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Final Fantasy 7 Revelation director says each character in the RPG only has 4 jobs because making games is so much harder now
The director of Final Fantasy 7 Revelation has explained why each character in the upcoming RPG is limited to just four jobs (classes), citing the far greater complexity and cost of modern game development compared with earlier entries in the series. The comment highlights how the scale of contemporary game production, with its higher fidelity and production demands, forces developers to make deliberate trade-offs between depth of systems, such as job or class variety, and the resources needed to deliver them.
Older Final Fantasy games, including the original Final Fantasy 7, were able to offer broader customisation options partly because development pipelines were simpler and less resource-intensive. The director's remarks suggest that Final Fantasy 7 Revelation's more restrained job system is a conscious design choice shaped by the realities of building a modern, high-production-value RPG, rather than a reduction in ambition for the game itself.
In short
- Final Fantasy 7 Revelation limits each character to four jobs.
- Director blames rising complexity and cost of modern game development.
- Older games allowed more variety due to simpler production demands.
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The case for
Modern AAA game development genuinely demands vastly more resources than previous generations due to expectations for visual fidelity, animation quality, voice acting, and complex systems integration. Restricting job variety to four per character allows the team to deeply develop each job's mechanics, animations, and balance rather than spread resources across a dozen shallow options that diminish the overall experience. This represents thoughtful prioritisation of quality over quantity, ensuring players receive genuinely polished gameplay depth rather than breadth at the expense of refinement.
The case against
Whilst modern development is undeniably complex, the four-job limit may reflect bloated budgets and resource misallocation rather than genuine technical necessity. Earlier Final Fantasy games achieved vastly broader customisation with comparable artistic ambition, suggesting the problem lies not with development complexity itself but with how costs have spiralled through unnecessary scope creep and corporate profit-maximisation. Players enjoyed meaningful choice and depth before; accepting diminished options sets a troubling precedent that satisfies shareholder interests more than player experience, and the industry should resist normalising feature reductions as inevitable rather than solvable through better planning and investment.
Explained simply
Final Fantasy 7 Revelation is an upcoming role-playing game in the Final Fantasy series, which is known for stories about a group of heroes and combat systems that let players shape how their characters fight. A “job” or “class” is a character’s combat role, such as focusing on magic or close-range attacks.
Earlier games, including the original Final Fantasy 7, offered broader ways to customise characters. Modern games often require more detailed graphics, animation and other content, so each extra role can take more time and resources to create and balance.
The number of jobs is one design choice among many in a large game. It matters because it affects how much players can vary their characters and how developers divide their effort across the game.