This article contains spoilers for Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. Specifically, it details the events from several dates Cloud can have at the Gold Saucer. If you’re yet to experience one of these scenes, we suggest returning to the article once you have. Alternatively, if you’d like to see every Gold Saucer date in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, you can watch every variation in this video:

Fans of the original Final Fantasy 7 will fondly remember the Gold Saucer gondola date. This romantic liaison paired you up with Aerith, Tifa, Yuffie, or even Barret, depending on your dialogue choices throughout the game.

The intimate moment makes its expected return in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, but unlike the original – and perhaps indicative of the entire remake’s philosophy – this time each date has a renewed focus. Every variation has a strong and defined angle, tying into the grander narrative while also fleshing out relationships with the hindsight of nearly 30 years of character evolution. Each one packs an emotional punch, helping Cloud and his partner of choice grow. This stronger emphasis on storytelling replaces what was previously surface-level romance and amusing, but ultimately cheap laughs. I’m looking at you, the ‘Barret unloads his minigun at the fireworks’ moment from the original.

That’s not to say there’s not laughs to be had, with some funny moments riffing on the source material. Build your relationship to a strong enough level with Yuffie and you’ll unlock her extended “intimate” date which leans heavily on jokes from the original. Yuffie demanding that Cloud “say something!” only to get a deadpan response of “… something” is a particular highlight. But Yuffie’s date is also a perfect illustration of how Rebirth has expertly matured the original conversations, with Yuffie now talking this moment to share a personal story about her misguided love for another SOLDIER, who, upon letting her down gently, led Yuffie down a focused training path to prove herself a warrior – a path not too dissimilar to Cloud’s.

It’s this moment of vulnerability that helps not only Cloud, but also us as players to scratch beneath the surface of Yuffie’s seemingly one-dimensional characterisation (that being her relentless quest for materia) and demonstrate her deep insecurities. It’s a scene that allows her to open up, revealing that she shares Cloud’s inability to discuss her innermost feelings. In this moment, I felt a connection to Yuffie I’d never had in the almost 30 years of her existence, and it’s a testament to the care and attention Rebirth’s character writing has received. It’s clear that Cloud also feels this connection, and it helps strengthen their bond. It now feels significantly more understandable why they’d fight for each other. And so it’s a shame that a majority of players will likely miss this moment in their playthrough, because this date is just one of many, and something that requires significant investment in Yuffie to unlock.

That’s the less likely result for most players, I would imagine, since Aerith and Tifa form the original love triangle and are the characters that garner the most attention. That’s not to say that their Gold Saucer date experiences are not equally worthwhile, but they are the more expected character moments. As a result, it’s the left field choices like Yuffie that result in unexpected bonds that really resonated with me, and what happens during Barret’s date is another prime example.

In the 1997 original, there was no doubting that the Barret choice was the joke option. He and Cloud spend the entire date in a comical huff, Barret accuses Cloud of having a crush on his four year old daughter (seriously…) and then, as mentioned before, he ends the date by unloading his gun arm on the fireworks because they’re irritating him. It’s wacky.

But in Rebirth, what was once a silly sequence now is an opportunity for character development. This time around, Barret is evolved into a mentor-like figure for Cloud. He tells a sentimental story about when he first met his partner, Myrna, which serves as a jumping off point to teach Cloud a valuable life lesson that can only come from someone with significantly more life experience.

“Once you find your soulmate, you never let ‘em go.” shares Barret, explaining that he was also once a selfish young man who had some growing up to do. He goes on to tell Cloud that he’s “overthinking it. You just gotta go for it sometimes.” Cloud rightly points out that Barret “always goes for it”, which leads to the pair coming to the conclusion that they balance each other out.

Unlike the original date, not only does Barret now offer advice, but his bond with Cloud is strengthened. It’s a reminder that – despite all their differences – in the language of love they actually share a lot in common. Couple this with the interesting story of how a young, brash Barret met the love of his life and what’s cemented is a scene of valuable relationship growth. Again, it’s a real shame that you could easily miss this. In fact, it almost feels essential to Cloud and Barret’s friendship.

It’s not just character development you’ll likely miss at the Gold Saucer, either. An unlikely Red XIII date – one you might automatically assume would be the “joke” option – offers not only the strengthening of a bond, but some vital clarity of the events of the previous game, Final Fantasy 7 Remake.

“It might sound crazy, but back in Midgar Aerith and I could both see the future,” reveals Red XIII, confirming a popular theory about the messy concluding events of the first game. “That would explain a lot,” Cloud replies, demonstrating his understanding of the events and also acting as a proxy for the audience. Red XII goes on to theorise that “the Whispers took it from us when we left,” helping explain the clean slate the character’s appear to have in Rebirth. He does still have a faint, outstanding memory, though; that Cloud has to keep Aerith safe. It’s ominous foreshadowing of the original game’s tragedy, and a hint that things could be different this time around.

