Even just a handful of months after its launch, the Switch 2 is proving to be a particularly compelling console for third-party developers. One of the biggest surprises was the announcement that not only would Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade launch on 22nd January 2026, but it would be followed by both Rebirth and the currently untitled third entry in the Remake Trilogy.
To find out more about the process in bringing the games to the Switch 2, we recently spent some time with series director Naoki Hamaguchi. We talk over how he got into game development, how Remake was optimised for Nintendo’s new console, and how the team was influenced by a little game called Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
We also had another go with the Remake demo on Switch 2, all in handheld mode, and it’s not hyperbole to call this is thing astonishing. The visuals are near indistinguishable from the PS5 version, and although frame rate is capped at 30fps, it felt much smoother and stable than the official figures would have you believe. Provided the full game is up to scratch, this is almost certainly a ‘miracle port’, and it’s comfortably the best-looking game on Switch 2 so far.
So without further ado, let’s dive into our conversation with Hamaguchi-san…
Nintendo Life (Ollie Reynolds): Am I right in thinking you were inspired by Final Fantasy VI to get into game development?
Naoki Hamaguchi: Yes that’s absolutely right. I think I was in secondary school, so I was still fairly young back then. But even as a child, I remember seeing that: the ensemble cast with their own stories to tell, the setting, the emotional and dramatic storytelling. It was amazing, and it’s not a movie, but a piece of digital entertainment I could become involved with.
It was very vague at that point, there was nothing specific in my head, but I thought it would be great if I would get involved in this kind of thing when I’m older. So yes, it was definitely from Final Fantasy VI.
So how does it feel to go from being a fan of Final Fantasy to now leading the development on the Final Fantasy VII Remake trilogy?
I was inspired by Final Fantasy when I was a kid, it made me want to go into games at some point.
So I was inspired by Final Fantasy when I was a kid, it made me want to go into games at some point. Then I joined Square Enix some time after university and I’ve been working here for over 20 years now – maybe 24, 25 years, I’d say – working on Final Fantasy that whole time, slowly growing and learning more about it.
In some ways, I’ve been brought up by Final Fantasy and I’ve learned so much about it over the years. So the feeling that I have now is very much the idea that I want to give back to the series that has really taught me so much and given me so much. So that’s where my mind and my heart are at the moment.
How much pressure do you feel to ensure that the trilogy lives up to fans’ expectations. And as a fan yourself, do you have you own personal expectations that you’d like to meet?
My honest feeling is that yes, there is pressure, I can’t deny that, but I don’t really let it get on top of me. It’s just so satisfying and rewarding to have so many people out there waiting for your game. Having so many people play and enjoy these games is really special, so I’m having a lot of fun with it at the same time.
One other thing is that the team we have working on this series is just really, really great. I’m blessed to have it, and it really supports me in making these games. It contains a lot of new people, people like myself who were fans of the original games, but then we also have a number of creators who worked on the original Final Fantasy VII. So people like Tetsuya Nomura, Yoshinori Kitase, Motomu Toriyama, Kazushige Nojima…
Having them there really helps to ground it in the original and keep that essence of what made Final Fantasy VII what it was. In some sense, if it was just me and I was responsible for everything, then it might wind up becoming my personal take on it as a fan. But together, we’re able to determine what is most important for the fans and create a modern piece of entertainment that still retains the core essence.
With that in mind, how confident are you that the upcoming third game will deliver a satisfying conclusion?
Well obviously, there’s no way I can tell you today how this ends what happens in the conclusion of the trilogy. But the game itself is coming along really well, the story is all fixed down and final now, and we’ve moved onto working on the core gameplay experiences; I know exactly how that’s going to be structured to be really satisfying and delight the fans.
I’m really looking forward to the day when that can be brought to the players, and I am very confident that it will be a fitting conclusion to the trilogy.
I’ve played the demo for Final Fantasy VII Remake on Switch 2, and it’s remarkable just how good it looks and how well it runs – particularly in handheld mode. Can you talk about the development process for this and what challenges you faced?
First of all, thank you! That’s the best praise you could give me for that. I am confident at the moment, with all the games available on Switch 2, in terms of the most high-end graphical experience, I think we are the best – we really hit the peak on that game.
