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Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth's ending might not have gone down brilliantly with absolutely everyone, but director Naoki Hamaguchi says that's fine since the team ultimately hoped to spark "speculation and discussion," and that's exactly what the ending has done.
We're not going to get into specific spoilers here, but it's safe to say that Rebirth takes the events of the original 1997 RPG and delivers them in a more complex, mysterious way. There's a lot more room for speculation on exactly what happened (although you can check out our handy guide to Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth's ending explained for a more detailed rundown), which all links into what the team at Square Enix was hoping to achieve. In a new interview shared by Square Enix, Hamuguchi says that fans have had the reaction he expected.
"We've had some people who are really positive towards the ending – they really liked it. On the other hand, we've had people who maybe weren't so keen on it and had more negative things to say," he begins.
"I think that both of those opinions are very valid and worthwhile," he continues, noting a similar sentiment shared by Final Fantasy 7 remake project producer and director of the original RPG, Yoshinori Kitase, and adding: "We wanted to inspire speculation and discussion among fans during the gap between the second and third game."
Just as the team hoped, this has been working out perfectly, to the point that now – over nine months since Rebirth's release – "people are still talking about it." Hamaguchi concludes: "You have positive takes and negative takes, interesting discussions and sometimes they all collide. That's basically the response we wanted to achieve."
Whether that discussion will be able to tide everyone over until the release of the third and final part of the Remake trilogy is another matter, though – it doesn't have a release date at the time of writing, so we could be waiting for some time yet. At the very least, the plot is complete, with the development team already at work on the finale.
