Skip to main content
News

Red XIII is not a playable character in Final Fantasy VII: Remake

Players won't be able to step into the paws of the fierce feline Red XIII in Final Fantasy VII: Remake.
Jonas Mäki Editor Sweden 2 March 2020

The feline character Red XIII is one of the more iconic characters of Final Fantasy VII: Remake, and we have previously seen him in trailers for the game. But quite surprisingly, Square Enix has now revealed that he won't be playable this time, but will instead be an AI-controlled guest character.

This was revealed in an interview with VG247, where the co-director Naoki Hamaguchi says:

"We felt the point at which Red XIII joins the party in the story is very late on so we thought okay, 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, it's not really enough time to do that.

We thought that the best way to have him involved was as a guest character. Normally throughout the game you'll be playing as a three-man party, but you will have him as a guest character that fights alongside you during the the last part of the story. He'll be using all of his old really nostalgic moves, and you'll see that. We felt that was the best way of showing him off as a character and who he is. That's why we felt that was the best way to include him."

This means the game offers four playable characters (Cloud, Tifa, Barret and Aeris), with Cloud being the main character you always control outside battles. Was Red XIII a character you included in your party in the original Final Fantasy VII?

Editor Sweden Jonas Mäki has written for Gamereactor since 2002, becoming an editor in 2007. He covers the video game industry across news, releases and the business side, with a particular interest in sales figures and where the industry is heading.
Full profile Gamereactor author since 2007 · 12,193 published articles
Why trust Gamereactor
23 Editions Each with its own newsroom and its own scores.
1998 Publishing since Independently owned for the whole of it.
100% Hands-on Written from time with the game, never press material.
1–10 Network Score Every edition’s score, averaged and shown.