Ethan Crossfield 
If you bounced off Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth’s map because it asked you to do too much, Final Fantasy 7 Revelation is aiming to be more player-choice friendly—by making the rewards for optional activities clearer and more directly tied to what you’re actually doing.
What’s changing in Revelation’s optional content
Final Fantasy 7 Revelation director Naoki Hamaguchi has confirmed a more deliberate reward structure for side activities. The core idea is to reduce the pressure to complete everything just to progress toward a broad “meta” strength goal.
Hamaguchi’s comments come after he acknowledged that some players found Rebirth’s abundance of optional activities exhausting. In Rebirth, regional maps were packed with side content—some of it rewarding useful materia—which is a common RPG approach, but the sheer volume didn’t land well with everyone.
For Revelation, the plan is to make the “goal and reward” of each optional activity more transparent by linking prizes to the type of content that earns them. In other words: if you’re doing side content for a specific payoff, the game should communicate that connection more clearly upfront.
Who benefits: players who prefer combat—or card progression
The director’s example outlines how the new system should work at a practical level. Combat-focused optional activities are expected to provide rewards that improve battle performance. That means players looking for combat upgrades shouldn’t need to complete an unrelated mini-game just to get the kind of progression they want.
At the same time, Queen’s Blood—Square Enix’s card battle mode—will return in Revelation with changes. Hamaguchi’s implication is that the card game can maintain its own progression path without turning into a mandatory detour for players whose primary interest is combat.
While the source doesn’t claim the overall quantity of side activities will shrink, it does suggest Revelation will aim for a more predictable reward experience. Instead of relying on an opaque reward ecosystem that nudges players to do everything “just in case,” the game should let players prioritize based on personal preferences.
What’s next: reducing fatigue without shrinking the world
The reward redesign is part of a broader effort to make Revelation’s larger open world feel less repetitive. Square Enix is also planning additions intended to refresh traversal and exploration, including more vertical terrain, the ability to dive onto the map from the Highwind, and flying Chocobo movement.
Hamaguchi previously pointed to the reason some players may have stopped Rebirth entirely: the world map’s heavy content density. By pairing a clearer reward structure with traversal changes, Revelation appears to be trying to preserve the expansive structure associated with the remake trilogy—while giving players enough information to decide whether an activity is worth their time.
Still, the outcome depends on implementation consistency. The open question is whether combat-focused players can reliably bypass mini-games without feeling like they’re missing out on meaningful rewards.
What players should know
- Revelation is redesigning side-activity rewards so prizes align more directly with the activity type.
- Combat-focused side content is expected to reward battle improvements without requiring unrelated mini-games.
- Queen’s Blood returns with changes and should keep its own progression path rather than acting as a combat gate.
- Square Enix isn’t signaling a reduction in side content volume—more emphasis is on clarity and predictability.
- The goal is to reduce open-world fatigue while keeping the large-scale exploration feel.
Expert View
This is a smart, player-friendly shift: Rebirth’s optional content was impressive, but the “do it all for something” pressure can undercut choice. If Revelation truly ties rewards to activity categories consistently, it should make the world feel bigger without feeling busier in the wrong way. The real test will be whether bypassing mini-games ever costs combat players anything meaningful.
