Naoki Hamaguchi Links Final Fantasy Vii Rebirth to 1996-style action shift
Naoki Hamaguchi said final fantasy vii rebirth sits inside a wider shift toward action-heavy RPG design, pointing to Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 as a current example. In his view, younger players want faster feedback than older command-based systems usually provide, and that push is reshaping how turn-based games are built.
Hamaguchi on younger players
“RPGs and JRPGs are increasingly brought up as legacy genres,” Hamaguchi said in an interview with Game Informer. He added, “It’s also true that when we look at younger players, they increasingly favor more real-time experiences in games” and “I believe they’re a generation that’s naturally accustomed to receiving instant feedback upon input.”
“With that context in mind, it may have been inevitable for turn-based games that incorporate real-time decision-making through action elements to gain prominence,” he said. That is the commercial and creative pressure point now facing role-playing games: the audience still values planning, but it increasingly expects that planning to resolve faster on screen.
Final Fantasy 7 Remake trilogy
Hamaguchi said the Final Fantasy 7 Remake team worried that moving the 1997 original into real-time action combat would “reduce the room for strategic thinking and the momentary tension of choosing commands that were present in the original game.” The studio answered that by folding elements of the original Final Fantasy 7 Active-Time Battle system into the Final Fantasy 7 Remake trilogy through an ATB bar that unlocks special moves after regular attacks.
That compromise is what makes his comments notable now. He is not arguing that strategy disappeared; he is saying the market is rewarding games that keep strategy but shorten the wait between input and payoff, which is why Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 fits the conversation so neatly.
1996 to 2008
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was far from the first game to blend real-time elements with turn-based combat. Super Mario RPG on SNES did it in 1996, Lost Odyssey used similar elements in 2008 on Xbox 360, and Nintendo’s Mario & Luigi franchise also employed the approach.
Hamaguchi’s remarks line up with what Final Fantasy 16 producer Naoki Yoshida said in 2022, when he argued that a modern audience would be more receptive to real-time combat in RPGs than to turn-based systems and added, “For the past decade or so, I’ve seen quite a number of opinions saying ‘I don’t understand the attraction of selecting commands in video games.’” For players watching the genre from the outside, the practical takeaway is simple: the debate is no longer whether action belongs in RPGs, but how much of it a big-budget series can add without losing the tactical pause that made the old model work.
