Final Fantasy 7 Revelation's Highwind airship is going to be the highlight of the game

Seven years on since the first part of the Final Fantasy VII Remake trilogy was released, Square Enix is finally set to conclude the trilogy with Final Fantasy VII Revelation in 2027.

The game adapts the final third act of the original 1997 game, chronicling the last part of the story, which sees the eco-terrorist group AVALANCHE fighting against the Shinra Corporation that controls the central metropolis of Midgar, all while defeating Sephiroth, who seeks to harness the power of the planet and destroy all life on it.

Set to be the biggest Final Fantasy world Square Enix has created so far, Final Fantasy VII Revelation features the return of the Highwind airship (teased in Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth) to allow you a way to quickly travel around the world.

During my hands-on session at Gamescom, I was really surprised (and elated) to see just how much freedom you have with the Highwind.

In the original Final Fantasy VII, the Highwind was the airship that allowed players to travel to the various corners of the world, allowing them to revisit areas previously discovered as well as find new areas.

You could essentially travel to anywhere on the map and land there if the terrain allowed for it. Considering you unlock the airship at the beginning of Disc 2, or around 25 hours into the game, it was a nice reward for players who had stuck with the first half of the game for as long as they did.

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Final Fantasy VII Revelation's Highwind allows you to go pretty much anywhere

In Final Fantasy VII Revelation, you unlock the Highwind after around six hours of gameplay. Here, the ship functions quite similarly to how it did in the original. You can fly around pretty much the entirety of the overworld, with certain zones marked as explorable for where you can land.

When you want to land somewhere, your party jumps out of the airship and can freefall to a specific spot, opening a parachute as they get closer to the ground for a more precise landing.

You can pretty much land anywhere within these zones, but some areas are off-limits to you, such as rocky mountains and desolate areas with nothing to do in them. I do think it would have been fun to make everywhere accessible to you, but given how large the world of Final Fantasy VII is, I can understand why some places were cut.

Square Enix

Compared to the original, the size of many places has been scaled up to make the world feel believably large, and this short demo certainly gave me that impression.

Similarly, some areas are also designated “no-fly zones” for the Highwind, meaning you can’t just go straight to Midgar or Rocket Town before you’re supposed to (believe me, I tried to do that during the demo).

The airship isn't just for getting around

Of course, the Highwind isn’t just for getting around, but it also acts as your central hub for accessing pretty much everything else in the game. Return to the bridge at any time, take control of any character, change equipment and items, and also have a look at the quests and activities you can do.

You can also explore the Highwind itself, interacting with the many characters on board and advancing storylines.

Overall, it looks like there’ll be plenty to do here that I didn’t have time to see in my hands-on session, but it seems like the airship will play an even bigger role in Revelation than it did in the original game.

Square Enix

One thing I’m a little sceptical about is if unlocking the Highwind in Final Fantasy VII Revelation will have the same effect as it did in the original game. As I mentioned before, you unlock the airship after around 25 hours of gameplay, making it a fun reward to unlock after sticking with the story for so long.

But by splitting the game up into three parts for the remake trilogy, the momentum isn’t quite the same as if you’d been playing one unbroken story. Quality-of-life and gameplay improvements between games are more noticeable, and there are natural start and end points that cause the experience to be less consistent than it would be if it were one game.

Of course, this is one minor nitpick that Square Enix can’t work around given the nature of how these remakes have been released. Still, I love what I’ve seen of Final Fantasy VII Revelation so far, of course, and I’m looking forward to seeing how the final act of the story is concluded.

Final Fantasy VII Revelation will be released for PC, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PlayStation 5 on April 8, 2027.