Final Fantasy 7 Remake Devs Kept Fans Guessing About Aerith's Fate Until the Very End

Square Enix aims to push boundaries with its trilogy’s story, teasing bolder risks, sharper twists, and bigger surprises ahead.

Square Enix knows exactly what you were doing during Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth: scanning every scene with Aerith trying to figure out if history would repeat. The game was built to keep you guessing, and now the director is talking about why.

Hamaguchi says the ambiguity was the point

Naoki Hamaguchi, who directed Rebirth and is also steering the still-untitled third entry (everyone calls it Part 3, but Square hasn’t actually named it), told Game Developer that Aerith’s fate was left deliberately murky. He knew fans were laser-focused on whether the 1997 moment would happen again, so the team designed Rebirth to withhold that answer until the final minutes.

Spoilers for Rebirth ahead

Rebirth has been out for over a year, so here we go: Aerith dies. Yes, again. What’s different is the presentation. The ending flirts with the idea that Cloud actually saves her, and it never cleanly spells out Sephiroth’s strike the way the original did. That choice is why the finale stirred so much debate — the outcome matches the classic, but the path there is intentionally foggy.

Looking toward Part 3

Hamaguchi is already signaling that the finale will carry the same kind of suspense, this time around major beats like Meteor. He would not spill details, but he did drop one reassuring tease:

'The ending is in safe hands and will really reward everyone for sticking with us to the end.'

Make of that what you will — the man knows how to dangle a carrot.

Why change things at all?

This is the part some fans love and others side-eye: the team has been intentionally reshaping pieces of the original. Hamaguchi says the big goal across the remake trilogy was figuring out which changes would keep players engaged over three games, so they’ve been pushing boundaries and testing bolder story swings. At the same time, he stresses they are trying to be careful about where and how they tweak the canon.

The quick hits

• Rebirth’s director Naoki Hamaguchi says Aerith’s fate was kept ambiguous by design so players wouldn’t know until the end.
• Yes, Aerith dies in Rebirth, but the scene is staged to briefly suggest Cloud might have stopped it, which fueled the controversy.
• The third game is still officially untitled, and Hamaguchi hints its ending is 'in safe hands' and will 'really reward' players.
• Expect more suspense around big original plot points in Part 3, including Meteor.
• Square Enix has been pushing for bold story changes to keep the trilogy fresh, while claiming they are being selective and careful.

One more tease: combat probably won’t sit still either

On top of the story talk, Hamaguchi also suggested he doesn’t plan to carry the exact same battle system into his future games: 'We want to keep it surprising.' Inside baseball, yes, but it tracks with everything else he’s saying — evolution over repetition.