By Online Games VIP Editorial
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IGN’s second Final Fantasy 7 Revelation preview details Highwind exploration, changed regions, Wutai traversal, and questions about side-content bloat.
Final Fantasy VII Revelation is being presented as a more open-ended conclusion to Square Enix’s three-game remake project, according to IGN’s second preview of the game. In a preview session lasting two hours, IGN’s Logan Plant explored the world from the Highwind airship, returned to locations from Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, and followed part of Yuffie’s story in Wutai.
IGN reports that the preview build offered broad freedom from Chapter 4, with Yuffie, Barret, Nanaki, Cid, and Vincent able to travel across the continent aboard the Highwind. The session also showed how familiar regions have changed and introduced traversal tools such as parachuting and a grapple gun. However, the preview leaves major questions about how Revelation will balance its larger scope with the side-content overload that Plant felt weakened parts of Rebirth.
IGN describes Revelation as a game that feels like the third act of a Japanese role-playing game. That structure follows the role it occupies within Square Enix’s remake series, which is retelling the original PlayStation Final Fantasy VII across three games. IGN’s preview places the playable party at a point where access to the Highwind opens up movement across an entire world map.
The preview began in Chapter 4, which IGN notes is relatively early when compared with the chapter counts of the previous games. Final Fantasy VII Rebirth had 14 chapters, while Final Fantasy VII Remake had 18. Despite that early story position, the preview allowed Plant to travel wherever he wanted rather than directing him through a narrow sequence of locations.
IGN’s session focused on the Highwind as both transportation and a way to view the world from above. Plant flew over areas previously explored in Rebirth, along with locations that were new to the preview. The airship could also be used to reach specific points on the ground by parachute, giving the world map a vertical element that was not present in the same form during the earlier exploration described by IGN.
That freedom is the clearest confirmed change in the preview. Instead of treating earlier regions as finished destinations, Revelation revisits them after events have altered the world. The result, as presented by IGN, is a map that combines familiar geography with new objectives, changed enemies, and additional routes through locations players may already recognize.
IGN reports that the Grasslands, one of the first open zones reached in Rebirth, felt substantially different in the preview. Earlier, the area had served as a relatively gentle introduction to the world outside Midgar. In Revelation, Plant encountered larger and more dangerous creatures roaming the region.
IGN attributes the environmental changes to an explanation from Revelation director Naoki Hamaguchi. According to the preview, the approaching meteor has caused seismic shifts that have changed the geography of familiar areas. This gives the returning locations an in-world reason to look and play differently, rather than presenting them as unchanged versions of their earlier appearances.
The publisher-specific reporting also states that side quests in these returning areas will be new. After landing in the Grasslands, Plant saw roughly a dozen markers pointing toward optional objectives across the region. That detail confirms that Revelation is not simply reusing the earlier map as a backdrop for the main story. It is adding another layer of activities to spaces players have already visited.
IGN’s preview also shows how the Highwind affects the way those activities are approached. Players can parachute down and apparently choose their landing point within a region, allowing them to move toward a selected objective instead of beginning from a conventional entrance. The preview records this as a practical source of freedom, although it does not establish whether every location can be reached this way.
There are limits. IGN found that Wutai did not allow the same unrestricted landing approach used in the Grasslands. The preview does not explain all of the conditions governing airship landings, so the full rules for moving from the Highwind to the ground remain unconfirmed.
IGN spent much of the preview’s story-focused exploration in Wutai, Yuffie’s hometown. The preview describes the settlement as a fully realized location with tall buildings and a dense urban layout. That environment also serves as a showcase for the grapple gun, one of the traversal additions highlighted in the report.
The grapple gun allows Yuffie to pull herself toward specific points marked by the game’s interface. IGN makes clear that the tool is not an unrestricted grappling system: its use is limited to designated points. Even with that restriction, Plant found that it made movement through Wutai more engaging by adding another way to navigate the town’s vertical spaces.
IGN also encountered a grapple gun race in Wutai. The activity required Yuffie to reach the town’s highest point within a time limit. The preview confirms the existence of this event, but it does not provide enough information to establish how many similar challenges appear in the full game or whether they are required for story progress.
The road to Wutai was also where IGN spent the most time with Revelation’s combat. According to the preview, the basic system remains close to Rebirth’s approach. Combat director Teruki Endo told IGN that the team viewed the second game’s combat as having reached a perfected state, so the third game is focused on polish and giving players more freedom.
One confirmed part of that effort is the FITS system. IGN reports that FITS allows players to assign one of four classes to each party member. The supplied preview ends while Plant is discussing a newcomer, so it does not establish the full list of classes, how assignments affect combat, or how the system interacts with the established party abilities.
Analysis: freedom could help, but more content may not solve the bloat problem
IGN’s preview presents a meaningful player-facing tension. The Highwind, parachute landings, and returning regions all point toward a structure that gives players more control over where they go and what they do. That could make optional content easier to approach on the player’s own terms, particularly when a large map offers many competing objectives.
That is analysis of IGN’s preview, not an OnlineGamesVIP hands-on verdict. The source records Plant’s personal concern that Rebirth’s checklist-style activities and mandatory minigames made that game feel bloated. Revelation appears to increase the amount of content in its returning zones, including new side quests and activities, so the size of the problem may depend less on the number of tasks than on how clearly the game lets players prioritize them.
Parachuting could matter here because it changes the cost of starting an activity. If players can leave the Highwind, land near a selected objective, and return to exploration without following a fixed route, optional content may feel less like a checklist imposed on the journey. That is an interpretation of the traversal design shown in the preview, not a confirmed statement about the completed game’s pacing.
The changed Grasslands also suggest a different purpose for revisiting old areas. Rather than simply extending the same map, Revelation can use environmental changes and stronger enemies to make familiar regions feel like part of a later stage of the larger story. Whether that difference is enough to make repeated locations feel fresh will depend on the variety of objectives and encounters, which the preview does not fully demonstrate.
Wutai offers a separate test for the design. Its dense vertical layout gives the grapple gun an obvious role, while the timed race shows how movement can become an activity in its own right. For players who enjoy exploration challenges, that may add texture to the world. For players already wary of mandatory diversions, the important unanswered issue is how often these activities interrupt the main path and whether they remain optional.
IGN’s session provides no release date in the supplied source, and it does not confirm the platforms, final scope, or launch plans for Final Fantasy VII Revelation. It also does not establish how many chapters the full game contains, how much of the world map can be visited immediately, or whether all regions from the earlier games return in altered form.
The preview does not give a complete account of the story. It confirms access to part of Yuffie’s political quest in Wutai, but it does not explain the quest’s outcome, its wider role in the plot, or how the other returning and new party members are used across the campaign. Those details remain outside the evidence provided here.
Combat is also only partially documented. The preview confirms that the system remains similar to Rebirth and that FITS introduces four class assignments for each party member. It does not explain the class effects, progression rules, party combinations, difficulty balance, or how Vincent and Cid function in battle. More information will be needed before the new system can be judged beyond its basic structure.
The next useful evidence will be a longer look at the world map outside a timed preview session, especially how players move between main objectives and optional activities. Further combat demonstrations should clarify FITS, while additional coverage of Wutai and the returning regions can show whether Revelation’s freedom produces meaningful choices or simply a larger list of tasks. For now, IGN’s report confirms an expansive final chapter with strong exploration tools, while leaving the game’s pacing and content management as its central open questions.