The Final Fantasy VII Trilogy Ends With a Jump From an Airship

What's actually confirmed

Those figures come from Square Enix's own announcements and from outlets that had hands-on time with the game this year, not from marketing copy alone. Worth saying plainly, too: Naoki Hamaguchi told Video Games Chronicle during this year's Tokyo Game Show, which ran September 17 through 21, 2026 in Chiba, that development is still underway, so some of what follows could shift before launch.

From one city block to an open sky

The first game never left Midgar. Remake spent 2020 arguing that a single city district held enough story for a full release, and most reviewers agreed, even while calling the path through it fairly linear. Rebirth broke that shape open in 2024, sending the party on chocobo-back across Junon, Costa del Sol, Corel, Gold Saucer, Gongaga and Cosmo Canyon. One region got left out on purpose: the developers said outright that the visit to Wutai was being saved for the third installment, according to Wikipedia's account of Rebirth's design choices.

Revelation is where that promise gets cashed in. Hands-on previews from gamescom 2026 in Cologne describe a fully flyable Highwind that functions as real transportation rather than a fast-travel menu with wings, plus a submarine for underwater exploration and a job-style gear system called FITS that hands characters new abilities borrowed from classic Final Fantasy jobs. One hands-on account from the show describes a jungle region thick with verticality, layered canopy, elevated platforms, and enough optional detours, from creature photography to tougher monster hunts, that the writer explored for a full hour and still felt like they had barely started. A separate, more tightly directed section built around Yuffie's story contrasts with that freeform sprawl, according to the same account. Wutai and Rocket Town, both skipped in Rebirth, are confirmed to finally appear, carrying the story toward the original game's climax at the Northern Crater.

Two more chapters after the credits

Square Enix used this same window to confirm what happens after players reach the ending. Two story expansions are planned: one centered on Sephiroth, one titled Vincent & the Turks. Nintendo Wire's reporting puts the first in winter 2027 and the second in spring 2028, sold together as a Story Expansion Pass that can also be bought one episode at a time. Kotaku's coverage of the confirmation adds that pricing for either chapter has not been announced, and that the Vincent expansion's mention of the Turks hints it may dig into his life before the original 1997 story, though Square Enix has not spelled that out yet.

None of that extra story is required reading, and that is worth saying plainly. Nintendo Wire's report describes Hamaguchi framing the expansions as spinoffs from a main story that already reaches its own conclusion inside the base game, meaning players can finish Revelation without ever opening either chapter. I read that as a considerate choice rather than a hedge. It lets the studio spend real budget deepening two fan-favorite characters without holding the ending hostage to a season pass.

The detail worth smiling about

My favorite thing to come out of this round of previews has nothing to do with airships. Rebirth's piano minigame, the one where Cloud sits down at increasingly elaborate keyboards to plink out a tune, quietly became one of the series' most beloved optional distractions. Hamaguchi told VGC that the minigame returns in Revelation with a genuine upgrade: it now carries a piece of story information about Tifa, delivered through the rewards players earn by getting good at it. A team noticing which small, unnecessary thing its players loved, and then handing that thing real narrative weight, is a nicer kind of listening than most sequels bother with.

What's still genuinely unclear

Plenty remains unconfirmed, and I'd rather say so than pretend the picture is finished.

• The exact install size. Hamaguchi's roughly 200GB figure is a current estimate, not a locked number, since development is ongoing.
• Pricing for either DLC chapter, or for the Story Expansion Pass that bundles both.
• Whether the Sephiroth and Vincent expansions sit before, during or after the main story's own timeline.
• The full contents of the Wutai and Rocket Town sections beyond their confirmed return.

None of that uncertainty is unusual for a game seven months from release, and Square Enix has earned some patience here. A project that began in 2020 by asking fans to trust an eight-plus-hour prologue is closing, on current plans, by handing them a flyable airship, a submarine, and the freedom to ignore the story entirely in favor of chasing something through the trees. That is an odd kind of trust to build across three games and six years, and by the accounts coming out of Cologne's gamescom in late August 2026 and Chiba's Tokyo Game Show in September 2026, I think it is paying off.