When Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade is released on PS5, it will come with an extra DLC episode featuring Yuffie. It seems like this wasn’t the original plan, though. In an interview with Famitsu, Final Fantasy VII Evercrisis and Final Fantasy VII The First Soldier creative director Tetsuya Nomura said they wanted to merely remake the game for PlayStation 5 and not have extra DLC. While Yuffie is now classified as DLC, there remains no plans to have any more DLC in the future.
The new Yuffie content was intended to be included as part of the base game when it made the leap to PlayStation 5, but this wasn’t possible because of “the nature of the upgrade system”. As such, it had to be labelled as downloadable content. Still, Nomura insists this will be the only DLC for the game and they “do not have any plans for downloadable content at this time”. If they do ever decide to make DLC for Intergrade, it won’t be until they’ve completed the next game, so that doesn’t necessarily mean there won’t be more content in the future.
Square Enix has already briefly introduced new character Sonon, but Nomura explained his “oriental appearance with military style clothing and an armored motif” is because he’s working for Avalanche. His martial arts combat style is meant to compliment Yuffie’s style, and his outfit is meant to appear as if his movement isn’t hindered in any way. His build has also changed since the character was originally created:
Originally he was designed with finer features for a softer “pretty boy” look, but I thought that him being paired with Yuffie would add a new dynamic that differed from what you got with Cloud or Vincent, so I changed him to the more masculine character you see now.
Players will only be able to control Yuffie directly; Sonon will be an ally fighting alongside her. During combat, the screen will indicate whether there are opportunities for her abilities to combine with those of Sonon. Players can choose whether to allow Sonon to act as an independent and intuitive AI character or whether they wish to control his movements through commands. The two combo modes can be alternated using L2 to switch between them. There’ll also be new materia nad summons that can be used just in the Yuffie DLC.
Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade will be released on PlayStation 5 on June 10. Players who have purchased the PS4 version of Final Fantasy VII Remake will get a free new-gen upgrade but will have to purchase the Yuffie DLC episode separately for an unspecified cost. Those who redeem the PS4 game while it is free with PlayStation Plus will not be able to upgrade to the PS5 version of the game.