow. Payoffs feel muted. The narrative becomes a lowest-common-denominator version of itself, shaped not by what the story needs but by what marketing thinks new players can tolerate.

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is unapologetic about what it is—a continuation of a meta-narrative spanning nearly thirty years. The game doesn't pretend otherwise in its actual design. But Square Enix's public statements do, and that gap between what the company says and what the game actually demands creates a betrayal of trust. Remake itself was marketed as a modernized retelling of the classic PlayStation RPG, and when it turned out to be something else entirely—a narrative remix that plays with player expectations—newcomers reached its ending bewildered. Now they're being told the sequel needs no prior reading.

The industry's obsession with making every sequel an entry point stems from a legitimate market anxiety: long continuities can feel intimidating. Kingdom Hearts and The Legend of Heroes have both faced dismissal from potential players unwilling to invest the time and money required to catch up. That hesitation is fair. Video games demand more from consumers than most media—dozens of hours, significant expense, sustained attention. Watching Dune: Part Two requires one night of viewing. Playing through Remake takes substantially longer.

But the solution isn't to lie about what sequels are. Sequels are extensions of what came before. They build on worlds, characters, and themes established in earlier work. Treating them as if they should be approachable at any entry point doesn't democratize storytelling—it diminishes it. It's not gatekeeping to say that people should experience a readily available, long-running story from the beginning rather than have it capitulate to a watered-down version of itself. The Marvel Cinematic Universe faced criticism for Avengers: Infinity War feeling like an advertisement for other films, with meanings outsourced to previous entries. But that film was explicitly billed as a culmination, a grand finale. Meeting it on those terms means accepting that it depends on what came before.

Square Enix wants players to think Rebirth stands alone. The company's fear of proclaiming that a $70 product might benefit from context found in other games has led to bad advice and broken trust. The industry needs to stop treating continuity as a problem worth hiding. Not every story needs MCU-level baggage, but not everyone needs to be scared of experiencing something whole.