The Shinra HQ building in Final Fantasy VII Remake will include a brand new upper floor, not recreated from the original game. We learned that via a new official interview with Producer Yoshinori Kitase and Co-Director Naoki Hamaguchi, published by Square Enix.In the interview, Hamaguchi mentioned how surprised he was to see the number of players disappointed about how Red XIII won't be playable in the game, making him realize once again how loved every single character of the original game is. As such, Hamaguchi revealed how Red XIII's gameplay was designed in a special way to offset him not being playable in battle. At some point after meeting Red XIII, the party will stumble into a new upper floor of the Shinra HQ. The key to navigating that floor will lie in Red XIII’s unique physical abilities to overcome environmental obstacles. This probably means reaching places human beings wouldn't be able to reach.

Personally speaking,  I think Final Fantasy VII Remake adding one floor or more to the Shinra HQ makes a lot of sense, especially as these were directly designed with the Remake in mind. While I believe Square Enix didn't communicate on this yet, I highly doubt every single floor of the Shinra HQ will be accessible in the Remake. That's just my own guess, but I wouldn't expect the game to have as many fully explorable floors as the original game either. Creating that many floors and making them explorable would be a gargantuan task.

The interview also deals with why Final Fantasy VII Remake is divided into multiple fully-fledged games, among other subjects. You can also read the latest details from Tetsuya Nomura we translated in a past article. Profiles for some of the new characters were shared as well.

Final Fantasy VII Remake launches on April 10. The game will be a PlayStation 4 exclusive until April 2021. It's still unclear whether fans will get their preordered physical copies on April 10 or not, and Square Enix is supposed to communicate more on the matter this week: