The shape of the trilogy
🏙️ Remake (2020)
Midgar only: the first few hours of the 1997 game expanded to forty, ending with the party leaving the city and the Whispers — the arbiters of fate — defeated. Intermission, Yuffie's episode, came with the 2021 Intergrade version.
🌍 Rebirth (2024)
From Kalm to the Forgotten Capital: the Nibelheim flashback, Junon, Costa del Sol, the Gold Saucer, Gongaga, Cosmo Canyon, Nibelheim itself and the Temple of the Ancients. In the original that is disc one; here it is a hundred hours.
❓ Part three
Announced as in development the day Rebirth shipped, and named Final Fantasy VII Revelation at Summer Game Fest 2026: out 8 April 2027 on PS5, Switch 2, Xbox Series X|S and PC. Square Enix has said the story was finished by January 2025, and the gap is about three years against the four between the first two.
What Rebirth changes, without spoiling how
- Zack is alive in a world that runs beside this one, and the game cuts to him. The original's ending for him is the thing the trilogy is arguing with.
- The Whispers are gone as a system and present as a question: every departure from 1997 is something the story now has to own.
- The Nibelheim flashback is played, not narrated, and it is the first chapter.
- The ending of the Forgotten Capital is the trilogy's central change and the reason chapter 14 is discussed more than the other thirteen together.
- Cait Sith, Vincent and Cid arrive where they did in 1997; only the first is playable.
Still to verify
Cross-checked on 16 September 2026 against Square Enix's release history and Wikipedia, with the interviews it cites on the third part. What is still unverified is the only thing reading cannot settle — nobody here has played it.