Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is little over a month away from release, and, in addition to the game's highly anticipated continuation of Remake’s story, players can also look forward to a whole host of lighthearted side content.
We already knew that Rebirth was set to feature several minigames, but in a new video interview with Game Informer, game director Naoki Hamaguchi teased that there’ll be “loads” for players to dive into. In particular, the chocobo racing minigame was pointed to as the one which has undergone the most changes from the original Final Fantasy 7.
“We've adapted the chocobo race into a very modern racing game, so that’s quite a big difference from the original,” Hamaguchi said.
In a separate interview with IGN, Hamaguchi previously revealed that chocobos in the races can wear different equipment to boost their stats, and race on a wide variety of courses. At the time, he stated that players will be able to spend “copious” hours on chocobo racing alone.
Despite this, chocobo racing isn’t Hamaguchi’s personal favorite minigame in Rebirth: “There’s so many that we’ve worked really hard on, but personally, I really like the card game,” he told Game Informer.
Speaking more about Rebirth’s minigames, he added that the CPR game is still included, but “we changed it slightly,” so it remains to be seen what that looks like in its modernized form. Otherwise, perhaps disappointingly for fans, “there is no snowboarding” in Rebirth.
Elsewhere in the interview, Hamaguchi was asked if Final Fantasy’s chocobos smell bad, to which he suggested that their scent “might be similar to a horse.” Given that they’re housed in ranches and stables, that’s not too surprising, I suppose.
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is set to release on February 29 on PlayStation 5.
For more games like Final Fantasy, be sure to check out our lists of the best RPGs and best story games.