I love the Switch 2, I think it’s a great piece of hardware, it’s got impressive specifications, and it can do a lot. From a developers perspective, there’s a little kink in it where when you go from TV mode to handheld mode, there are obvious concerns about battery life, conservation, etc. And of course, the technical capacity of the system actually drops when you go into handheld mode. That can be a difficult thing for developers to get around.
…in terms of the most high-end graphical experience, I think we are the best
So when we started development, we ported the previous version to Switch 2 to see how it was running. As we’d expected, the frame rates in handheld mode were perhaps a little below where we wanted them. So we had to do some optimisation to ensure the frame rate was where it needed to be and the visuals were what fans were expecting, and I think we got a really good result from how we approached it.
It’s very character based, we’ve got lots of really iconic main characters like Cloud, Sephiroth, etc. And the way that they appeared as characters had to be right, they couldn’t be in any way inferior to how they will have appeared on the other platforms.
Most of this was in the lighting, and how the light affects their faces and expressions. We decided that even though lighting is quite a high-processing burden and would put a lot of pressure on frame rate, it had to basically stay the same.
So once we had that baseline down, we could look at things we could adjust, so things like shadows and the post-processing effect. A lot of this was down to our engineering team, and if you compare the games side-by-side, even in portable mode, they look really close. Some small effects you might be able to notice things have changed, but having the lighting remain the same was important to have the most impact on the players’ experience of the game.
Do you have a personal preference between TV mode and handheld mode?
I personally prefer the portable mode, that’s the one I’d most like people to try out and experience.
However, we really wanted as little difference as possible between TV mode and portable mode, so when you have TV mode, you have native 2K with a very stable resolution and frame rate. When it goes down into handheld, it can’t be maintained in the same way, so it does drop the resolution, but we’ve used DLSS to upscale it and get it as close as possible.
So even comparing side-by-side, you can see that the quality is very much the same. That’s why I want people to really pay attention to what we’ve done with the handheld mode.
The original Final Fantasy VII is also available on the Switch. Would you recommend newcomers try this out first before moving onto Remake, or would prefer the opposite?
In a lot of ways, that’s a difficult question to answer. A lot of people say to me that if they could go back and play the original Final Fantasy VII with no knowledge of the story and enjoy it for the first time, there’d be nothing better than that. The Remake is designed to be enjoyed by people who have played the original and know it well, and also by complete newcomers who know nothing about it.
So either way is fine, you’ll enjoy the game and have a similar experience whether you’ve played the original or not. If you have the opportunity, I’d like you to play the Remake first and enjoy it as a fresh experience on its own.
There are definitely nods in there, so if you’ve played [the original] before, you can see how we’ve reworked things, and that’s a completely legitimate way of playing. But if you’ve not played it before, I’d kind of like you to experience the Remake first with the new graphics and presentation and have that be your first impression of the game.
And like the Switch port of Final Fantasy VII, the remake has also introduced Streamlined Progression, which includes options for maximum health, damage, etc. What was the thinking behind this? And did you get any pushback from your colleagues for adding it?
So there’s two main points as to why we wanted to include these. The first one – and this kind of links into the fact that we wanted to announce that the whole trilogy would be coming to the Switch 2 – is that these are very large RPGs and we want people to play through the whole trilogy and experience everything. However, the time commitment is quite strong and that might put some people off. So to lower the barrier for entry is really the idea behind that. People can get through the games quicker and prepare themselves to play the later games in the series.
I always find myself wanting these kinds of functions when I play games
The second point is very much a personal thing for me. As a game creator, I spend a lot of time making games, and so I find that I have very little time to play games outside of that. And I imagine there are a lot of people in similar situations. I think it’s a shame.
I would really like to spend more time and see more of the game I’m playing, but if a powerful enemy shows up, I don’t want to be spending all the time getting stronger just to beat that one guy. If only there was a way to put my level up to maximum and then see more of the game. So I always find myself wanting these kinds of functions when I play games.
In terms of whether there was any pushback or negative response to that within the team, I don’t remember there being any. It might be the fact that I’m the director and it’s difficult to say these things to me, but I don’t remember there being anyone particularly worried.
Of course, after we announced it, there were people on social media concerned about whether it would affect playing the game properly. It’s important to stress that it’s an option. It’s important to provide choices that fit into what players are looking for today, and one of the parallels is the idea in streaming services like Netflix of the double-speed playback mode. When that was introduced, everybody thought it was terrible, but people have started to get used to it and accept it now as an option. But of course we’re not going to base the game balance on having those features available and therefore forcing you to use them. If you want to use it, you can.
