Final Fantasy 7 Remake's lead battle designer has said that he wants to eventually "surpass" the Gambit System that was featured in Final Fantasy 12.
When Final Fantasy 7 Remake released, its combat system was one of the things that almost everyone seemed to love. As great as it was, it seems that developers behind it are keen to make some big improvements to it in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, as an interview with the lead battle designer, Satoru Koyama, has the lofty goal of trying to outdo Final Fantasy 12's incredibly detailed Gambit System.
The interview in question comes from the Final Fantasy 7 Remake Ultimania (as shared on ResetEra) which was released in Japan some time ago but has now been translated ahead of the book's worldwide release later this year. One section of the Ultimania features an interview with Satoru Koyama, Remake's lead battle designer. In it, he talks about some of the challenges he wants to tackle in his "next work", detailing how Remake's combat could be improved and name-dropping Final Fantasy 12 in the process.
Koyama said, "This time around, we had it so AI teammates could only perform the Attack command in order to allow players to switch between characters as they fight. However, next time, I’d like to create an AI that can juggle a variety of techniques and magic. My goal is to surpass Final Fantasy 12's Gambit system. I’d also like to focus more energy into aspects that support player control, such as Classic Mode, where characters fight automatically."
For those who don't remember, the Gambit System was introduced in Final Fantasy 12 as a way of commanding characters. Players could set commands and actions that will take place under certain conditions, and the game would then evaluate which action the character would perform at that moment based on whether those conditions are met.
It's a little bit like programming and could be quite complicated, but it did offer a lot of options, especially when compared to Final Fantasy 7 Remake. As Koyama points out, the AI in Remake could really only perform attacks while waiting to be swapped to, so it seems like we might see some kind of improvement on the system in Rebirth.
We don't yet know if Koyaka is returning as lead battle designer for Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, but if he does (which seems likely considering he's asked about his plans for his "next work"), then it seems like this interview has given us a little glimpse into what the team is aiming to do with AI characters in the future.