In this moment Cloud and Red XIII build a bond of trust. They learn to talk honestly with each other and the value their togetherness has, concluding with the pair shaking hand/paw on their agreement to protect Aerith. It’s not only a scene that matters in regards to relationship growth, but one that confirms vital story information that at best we could only previously infer.

Importantly, none of these dates feel like the ‘canon’ choice. Or rather; all of the dates feel like the canon choice, with story beats that live concurrently. Each one progresses Cloud’s relationship with his friends and/or romantic interests, and unlike the original none of them feel like they don’t belong (with the exception of a new, awkward hang out with Cait Sith, Cid and Vincent – a joke date and consolation prize for stalling your other relationships). Each date in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth matters, it’s just a shame that the majority of players will never experience each and every one of these important pieces of storytelling.

Dale Driver is IGN’s Executive Producer of Video Programming and he ended up going on a date with the three boys on his first playthough, even though he tried his hardest to get Red XIII.

Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered developer Aspyr has confirmed it accidentally released two different versions of the game across Steam and the Epic Games Store, and changed what some deemed the better version back to the regular.

As reported by Eurogamer, players of the remastered trilogy noticed differences between versions and X/Twitter user @small_medpack posted a list of them online. The Epic Games Store version of the game included more poses in photo mode, higher quality textures and animations on the Nevada level, more realistic snowflakes, and more, though also had some broken achievements.

Surprising fans, Aspyr deemed this version the unfinished one and has updated it to match the intended version that was released on Steam. The enhancements mentioned above are therefore no longer available in the Epic Games Store version of the game.

“A development build with incomplete assets has been available for download on the Epic Games Store,” Aspyr said in a post on Steam. “Content in that Epic Games Store build contained some work-in-progress materials that do not represent our final quality expectations. We have corrected the build to match the live Steam version.”

Some fans are understandably confused by the mishap, and had expected the Steam version would receive the additional features rather than the Epic Games Store version losing them, but it also seemingly included other issues and incomplete assets beyond the broken achievements

“A development build that is superior to what we’ve got on Steam, not sure what to make of this mess,” said KeeperAdahn on Reddit. “They make it sound as if the Epic Games Store version is worse than the version we got? But from what I have seen on YouTube it looked much better,” added BenSlashes.

A bigger update is also coming though, presumably set to improve Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered across the board. “We currently are working on the first update, which we anticipate will launch in the next few weeks,” Aspyr said in the same post. “We appreciate your patience as we want to ensure that the quality is meeting the needs and expectations of our community.”

Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered arrived February 13 as an upgraded version of the original trilogy: Tomb Raider and The Unfinished Business expansion, Tomb Rader 2 and The Gold Mask expansion, and Tomb Raider 3 and The Lost Artifact Expansion.

Tomb Raider custodian Crystal Dynamics included a sensitivity warning in the collection for what it called “deeply harmful” racial and ethnic prejudices included, but said it didn’t remove them “in the hopes that we may acknowledge its harmful impact and learn from it”.

Its release was followed by the official reveal of protagonist Lara Croft’s redesign, which will presumably debut officially in Tomb Raider Next. The next mainline game in the franchise is currently being developed in Unreal Engine 5, with Amazon Games supporting Crystal Dynamics.

It will be the first new entry since 2018’s Shadow of the Tomb Raider, which wrapped up a trilogy of games during the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One generation. That series reset Lara Croft’s origins in a grittier setting, but it’s unclear how Tomb Raider Next will fit into the equation.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.

Spoiler Warning: This interview contains some spoilers for the ending of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth as well as some of the major changes from the original. You have been warned!

Heading into Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, fans had only one question on their mind: What was going to happen to Aerith? Final Fantasy VII Remake had upended the classic story, seemingly leaving the door open for all manner of changes, including to one of the biggest twists in gaming history. But if director Naoki Hamaguchi felt pressure to get the moment right, he isn’t saying it.

“In terms of whether there was pressure or stress around the scene, it was actually more so that within Nojima-san’s initial scenario we had this direction that was pretty set from his initial scenario. And so that was kind of quite solidified early on,” Hamaguchi tells IGN.

According to Hamaguchi, the anticipated finale for Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, which launched yesterday on PlayStation 5, didn’t inspire much internal debate. Instead, the development team mostly focused on executing on director Kazushige Nojima’s vision as best they could. “More of this kind of sense of determination as a team to best convey this based on Nojima-san’s scenario,” Hamaguchi says.

