Square Enix is keeping the concluding chapter of the Final Fantasy VII Remake trilogy on Unreal Engine 4, with director Naoki Hamaguchi explaining that the team’s extensive, in-house changes to UE4 make it the most practical choice for finishing the project.
Final Fantasy VII Remake and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth were both built on UE4, and the industry’s wider adoption of Unreal Engine 5 made an upgrade seem like a natural next step for the finale. Hamaguchi’s reasoning goes in the opposite direction: the trilogy has been developed on a heavily customized foundation, and that investment is now inseparable from day-to-day production. Continuing on UE4, he said, is more beneficial when you already have a version you know inside and out, tailored to your needs.
In modern AAA development, an engine switch is rarely a simple uplift. A new major engine version can affect how lighting is authored, how worlds are streamed, how memory budgets are managed, and how gameplay systems interact with rendering and physics. It can also force teams to rebuild or refactor internal tools layered on top of the engine—editors, exporters, debugging utilities, automation, and performance profiling. Even when the migration “works,” studios still have to revalidate everything across platforms, retune performance targets, and confirm that content behaves consistently under new technical assumptions. That review process can consume months, and it often lands on the same teams that are also trying to finish content.
For a trilogy, the risk multiplies because so much is shared. Remake launched in 2020 and later expanded with the Intergrade edition, while Rebirth arrived on PlayStation 5 in February 2024 with broader environments and more systemic exploration. The final chapter is expected to inherit combat systems, character controllers, traversal assumptions, and content pipelines that have been refined over years. Keeping the same technical base reduces the chance of disruptive changes late in production, when teams are prioritizing polish, balancing, and final optimization rather than rebuilding fundamentals.
Hamaguchi also suggested that major creative milestones are already locked behind the scenes. He said the third game’s title has been decided internally by creative director Tetsuya Nomura, though it has not been publicly revealed. In earlier comments, Hamaguchi had talked about weighing the pros and cons of moving to UE5, with a central question being whether changing environments would accelerate delivery or slow it down. This latest confirmation signals the team has made its call: continuity and throughput, with the goal of moving from Rebirth into the finale without a disruptive technology reset.
The decision fits a broader market reality where production efficiency is becoming a competitive advantage. Unreal Engine 5 has been production-ready since 2022 and offers headline features like Lumen and Nanite, but many studios still prioritize predictability over novelty, especially when shipping on fixed console hardware and supporting multiple performance targets. Certification timelines, patch cadence, and the sheer cost of large-scale QA all favor stable, well-understood technology. In many cases, teams prefer to finish a multi-year production on familiar tools, then selectively adopt new features on a future project where the schedule can absorb a learning curve.
Those considerations are sharpened by the economics of the market. Recent industry estimates put global game revenues at roughly $189 billion in 2025, supported by a player base of about 3.6 billion people worldwide. Console spending has been a key growth driver, while mobile remains a massive share of playtime and monetization. In the U.S. market, annual consumer spending on video games is around $59 billion, and content spending accounts for the majority of that total. With stakes that high, schedules and predictability can matter as much as graphical ambition, and teams look for any choice that reduces production risk.
For players, “still on UE4” should not be read as a downgrade. A customized engine can behave more like a proprietary platform than an off-the-shelf product, and studios routinely backport features, optimize bottlenecks, and build bespoke systems on top of older versions. Square Enix has already demonstrated that UE4 can deliver ambitious visuals and large-scale set pieces across the first two games. The more meaningful question is what the team gains by avoiding a migration: more polish, steadier performance, tighter pacing, and potentially a smoother path to release across the platforms the trilogy is targeting.
Square Enix has not announced the third game’s release date or official title yet, but Hamaguchi’s comments provide a clear signal about the approach. The finale is being built to maximize continuity, minimize risk, and deliver the last chapter without reinventing the technical wheel at the finish line.
News written by Mike.
