FF7 Rebirth Glitch Proves One Missing Feature Needs To Be In FF7 Remake Part 3 (2024)

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is a huge, feature-rich experience, but that doesn't mean that every good idea that could have made it into the game is there. As the middle chapter of the classic FF7 story, Rebirth adds new story segments, mini-games, and a heap of semi-open-world side content, ballooning things into an experience that can take over 100 hours for dedicated players. It's almost easier to complain that there's too much than argue that there's too little, and minor gripes like the inefficient methods for swapping materia don't significantly damage the overall experience.

FF7 Remake Part 3 is still likely two or three years away, but there's a lot of interesting room for speculation about how it might further iterate on the formula. FF7 Rebirth marked a dramatic increase in scale from FF7 Remake, and improvements to side content, combat possibilities, and more helped make up for any areas where it felt comparatively lacking. FF7 Remake Part 3's biggest challenges will lie in opening up the world to aerial travel and bringing home a narrative that's made some divisive changes, but even small tweaks could play a major role in making it land.

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth Lacks A Day/Night Cycle

Time Doesn't Pass When Exploring FF7 Rebirth

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Despite how much time the party can spend running around vast expanses in FF7 Rebirth, its open zones remain static in one key regard, as the time of day never changes. Day/night cycles are a common way to make video game worlds feel more alive, acknowledging (and typically accelerating) the passage of time even when the story isn't moving forward. From an aesthetic standpoint, they provide appreciable environmental variety, often completely changing the atmosphere of locations depending on the time of day.

Although there's no typical way to see nighttime versions of many areas in the game, an unusual glitch actually seems to make that more or less possible. Reddit user Perfect_Screw-Ups posted a video showcasing a bug where some value in the game's lighting system appears to have gone awry, resulting in a much darker than normal version of the Corel region. Even though it's not as carefully curated as an intentional nighttime take on the area might be, the result is still cool, and it's hard not to look at it and wish that the game had a similar feature.

Although the main story of FF7 Rebirth is intent on always keeping things fresh, the World Intel material scattered throughout the game's zones can start feeling repetitive a lot more quickly. There are a number of ways to address this problem, but a day/night cycle would be one of the most straightforward tweaks to keep things from becoming stale. Nights could bring out different monsters or environmental conditions, possibly helping to restore some element of mystique to areas like the Corel Desert that lost much of the enigmatic quality they possessed in the original FF7.

There Might Be A Reason For FF7 Rebirth's Static Clock

The Main Story Of FF7 Rebirth Takes Precedence

The lack of a day/night cycle in FF7 Rebirth is probably a result of more than just idle negligence, however, and Square Enix may very well have a good reason for excluding it from FF7 Rebirth. There's no doubt that the main story of FF7 Rebirth is more important than the exploration side of things, and the game's sense of timing is generally geared around that prerogative. Certain key scenes take place at very particular times of day, and it's easier to set up moments on a schedule when the passage of time is otherwise static.

There's also an argument to make that a day/night cycle would come with immersion compromises of its own, as the story of FF7 is something of a ticking clock scenario. Implying that multiple days passed exploring certain reasons wouldn't necessarily make sense, and it certainly wouldn't help prove Avalanche's conviction about stopping Shinra and Sephiroth. All the same, FF7 Rebirth throws in enough trivial side content that this seems like a fairly minor concern, and Cloud certainly seems happy to while away the time playing card games and running around an amusem*nt park.

FF7 Remake Part 3 Could Add A Day/Night Cycle

Creativity Could Solve Some Of The Challenges

Despite the challenges that the concept presents, it would still be nice for FF7 Remake Part 3 to implement a day/night cycle in one form or another. There are certainly ways to do it in a limited capacity with minimal consequences, even if Square Enix isn't willing to commit to fully implementing the feature. The most conservative approach would be reserving it for post-game, but plenty of half-solutions like having day/night exploration after completing the main story events in an area or implementing various toggle options could also be viable.

As shown by the video of the FF7 Rebirth glitch, simply having more areas accessible at night would do a lot on its own, and it would be nice if FF7 Remake Part 3 revisited some regions at a different time of day, even if time itself remained static. Making areas that have already appeared in the first two games fresh again is going to be one of the biggest challenges of designing FF7 Remake Part 3, and this approach certainly wouldn't hurt.

The lack of a day/night cycle certainly didn't kill FF7 Rebirth, and FF7 Remake Part 3 should do just fine without one. As far as a feature wishlist goes, however, it's certainly a tempting concept. Making the world more dynamic outside the main story content and major side quests is one of the most important challenges for FF7 Remake Part 3 to solve, and if it's willing to take some new opportunities, the game has a chance at being even better than Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth.

Source: Perfect_Screw-Ups/Reddit

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is the sequel to Final Fantasy 7 Remake and will see Cloud and his friends set off beyond the walls of Midgar to explore the world, stop Sephiroth's machinations, and see the world outside their slum prison. Now that the whispers of fate no longer guide the characters along the pre-destined path set in the original PlayStation classic Final Fantasy 7, the heroes (and villains) will shape the future. The game will still visit prominent locales and revisit crucial story points, but it will be a more significant departure from the first game from the source material.

RPG

Franchise

Final Fantasy

Platform(s)

PlayStation 5

Released

February 29, 2024

Developer(s)

Square Enix