As a Nintendo-focused site, one of the big RPG franchises for us is Xenoblade Chronicles. I’m curious if you’d played the Monolith-developed games and if these have influenced your approach to the Final Fantasy VII Remake trilogy?
I remember I was involved with the Xeno games we made in the past with Square Enix, but unfortunately I haven’t played the more recent ones from Nintendo, so I’m sorry about that.
But if you talk about other Nintendo games that have influenced me and I’ve taken a lot from – and you might think this is a bit of a cop out – then it’ll be Zelda: Breath of the Wild. It’s such an inspirational game and I’ve learned so much from that. Looking at how its affected the Remake series, moving from Remake to Rebirth and that switch to more open-world gameplay, Breath of the Wild was hugely influential there.
…telling a story around gameplay first, seeing how Zelda achieved this was definitely an inspiration for Rebirth
If you compare the kinds of games we make in Final Fantasy with Zelda, in some ways the approach is slightly different. Our games very much start with the story, and then we kind of work out what kind of gameplay experience we want to add to create that story and that feeling of being in that story.
I think Zelda does it the other way around, they start with the gameplay experience and then the setting and world is kind of fitted around that. So telling a story around gameplay first, seeing how Zelda achieved this was definitely an inspiration for Rebirth.
When you’re done with the third entry in the trilogy, will you be taking a much-deserved break? Or do you have other projects that you’re working on?
In my position, I am the director for the Final Fantasy VII Remake series, so my biggest focus at the moment is getting part three done and seeing fans reactions to that. In addition, I’m also the head of Creative Studio One, so that’s involved in making other games which I’m a part of.
One big thing I’m looking forward to in the future is having the team I’ve put together work on something new. One thing that’s common in the industry is that when a project is finished, the team is split and moved around, but that hasn’t happened here. We’ve basically got the same guys all the way from the beginning of the project right through to the end. So I’m really looking forward to the game that we look to create after – it could be a Final Fantasy, it could be something completely different… I’ve not decided yet.
But whatever it is, gamers who have paid attention and seen what we’ve done with the Remake trilogy, they’ll have great expectations and will look forward to seeing what the team come up with.
Are there any other Final Fantasy games in the series that you’d like to see get remade?
In terms of if the company thinks it’s a good idea and there’s a business opportunity there to do one of the older Final Fantasy games and remake it in a similar way, there’s a lot of them we haven’t done, so I definitely think we could.
However, I wouldn’t want it to be me that. The Final Fantasy series has taken up well over 10 years of my career as a creator, and it’s been great, I’ve really enjoyed it working on it. But if I was asked by the company to helm another Final Fantasy for another 10 years, that would probably be my career over by the time it’s done, so I would rather work on something completely new. I think the fans would probably appreciate something new too, maybe.
If there’s another younger creator within the company, someone who’s really passionate about Final Fantasy and wants to do a remake project, then I’d definitely back them up as much as I could; I just don’t want it to be me!
Finally, I just want to personally thank you for the work that you’ve done. Fans have been dreaming for a remake of Final Fantasy VII for years, and I think the results so far really speak for themselves. I can’t wait to play Remake, Rebirth, and the third game on the Switch 2.
I’m so happy that there are people out there with that passion for the game, and myself, I’m very much in the same boat. The love and affection I have for Final Fantasy is very much there, I really do love the games. I made a joke about it, how I’ve been working on this for 10 years and would like to try something different, and that’s funny, but the experience has just been amazing to work on this game for so long and really put everything I have as a creator into it. It really is the culmination of my whole career so far.
The love and affection I have for Final Fantasy is very much there
Getting the third game out there is very important and making sure it’s as good as it needs to be. I have a vision in my head of what the final version is going to look like, and I think it’ll be a really satisfying experience.
But obviously, before then, people who haven’t played Final Fantasy VII Remake yet, this is such a good opportunity to do so now that it’s coming out on the Switch 2. The whole series is coming to the Switch 2, so if you want to play it, have a go with the first one, you won’t regret it, and then we can all play the third game together and it enjoy it together in real time.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
Thanks to Naoki Hamaguchi for taking the time to speak to us. Further thanks go to Gavin Poffley for providing the translation, and to Tom Goldberger for arranging the interview.
Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade will launch on the Switch 2 on 22nd January, 2026.
