Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth director says Crisis Core star Zack “has an impact throughout the world” of the upcoming JRPG

Fans of Crisis Core Reunion star Zack Fair have even more reason to be excited for the upcoming Remake sequel Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth.

We’ve known for a while now that ol’ Zack is not only alive and kicking in Final Fantasy 7 Remake’s world, but that he would play a much bigger role in Rebirth than he did in the original Final Fantasy 7, where he only appeared in post-mortem flashbacks. Now, we have just a little more color around how that’ll play out, thanks to a new interview with Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth director Naoki Hamaguchi.

“I wonder how [Zack] is alive,” Hamaguchi jokes in an exchange with Game Informer (timestamped here). “So not just Cloud, but Zack’s existence has an impact throughout the world of Final Fantasy 7.”

Hamaguchi earlier said Zack is going to be an “immensely important, crucial, key character to this story,” adding that the Crisis Core star would be used “to depict the combined view of [writer Kazushige Nojima, creative director Tetsuya Nomura, and producer Yoshinori Kitase] – the original creators’ – intents of how this world of Final Fantasy 7 came to be and its policies and rule governing this world.”

If you haven’t played Crisis Core or its 2022 remake/remaster hybrid, you might be tempted to pick it up and blast through it before Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth launches on February 29, but it’s worth noting that it isn’t technically canon with the whole Remake series, which is set to span three standalone games in total. Hamaguchi says that’s because “the remake itself is a unique world distinct from the other games.”

Still, Crisis Core Reunion is a really solid JRPG and still a fine way to kill some time in-between bigger Final Fantasy releases, and Hamaguchi even says in the new Game Informer interview that “of course” it’s still worth playing even just to get to know Zack a little better.

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