Square Enix Made Final Fantasy VII Rebirth’s Open World Feel Like a Checklist to Many Players, but a New PC Mod Brings Back Random Encounters
Following the linear experience seen in Final Fantasy VII Remake, Square Enix went open-world with Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, doubling down on player choice and freedom in the upcoming Final Fantasy VII Revelation. While the open-world setup in the second entry in the series allowed director Naoki Hamaguchi and his team to expand the original's setting and story, its by-the-books, checklist-heavy design disappointed…
Following the linear experience seen in Final Fantasy VII Remake, Square Enix went open-world with Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, doubling down on player choice and freedom in the upcoming Final Fantasy VII Revelation. While the open-world setup in the second entry in the series allowed director Naoki Hamaguchi and his team to expand the original's setting and story, its by-the-books, checklist-heavy design disappointed more than a few players, but on PC, it's now possible to make the open-world segments slightly more dynamic with a new mod that brings back the random encounters of the original while also introducing a clever new progression system.
"Open-world camps come back as new mixes of their region's enemies, in random numbers, every time you fight them," reads the description of the Biome Randomizer mod on Nexus Mods. "Beat a Combat Assignment and its variant starts turning up in that region's camps." The mod leaves story battles and bosses untouched, so it focuses only on the open-world segments.
"After a while in Rebirth's open world you know every camp: the same enemies, in the same places, every time you pass. And the game is full of variants, tougher versions of familiar enemies, that you fight once in a Combat Assignment and never see again," the description continues. "This mod gives the open world variety, using only what the game already has. No new enemies, no new camps and no replaced game files."
In some ways, the Biome Randomizer mod brings something very akin to the random encounters of the original Final Fantasy VII to Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, but with a twist. While the original game has a random encounter rate, the enemy groups themselves aren't randomized, so this mod introduces a level of dynamism that the series as a whole never attempted. And with Combat Assignment variants joining the pool of possible enemies once cleared for the first time, this mod also introduces a level of challenge that other mods never delivered, as the player needs to come up with character builds that can cover the possibility of a really difficult enemy encounter.
Before you try out this new Final Fantasy VII Rebirth mod, it's important to note that development was mostly handled by AI agents: Codex for research and building the 1.0 release, and Opus 5.5 for the 1.1 release, with manual input for design calls and fixing issues that slipped through.
I quickly tested the mod on a completed save file, and everything seemed to work as intended in the Grasslands and Nibelheim regions, throwing so many unexpected enemy configurations that it made me want to complete another playthrough with it before Final Fantasy VII Revelation launches, much as the Shader Injector mod did a few months ago. While I am as critical as most when it comes to using AI for creative work, this is one use of AI I could get behind, as it spices up the experience with unexpected features without stealing from other people's work.
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