Final Fantasy VII: How Weapons Might Show Up in Remake Part 3

This article has spoilers for Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, and Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII.

Amidst all the speculation and anticipation surrounding a release date, Square Enix has been tight-lipped about the third installment of the Final Fantasy VII Remake project. Since FFVII Rebirth launched in February 2024, we've only known the basics: the game is in development, its scope will be comparable to — if not larger than — its predecessor, and it intends to tie up every loose thread left dangling by the previous chapters.

In recent interviews, trilogy director Naoki Hamaguchi revealed that minigames will still play a major role in the third chapter, and segments like Snowboarding will show up with more relevance. Hamaguchi also stated, during the announcement of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth for the Nintendo Switch 2, that 2026 will bring more information about the Remake project.

If there's one thing veteran fans are waiting to see reimagined, it's the Weapons — the four colossal, kaiju-like creatures that represented the ultimate challenge in the original game. The Weapons became one of FFVII's most iconic hallmarks and cemented the superboss concept as a franchise staple.

After all, few feelings are as vivid for those who spent their childhood or adolescence in front of a PlayStation, navigating the world, as the memory of halting Diamond Weapon's advance on Midgar, the race against time to defeat Emerald Weapon underwater, obtaining Cloud's legendary Ultima Weapon, or discovering that having the best gear and Materia simply wasn't enough to take down Ruby Weapon*.

The question isn't if Weapons will be in Part 3. Final Fantasy VII Remake and Rebirth have already dropped unmistakable hints, both within and outside the main story, that the Weapons exist in the new timeline. The real question is how Square will translate these battles into the Remake's real-time combat system.

The breadcrumbs left in Rebirth suggest the developers have interesting plans, and understanding what these creatures are helps frame the challenge of adapting them.

In the world of Final Fantasy VII, the Planet is a living organism with its own consciousness, and when faced with catastrophic danger, it awakens the Weapons — biological armaments created as a defense mechanism.

The Weapons exist to eliminate anything the Planet identifies as a threat, with no distinction between the innocent and the guilty. Their primary targets are humanity, due to its interference with the Lifestream through ShinRa's Mako reactors, and Sephiroth, who summoned Meteor.

Although Sephiroth is portrayed as the greater threat, the Weapons' attacks in the original game were always directed at ShinRa. The reason may lie in Final Fantasy VII's central theme — Environmentalism.

In the real world, human intervention amplifies the frequency of natural disasters, and in FFVII's world, these disasters are depicted as massive creatures capable of leveling entire cities — despite their more fantastical appearance, the Weapons are the embodiment of human greed's consequences on the Planet, which will eventually lead to their ruin.

In the original game, five Weapons exists:

Ultimate Weapon

The most narratively present, Ultimate Weapon is a recurring boss in Disc 2. Unlike the others, which remain stationary in specific locations, it travels across the world attacking various cities and regions. Ultimate Weapon may have been the cause of the Lifestream eruptions in Mideel — or it was drawn there by it

Diamond Weapon

One of two Weapons defeated as part of the main story, Diamond Weapon emerges from the ocean to attack Midgar during the final arc of Final Fantasy VII's second disc. It is destroyed by Sister Ray, the Junon cannon supercharged with Mako from Midgar's reactors.

Emerald Weapon

Roaming the ocean depths, Emerald Weapon is one of Final Fantasy VII's greatest optional challenges, armed with an arsenal that can wipe out an unprepared party in a minute. It also holds the title for the highest HP of any boss in the game.

Ruby Weapon

Considered by many to be Final Fantasy VII's toughest boss, Ruby Weapon is a crimson creature buried beneath the Gold Saucer desert. It wields two massive tentacles and can permanently remove party members from battle. It's also infamous for demanding party setups that defy conventional choices just to stand a chance.

