Final Fantasy 7 Remake and Rebirth director Naoki Hamaguchi hasn’t exactly been shy about his love for The Witcher, so he reacted just like the rest of us when CD Projekt Red‘s new saga was properly shown off at The Game Awards 2024.
Hamaguchi hasn’t been tight-lipped about CDPR’s fantasy series. Just last week, the director said The Witcher 3 was one of his biggest inspirations while making an open-world pivot in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth because why not look to the genre’s best? But he didn’t just play The Wild Hunt for work and research purposes, though.
In a new Reddit AMA with Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth’s leads, Hamaguchi cited the threequel as his favorite game of all time. Series producer Yoshinori Kitase then wrote about how the duo were in the crowd at The Game Awards this year when The Witcher 4‘s first trailer debuted. “Hamaguchi was so excited when Ciri removed her hood, he almost stood up!” All I can say is: same, same.
The Witcher stans, Hamaguchi included, should be more than happy to learn that Geralt will in fact be part of The Witcher 4 as CDPR recently revealed that, yes, that was Doug Cockle’s iconic husky voice at the end of the trailer. But we’ll need to wait until the game eventually drops to learn why Ciri needed to be the protagonist since it’s apparently closely tied to what’s happening in the story.
Elsewhere, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth’s PC port was announced to be coming next month. The game itself was up for multiple trophies at the show – including the main Game of the Year award – but only walked away with a prize for Best Soundtrack and, like, who could argue against that?
See where Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth lands in our best games of 2024 list.