If there’s one thing that stays consistent in the Final Fantasy community, it’s that fans are always down bad for the series’ cast of characters, whether that’s because of Tifa’s relentless charm or – hear me out – Kimahri’s gruff stoicism. Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth’s director knows his playerbase all too well and is asking you all to please, please avoid making anything too inappropriate with its upcoming PC port.
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth’s PC port comes out next month and while, yeah, “improved lighting” and other technical improvements are nice, what makes any PC port really exciting is all the potential mods that might follow. Remixed music, new outfits, tweaked difficulty, and other nice features are all a possibility – as are the more NSFW mods.
“While the team has no plans for official in-game mod support, we respect the creativity of the modding community and welcome their creations,” Rebirth director Naoki Hamaguchi says in a chat with the Epic Games Store, “though we ask modders not to create or install anything offensive or inappropriate.”
His polite request comes months after Final Fantasy 16 left consoles and unintentionally subjected itself to thirsty fanmade creations. It only took days for modders to unrobe main man Clive – there’s even a hilarious mod that makes him tell the player he loves them every three minutes if you’re really going through it – so who can blame Hamaguchi for wanting to protect his own cast? But, at the same time, who are we kidding? Adult mods already exist for Final Fantasy 7 Remake, and the sequel also includes babygirl Vincent this time around, so Hamaguchi is better off not checking NexusMods altogether.
In fairness, modding website 7th Heaven has let fans “change nearly any aspect” of the original game for years now and has essentially breathed new life into a classic. At the very least it’s allowed people to play it with a fresh set of eyes. Final Fantasy 9’s also received fully reworked backdrops in an essential mod. Maybe it’s just inevitable that explicit mods get swept in the same tide as the more useful ones, but it’s a small price to pay to make sure these games live on in a slightly different way for years to come.