The first day of Summer Game Fest culminated in a trailer for Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, the highly anticipated sequel in the ongoing Final Fantasy VII Remake saga.

In addition to adding fuel to the smoldering lore embers (Everyone is dead? Two timelines?), the trailer highlights impressive new combat feats, as well as gorgeous environments. It’s still not clear whether Final Fantasy VII Rebirth will be a truly open-world experience, or simply contain large, interconnected zones a la Xenoblade Chronicles. We certainly hope it's the former, but e ither way, what’s revealed is impressive, and hammers home that the title will be a vast adventure. But how vast?

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The Rebirth's world map is one of the biggest gameplay-related mysteries in the Final Fantasy VII remake saga. To date, no franchise entry has tackled a world map of the same scale as the Final Fantasy titles on PS1. Final Fantasy IX was the last game to include one, and every release since then has had smaller zones with fast-travel options. Final Fantasy XV attempted it, but only the first half of the game had anything resembling a world map: the second half of FFXV was essentially an on-rails action game.

So, will Final Fantasy VII Rebirth let us explore a massive, biome-dense continent with no loading or segregated zones? Will we be able to fly the Highwind airship aimlessly once again? We don’t know for certain, but the latest Rebirth trailer may contain evidence that the classic world map is coming back.

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What's In Junon Harbor?

The trailer's most immediately recognizable landmark is Junon Harbor. This enormous city and military installation is home to Shinra Electric Power Company’s navy and garrison, as well as its naval defense weapon, the Mako Cannon. This absurdly massive cannon is prominently displayed in this new trailer, silhouetted against the background as the party fights mobs in the badlands nearby. It is a truly towering sight.

Sharp-eyed viewers can also catch a glimpse of another unique Junon landmark, the Highwind airship. This was your primary means of travel during the original game’s second disk. It’s still unclear how the map is connected in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, and if we’ll even get the opportunity to fly the Highwind. Square Enix is well aware of how meticulous the Final Fantasy VII Remake fanbase has been with speculation and theory crafting, so it is highly unlikely that the Highwind is just for show. In fact, the airship isn't even visible from the map in the original game, so there's little chance that the developer added it to the Junon skyline as a mere easter egg.

Is That a Chocobo Mount System?

The trailer also features the series’ iconic chocobos. We see the party ride these gargantuan yellow chickens through towering ruins, with the camera panning across the Chocobo Farm. The farm played a major part in the original game's chocobo racing and chocobo breeding side quests. There, you captured, trained, fed, and bred chocobos to create the ultimate golden bird. Now, the stables are more foliage-dense compared to the original release, and feature a fresh burgundy paint job that is distinct from the gray-white farmhouse look of the PS1 game.

Chocobos are prominently featured in the trailer as proper mounts. In fact, you can have your big bird scout an area while you explore. This implies a greater range of chocobo actions, suggesting that you'll be using them more often than in the original game (which only ever required you to use them in a single scenario). A fully realized mount system for what was once a tiny section of the original game suggests that the world must be an expansive one to accommodate this chocobo-powered mobility. And it it's that big, a map may be needed for navigation purposes.

We won't know the true extent of the world's size until closer to release, but Final Fantasy VII Rebirth director Naoki Hamaguchi explained in a Twitter post that you'll enjoy a high degree of freedom. This doesn’t explicitly confirm or deny the existence of a unified world map, but it implies one thing: the world is going to be big.

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth comes to PlayStation 5 in early 2024.

Stay up to date with this year's releases by reading The Best Video Games Coming Out in 2023.