Final Fantasy 7 Revelation, the third and final entry in Square Enix’s FF7 remake trilogy, is set to deliver what Polygon describes as “the most staggeringly impressive open world I’ve ever seen.” The preview, based on a 45-minute hands-on session at Gamescom 2026, reveals that the game lets players fly an airship to literally any location in the world, seamlessly.
Following the conclusion of Rebirth, Aerith’s death still hangs over the story. Cid and Vincent Valentine now ride with the group. The mission sends them to Wutai, a nation ruled by ninjas. Along the way, they gain the Highwind, an airship that alters the course of the adventure.
The Highwind changes everything
Polygon’s hands-on preview calls the Highwind the crux of what makes Revelation so revelatory. The airship can be flown anywhere, parked, and left behind. Players can disembark from it, dive out of the hangar, deploy a parachute, and float down to earth, all without any breaks in the action.
Polygon’s demo picked up a few hours into the game, at the start of the fourth chapter, “House of Cards.” The core crew is aboard Cid’s airship. A crop of ominous kaiju-like creatures called Weapons have popped up around the planet.
Barret spends a lot of time shouting about how if they put his daughter, Marlene, in danger, those bastards are gonna regret it. Doesn’t matter that they’re 300 feet tall.
The immediate effect of being able to revisit every location from Rebirth is worldbuilding that gives the sense you’re occupying a real place, not a series of meticulously constructed levels. Polygon compares it to rotating your first level in Fez or taking off into orbit for the first time in No Man’s Sky.
“You don’t often get video game sequels that reuse environments in follow-up games,” the preview notes. “You rarely get games that reuse every environment.”
Rebirth’s world becomes Revelation’s foundation
The game renders every location from Rebirth exactly as it appeared in the earlier title, including the scooters of Costa del Sol. Polygon was able to visit Mideel, the Grasslands, Junon, Gongaga, Costa del Sol, and the Gold Saucer, and all of them are present.
The Wutai region has arrived in Final Fantasy 7 Revelation, and entering it during chapter four puts a temporary hold on your ability to move freely through side content, locking you into the main story mission instead.
The rest of the game, at least according to what Polygon played, keeps to the standard established in the trilogy’s previous two entries. It is clever and often silly without sacrificing dire narrative stakes. It’s as luxurious as ever.
“You can feel the Square Enix bucks dripping off every character model and baked into the background of every landscape,” the preview says.
The fighting blends real-time action with pause-time menus, and it still holds up well. Yet there are clear additions that might breathe new life into a system that has been around for seven years.
FITS system lets you swap classes mid-battle
The first new item added is the FITS system, which stands for Function-Integrated Tactical Suitwear. It allows you to change between four costumes instantly.
- Warrior
- Knight
- Black Mage
- Summoner
The outfits carry distinct move collections and stat boosts, which lets you remake your party setup while a fight is still going on. Polygon didn’t try out many FITS, once more pointing to the 45-minute limit, yet notes how it might unlock vast new choices for players who have reached high levels.
The two recruits each arrive with their own set of gear. One wields a staff that does negligible harm, while the other appears to lose life constantly, as though he were draped in leeches.
Vincent Valentine is an absolute monster — literally so. He can transform in battle into a giant wolf known as the Galian Beast, who tears through enemies like paper.
Polygon’s characters were around level 45, so maybe that was the result of playing high-level characters. But there appeared to be few limitations on spamming the Galian Beast’s attacks and obliterating every foe on the battlefield.
Weapons roam the world
At least by chapter four, you’ll be able to find — and fight — various Weapons all around the world. Whenever you land in a region for the first time, MAI (yes, she’s back) will pinpoint the location of that region’s Weapon.
Through a string of pop-up notifications, she’ll let you know about all the other things you can do: materia hunts, combat challenges, minigames, and side quests, and so on.
The game appears to assign a distinct side quest chain to each region, and the Gold Saucer is no exception. There, Dio handed Polygon a job involving a search for a group of droids that keep the theme park’s newly overhauled minigame playground running.
Instead of going through all the background details, Polygon chose to cut straight to the heart of the matter and concentrate on what really counts. The result is a game that delivers a main story worth following, with Wutai standing out as the clear high point.
“It is one of those you-have-to-play-it-to-believe-it moments of video game wizardry that come along every few years.”
A Swiss mountain city has been portaled into the tropics, where Edo-era architecture nestles into a cliff amid a jungle. This is Wutai, the home of Yuffie.
Seven years of exponential growth
Final Fantasy 7 Remake famously stretched the brief opening chapter of a totemic RPG into a 40-hour adventure. Rebirth, its sequel, expanded the middle part of the source material into a Ubisoft-style open world. Revelation continues the trend of exponential growth.
Polygon takes care to point out that “most impressive” does not necessarily imply “largest.”. A span of forty-five minutes simply isn’t sufficient to judge or fully comprehend what an open-world game is attempting to deliver.
Weeks after the fact, the person who wrote the preview is still struck by how Revelation builds on its predecessor, using Rebirth as the literal foundation for a jaw-dropping feat of game design.
Maybe the novelty will fade once you’ve done it 10 or 20 times. For now, it’s nothing short of transcendent.
Source: polygon.com
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