Red XIII Won’t Be Playable in FF7 Remake, But You Can Look at Him

Final Fantasy 7 Remake is getting even more attention than usual today. As FF7R impressions go live and people go hands-on with the newly dropped FF7R demo, co-director Naoki Hamaguchi shared some news about playable characters with VG24/7.

Specifically, Hamaguchi talked about Red XIII’s role in the remake of the JRPG classic.

Red XIII is the talking flame-dog shown off in recent trailers as a party member. But it’s not quite as straightforward as just having him as another party member. You can’t actually play as Red XIII in Final Fantasy 7 Remake‘s first part. Instead, he’ll be a guest member the AI controls.

This may or may not be surprising depending on your level of familiarity with the game. Red XIII doesn’t normally get involved until later in the story, so him not being playable isn’t a big surprise. There’s a good reason Square Enix showed off his role in recent trailers, though.

Hamaguchi said:

…if we’re gonna have him as a full character and try and get the player to enjoy his character development arc and growth as a character through that, [the original scenario isn’t] really enough time to do that.

We thought that the best way to have him involved was as a guest character.

So on the bright side, even if we can’t play as (and probably can’t pet) Red XIII, he gets a more robust role in the story anyway.

We’re getting ever closer to Final Fantasy 7 Remake‘s release date, so stay tuned to GameSkinny for more FF7 Remake news as it develops.