Final Fantasy VII Remake Part 3 Is Coming—and It's Draining Us…

Square Enix just announced that the final chapter of the *Final Fantasy VII* remake trilogy—unofficially dubbed *Revelation* by fans—is officially in development, and the internet reacted the way it always does: with screaming, theorizing, and a collective reaching for the wallet. But beneath the hype cycle lies something worth examining. We are now a society that applauds being strung along for a decade. Let's do the math. The original *Final Fantasy VII* released in 1997. One game. One disc. A complete story you bought once and owned forever. The remake project was announced in 2015. *Remake* arrived in 2020, *Rebirth* in 2024, and now we're told the finale is coming—sometime. Possibly 2027. That's twelve years from announcement to conclusion, and that's if everything goes smoothly. For a story that already existed. For a story millions of us already finished on a PlayStation One. And here's the part nobody wants to say out loud: this isn't an accident. It's a business model. The slow drip of nostalgia isn't generosity to fans—it's extraction. Each installment costs $70. Each one ships with a deluxe edition, a collector's box, a season pass, a pre-order bonus weapon that should have just been in the game. The trilogy, once complete, will likely cost well over $200 to experience in full, before DLC. The original cost $49.99 and asked nothing more of you. We've convinced ourselves this is normal. We've convinced ourselves that waiting years between chapters is "anticipation." That re-buying the same story three times is "supporting the developers." Meanwhile, in the real world, the median American rent just hit another record, grocery bills are unrecognizable, and families are cutting back on everything. Yet here we are, planning to drop another $70 on a game that ends on a cliffhanger designed to sell us the *next* $70 game. This is what late-stage consumer culture looks like. It's not that *Final Fantasy VII* is bad—it's one of the great stories in the medium. It's that we've allowed our entertainment to be carved up, stretched thin, and sold back to us at interest, and we call it an event. We throw viewing parties for trailers. We write 4,000-word essays about a thirty-second teaser. We treat patience as a virtue when it's really just the price of admission. The *Revelation* chapter will arrive eventually. It will be beautiful, probably. It will also be the third time we've paid to see the same meteor fall, and by then, who knows what the world around us will look like. We used to buy a story. Now we rent one, forever, and thank the company for the privilege. Maybe the real revelation is that we keep falling for it.