Square Enix’s Final Fantasy 7 Revelation will no longer tie summon unlocks to the remake trilogy’s often overly-chatty side character Chadley.
Since the first entry in 2020, the Final Fantasy 7 Remake trilogy has tied unlocking most of its summons to the virtual battle simulator operated by Chadley. While not all summons were tied to the character’s combat simulators, which boast his running commentary, most of them unfortunately were.
Chadley himself, as well as his companion Mai, is returning for Final Fantasy 7 Revelation, but summon unlocks will no longer be tied to the character. Instead, players will have to explore and find their summons, sometimes through the main campaign and sometimes off the beaten path.
“Players will encounter summon-related content directly in the world and collect materials tied to those summons through explorations rather than solely through simulations,” game director Naoki Hamaguchi confirmed to OMG at the Gamescom Asia x Thailand Game Show 2026.
In the interview, Hamaguchi used the Knights of the Round as an example as to how players will unlock summons. “For Knights of the Round, we have the original story for Gilgamesh,” he said. “And you can get the summon material on [through] that.”
Hamaguchi explains that this new way of unlocking summons is an example of how the team has restructured world exploration between Rebirth and Revelation. FF7 Rebirth’s world felt too stuffed with content, and Final Fantasy 7 Revelation has an even bigger world than before. However, the team is hoping that the way this new content is structured will cause less players to fall off.
“The world is very wide, and there are lots of spaces,” he said. “And as a game, I wouldn’t be happy if a player wants to go to a destination that takes lots of time. If players want to go somewhere, I don’t want it to take too much time or become difficult to reach. That would create stress, and that’s not good as a game.”
Hamaguchi also teased that Aerith still has an important role to play in Final Fantasy 7 Revelation, despite the events of the previous game. However, the game director is keen to not spoil anything regarding the character in this expanded version of the 1997 RPG classic.
Finally, as the remake trilogy comes to a close, the game director explained that the series has largely been crafted by the same people over the past decade. While there are a few changes here and there, the cast majority of the FF7 Remake team worked on Rebirth and now on Final Fantasy 7 Revelation, and staying together is one of the reasons why the games have released as quickly as they have.
“We’ve been together for over ten years. Everyone had very high motivation, and we really wanted to complete this together,” the game director explained.