Sapphire Weapon

Sapphire Weapon appears briefly, emerging from the ocean to attack Junon in a cutscene. The creature is destroyed by the city's cannon, and the crater where it supposedly fell can be seen once Cloud gains access to the submarine. Its role in the plot is never deeply explored, aside from indirectly facilitating Tifa's escape.

The Other Weapons

Weapons also show up in other installments within the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII.

Jade Weapon

Jade Weapon appears in Before Crisis: Final Fantasy VII, a mobile game chronicling the story of the Turks. The creature awakens following the summoning of Zirconiade, the game's final boss and a Summon with enough power to destroy the Planet. With Zirconiade defeated by the Turks, Jade Weapon hunts them, deeming them the greater threat.

Omega Weapon

Omega Weapon is a core piece of Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII's story. Unlike the other Weapons, Omega was created as a last resort — a vessel to transport the Planet's Lifestream to another world when destruction becomes inevitable.

Chaos, Vincent Valentine's level 4 Limit Break, was repurposed in Dirge of Cerberus to be part of Omega Weapon's system, acting as the Planet's executioner to return all living beings to the Lifestream.

Two Weapons emerge in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, born from the Mako Reactors in Corel and Gongaga. Each appears to carry a Magnus Materia (Huge Materia in the original title) and were born in response to Sephiroth's attempts to defy Destiny. According to the FFVII Rebirth Ultimania, both are still in larval stages and may develop further in the future.

The Magnus Materia arc occurs much earlier in Rebirth than in the original title, as does the appearance of these creatures. While Scarlet mentions the need for large, powerful Materias in an optional dialogue in Final Fantasy VII, these instruments appear to have a much grander role in the Remake's story than in the original, where they were used in ShinRa's attempts to stop Meteor from striking the Planet and for creating Master Materias.

The introduction of these new Weapons opens a dozen speculations about the White Whispers and the Planet's role in a conflict that seems to be fought between the Planet, Sephiroth, and Aerith over the future. We know the Planet is a conscious entity in FFVII and that there are three categories of entities manipulating destiny toward specific outcomes, with the gray Whispers controlled by the Planet, while the white and black ones are controlled by Aerith and Sephiroth, respectively.

The new Weapons, however, appear to act — or at least align — with the White Whispers, controlled by Aerith. The fact they don't seem to follow the Planet's will makes it even more difficult to speculate on their purpose within the larger narrative scope.

There's no doubt the original Weapons will show up in the third part of the Remake — the question is how they'll be presented and how their combat will be designed.

Adapting colossal creatures for the Remake's real-time combat presents a challenge Square has never faced on this scale and succeeded at. Unless their size is reduced, shoehorning them into conventional combat would create more gameplay problems than benefits or leave players feeling something was missing for the fight to be as incredible as they remember.

In the 1997 release, technical limitations meant all battles — including the Weapons — took place in small arenas with fixed cameras. Their scale was communicated through large sprites and cinematic attacks, but the battle functioned like any other boss encounter: you selected commands, watched animations, and managed ATB.

That doesn't work in a modern Action RPG. How do you create an engaging battle against a creature the size of Midgar's Tower when the player needs visibility to dodge attacks, position themselves, and execute combos?

The Lessons of Final Fantasy XV

Square has tried to solve this dilemma before — and failed. In Final Fantasy XV, the battle with Adamantoise was one of Hajime Tabata's team's unfulfilled promises: Adamantoise was a turtle the size of a mountain. In trailers, it could be seen on the map as the heroes drove down the road. In practice, its fight became one of the most frustrating experiences in the franchise.

A hunting sidequest was required just to reach Adamantoise, and the creature only awakened through this quest rather than, as the trailers suggested, seeming like a natural event in Final Fantasy XV's world.

But presentation wasn't the only problem: Adamantoise was just a massive HP sponge. Combat involved attacking parts of its body repeatedly, trying to dodge attacks with slow animations, and repeating the process for an hour or more. There was no transition or mechanic forcing adaptation — the "epic battle" was simply doing the same thing over and over, with the only sense of progression being a slowly depleting health bar.