Early returns have been mostly positive. Final Fantasy VII Rebirth currently sits at 92 on Metacritic and is enjoying strong word-of-mouth. But despite awarding it a 9 in our review, we weren’t the biggest fans of how it wrapped up, writing, “It does fumble the execution of its ending, getting caught up in the mess of its multiple twisting timelines, but new moments and the overarching journey manage to evoke a deeper sense of reflection in spite of that.”

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth’s ending is indeed confusing, its vague nature bound to inspire lorehounds within the fandom. For Hamaguchi and his team, though, the confusion may be a feature more than a bug.

“HD games take quite long to develop…it’s not as so that we can release the final title the following year or anything like that. Of course, it takes a bit more time, so it is our intent and hopes that there will be many thoughts and conjectures and sort of guesses as to what this exactly means. And we do hope that players will kind of think about this and consider this up to the following title,” Hamaguchi says.

The journey to Rebirth and beyond

Whenever the third part of the Final Fantasy Remake trilogy releases — whether it’s called Remembrance or something else — it will mark the conclusion of a journey that has now spanned close to a decade and two separate console generations. It stretches as far back as the PlayStation 3, when Square Enix released what was then considered a beautiful tech demo featuring Cloud that sparked fevered calls for a remake, which were finally answered in 2020 with the release of Final Fantasy VII Remake.

The first game was directed by Tetsuya Nomura, one of the key architects of the original Final Fantasy VII. When it came time for Rebirth, he handed the reigns to Hamaguchi, who had grown up playing Final Fantasy VI and Final Fantasy VII before finally joining Square Enix in 2006. As a child, he loved manga and was impressed by how Square’s RPGs were able to capture a similar range of depth and expression. He entered the games industry as a programmer, making him in some ways the opposite of Nomura, who has defined the look and feel of multiple generations of Final Fantasy games through his art.

Where Yoshinori Kitase, Nomura, Nojima, and Motomu Toriyama worried about the creative direction of the story, Hamaguchi was tasked with logistics. He talks about being in charge of the “structure of the game” — the meat and potatoes elements like the combat and the open world — and managing the overall development. Meanwhile, it was Nomura who came up with the “Rebirth” subtitle, which like Remake has something of a double-meaning (“I think having played the game, you will understand what Rebirth means to this title,” Hamaguchi says)

“Nomura-san is an extremely creative individual,” Hamaguchi goes on. “And since he was one of the creators involved with the original fan of Fantasy VII, he was vital in understanding the elements that were the most appealing and continue that were beloved from the original title and how we can best express this in a way that would make that kind of impact today as well. He has this immaculate sensibility in that way and his opinions were very vital in the development. He is a creator that I have massive respect towards.”

In his time at Square Enix, Hamaguchi has worked on numerous Final Fantasy releases stretching back to Final Fantasy XII. What makes Rebirth different, Hamaguchi says, is that its nature as a sequel means that it’s easier to take into account critical feedback and rework elements that don’t work quite as well. Rebirth was also able to retain between 80 and 90 percent of the developers who worked on Remake.

Asked if the team took any lessons from Final Fantasy XVI, which was being made at roughly the same time, Hamaguchi demurs, noting that the nature of development means that it can be difficult to suddenly change the direction of a game’s design.

“It is very often so that,even if there are other titles in which the timelines of development align or overlap, it can be pretty challenging to actually implement things from another title into our own simply because the overall structure is already constructed or determined early on,” Hamaguchi says. “So yeah, looking at the Active Time Lore or some of the cinematic elements of expression they deployed in Final Fantasy XVI, there were certainly a lot of elements that were inspiring or very intriguing…but it was quite difficult to implement.”

The grand finale

With Final Fantasy VII Rebirth now complete and in the hands of fans, Square Enix can look ahead to the final part of the trilogy, which based on the current pace of development may not be finished until roughly 2028. If that winds up being the case, Final Fantasy VII Remake’s grand finale may well be a PlayStation 6 launch title if Sony’s comments about the PS5 being in the “latter stage” of its life cycle are anything to go by.

As for what the third part will entail, we do have some hints. Notably, Hamaguchi says that Cid’s home Rocket Town, which doesn’t appear in Rebirth, may be in the next game. “So as for Rocket Town, this was also not a part of Nojima-san’s original structure…And considering that how we introduce the character, Cid, for the Remake series this time is arranged a bit differently, Nojima-san, Nomura-san and I were all aligned with this decision to consider this for the next title.”

According to Hamaguchi, Rocket Town was also cut at least in part to focus on Gongaga, a previously-optional area that gets more prominence in Rebirth. “Considering that in the original the Gongaga area was optional for the players, we wanted to delve into this and express this more in depth for Rebirth. And so that was also an additional consideration for this as well.”