The boss's size was also an issue. The camera constantly lost itself trying to frame both Noctis and the creature — and Final Fantasy XV's camera was already pretty rough in many cases — resulting in confusing angles where you couldn't see your own attacks, creating a visual obstacle rather than the memorable experience of facing a mountain-sized monster.

The Weapons cannot fall into this trap. Facing them needs to feel as epic as fans remember from their childhood and as challenging as to test the player's skill and adaptability.

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth may have already revealed the answer and solution to the problem Adamantoise posed. The final battle against Jenova Lifeclinger, followed by Sephiroth Reborn, introduces enemies divided into segments with different parties.

For plot reasons, Cloud and Zack face Sephiroth Reborn in different dimensions, while Barret's party and the others face him at the Forgotten Capital. Attacks from one group have consequences for Sephiroth's physical manifestation elsewhere.

The battle is divided into phases, where different groups of characters face different aspects of the enemy simultaneously. Each phase has attack patterns and mechanics that demand adapting your party to that specific challenge, with each group's progress contributing to the final goal of defeating the boss.

Reusing this formula for the Weapons solves the problems of scale, variety, and challenge — all at once.

Dividing the battle allows each arena to be properly sized, rather than trying to frame a Godzilla on screen alongside ants. Each segment focuses on a specific part of the boss or a distinct mechanic for greater gameplay variety and a sense of urgency, where different parts of the enemy might require different strategies to reach the goal of defeating it.

Another strong point of this approach is forcing players to utilize every character, transforming the Weapons into a mastery test over the game. Your hyper-optimized favorite party won't carry you to victory against the Weapons — you'd need to understand everyone's strengths and weaknesses, build specific loadouts and Materia setups, and adapt your strategies for each stage.

Imagine, for instance, a Ruby Weapon split between facing the main body and its tentacles. Or the need to divide characters between a team preventing Diamond Weapon's advance in the air with the Highwind and another on the ground?

Who knows if Emerald Weapon might include a DPS check against its eyes so the main party doesn't get wiped by the iconic Materia Storm attack? Or Ultimate Weapon requiring the party to split across different regions to engage it within cities while Cid pilots the Highwind in pursuit, mapping its itinerary?

There are countless possibilities for adapting the Weapon confrontations when these battles become divided between parties, utilizing the same logic presented in Rebirth's final encounter — including some that don't need to strictly adhere to every criterion from the original work. It just takes creativity to make them worthy of being remembered the same way fans remember them from Final Fantasy VII.

The Weapons symbolize the moment superbosses became tradition in Final Fantasy. They followed in the footsteps of Omega in Final Fantasy V and paved the way for the dreaded Penance in Final Fantasy X and Yiazmat in Final Fantasy XII, not to mention the dozens of other challenges across the series — from Adamantoise in Final Fantasy XIII to the more recent battle with Leviathan in Final Fantasy XVI.

Bringing them to life in the Remake's final chapter carries nearly three decades of expectations, and fans who spent hours in 1997 optimizing builds and finally triumphing over them expect Square to honor those memories by creating a spectacle worthy of the current generation.

The clues in Rebirth suggest the developers understand the challenge, and the segmented battles of Jenova Lifeclinger and Sephiroth Reborn offer the perfect solution. They maintain colossal scale, introduce mechanical variety to distinguish them from conventional bosses, and create challenges demanding optimization far beyond a single party.

Rebirth ends with the message that there are no promises for the journey's end. Expectations can — and should — be kept at reasonable levels to avoid disappointment with the final product. However, of all the anticipated elements in the third episode, the challenge of the Weapons and their historical legacy for Final Fantasy and the concept of superbosses in JRPGs deserve a representation for new generations worthy of the memory of countless fans who spent hours preparing their party and adapting strategies — and the feeling of triumph when, finally, the final blow is struck.

Thanks for reading!