Unsurprisingly, the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII works also figure to play a role of some kind in the third game. Orignally a collection side-stories and spin-off games, Square Enix has hardly been shy about including characters and story beats from its various works, even going so far as to feature elements from the much-maligned Dirge of Cerberus in the Intergrade DLC. Ahead of Rebirth’s release on February 29, the 2005 movie Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children briefly returned to theaters for a special showing.

Hamaguchi has said that the next game’s script is still in development, so plenty can change. However, he does tease still more potential additions from Compilation.

“So while I can’t comment on the sort of exact contents of the third title now, of course, whenever we present characters that have originally appealed and appeared in a Compilation title for Final Fantasy VII, we’ve seen very positive feedback. Fans are very delighted to see some of the characters from the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII titles that they have really loved and enjoyed. So I hope that we can continue to touch on these. But at the time, in terms of the storyline, nothing is set in stone,” Hamaguchi says.

For now, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth seems like a win for Square Enix, earning more positive word-of-mouth than the series has seen in years. The real test will be whether it’s able to defy the odds and sell more copies than its predecessor, which sits at about 7 million units. Outside of its extremely popular MMORPG, Final Fantasy has been trending downward for a while now (granted, Final Fantasy XVI differed from its peers in that it was a platform exclusive), and direct sequels tend to see diminishing returns.

One way or another, Hamaguchi says he plans to see Square Enix’s ambitious Final Fantasy VII Remake project through. “At the end of Remake, I had a pretty lengthy discussion with Kitase-san surrounding this and that I would be devoted to this project for the next 12 years or so. I think we both had reached the consensus together and had some very good discussions around that. And so with that, I feel very much committed, and with the Remake series, as well as Rebirth, I feel very much confident about bringing it into this world. So I have this resolve for the Remake series and concluding the trilogy.”

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is now available on PlayStation 5. For more, check out our full Final Fantasy VII Rebirth walkthrough as well as our guide to Final Fantasy VII Rebirth’s romances and relationships.

Kat Bailey is IGN’s News Director as well as co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Have a tip? Send her a DM at @the_katbot.

This week, Helldivers 2 has seen a glut of gameplay leaks showing off officially unavailable stratagems, including of the upcoming mechs and, more recently, of a vehicle reminiscent of Halo’s famous Warthog. But what’s going on here? The community has a number of explanations.

#Helldivers2 Vehicle Gameplay 🤯⁉️🔥 https://t.co/dtdPtXvCw1 pic.twitter.com/AsptmJxhfS

— JayTechTV 𝕏 (@TheRealJTV4K60) February 29, 2024

Amid claims developer Arrowhead is randomly letting select players call in these unannounced stratagems, or jumping into the live game itself to test these new features, a perhaps more likely explanation has emerged: it’s the work of cheaters.

The devs are evidently enabling strats for select folks to try. Brilliant marketing tbh. These aren’t leaks. 🤣 https://t.co/uCzqbHOomj

— Gothalion (@Gothalion) March 1, 2024

Five days ago, redditor stodal posted a list of game file names they uncovered while digging through the game’s innards. It included reference to a potential third alien faction dubbed the Illuminate, mechs, the ability to call in AI-controlled soldiers, weapon customisation, new weapons, something called ‘ship bowling’, and even names of upcoming enemies.

Now, as more and more gameplay videos showing apparent leaked footage emerges across social media, the community is pointing the finger at cheaters who are working around Helldivers 2’s anti-cheat to unlock the use of some of these normally unavailable features in live lobbies.

Overnight, redditor Old-Improvement7331 said a player joined their game and had access to mechs and a vehicle for faster travel. “I can only assume he was cheating due to being able to spawn mechs for everybody from the party,” Old-Improvement7331 said. Posting screenshots of the incident, Old-Improvement7331 said they gave a mech a go, saying it “definitely” made the game easier.

A growing debate about datamining equating to cheating within Helldivers 2 has also emerged, which in turn sparked a response from redditor Flighterist, who provided useful context for what’s happening. Apparently unavailable stratagems such as the vehicle are already in the game itself, but not officially enabled. Knowing this, some players are going into the files of the game to unlock their use in any lobby. Flighterist warned more of these types of videos will emerge in the coming days as more players unlock mechs and the like.

The question now is whether Arrowhead will take action to prevent this from happening, or whether it is even able to. Cheating has been a problem for Helldivers 2 ever since the game came out earlier this month. This week, IGN reported on how cheaters were using hacks to add infinite ammo, increase speed, and, perhaps most worrying, obtain hundreds of samples from missions.

Meanwhile, there’s plenty to be getting on with (officially!) in the world of Helldivers 2, including the ongoing galactic war against the bugs and bots. As revealed this week, Arrowhead employs a “game master” who runs the Helldivers 2 campaign like a D&D dungeon master.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.