Final Fantasy 7 Revelation Director Confirms Fortnite Helped Inspire the Highwind's Skydives

Final Fantasy 7 Revelation has already given fans one very obvious reason to make battle royale jokes: the Highwind now lets Cloud and the party leap from the airship and skydive toward their chosen destination. After players immediately compared the sequence to Fortnite's iconic pre-match drops, director Naoki Hamaguchi has confirmed there is some truth behind the comparison.

Speaking following a hands-on preview of the third and final installment in the Final Fantasy 7 remake trilogy, Hamaguchi acknowledged that Fortnite was among the inspirations for the new Highwind mechanic. "We did get a bit of inspiration from Fortnite, [we] won't lie about that," he said.

It is a small admission, but it answers one of the most persistent discussions around Revelation since its first reveal earlier in 2026. The moment footage showed the party launching themselves from the side of the Highwind, social media filled with images and jokes imagining Cloud Strife asking his teammates where they were dropping. Those jokes were not completely off base after all.

The Highwind has a much bigger role in Revelation

The Highwind is not simply a visual callback for longtime Final Fantasy fans. It is positioned as a central system in Final Fantasy 7 Revelation, which is set to conclude the remake trilogy. In the original PlayStation RPG, the iconic airship gave the player a sweeping new level of freedom on the world map. After the Highwind became available, players could fly across the planet, approach places from different directions, and access areas that had previously been unreachable.

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That foundational idea remains intact in Revelation. Players will be able to pilot the Highwind across the world and select the places they want to visit. The difference is in how the game translates an abstract 1997 world-map interaction into a modern, more physically detailed adventure.

In the original game, arriving at a destination could be wonderfully simple. The party's airship moved into position, the player exited, and the group appeared on the ground. It was a functional convention of an earlier RPG era, where the world map was designed around speed, readability, and imagination rather than seamless physical continuity.

Revelation is approaching that transition differently. Rather than having the party effectively teleport from the Highwind to the terrain below, Cloud and his companions jump from the vessel and descend through the sky. It is an elaborate solution to a practical design challenge: how do you retain the freedom and fantasy of a beloved airship while making movement between sky and ground feel credible in a modern remake?

The answer appears to be a high-altitude deployment sequence that is both functional and theatrical. It keeps the Highwind's role as a vehicle for world exploration, but turns the act of leaving it into its own memorable moment.

Why the Fortnite comparison was inevitable

Fortnite has made the act of dropping from the sky into a chosen location one of the most recognizable rituals in modern games. The format is instantly legible: a group travels overhead, players decide where to go, and everyone dives down toward the map. Even people who have never played Fortnite can generally understand the visual language.

That is why the response to Revelation's Highwind footage was so immediate. A party standing aboard a flying craft, selecting a destination, and then hurling themselves toward the world below naturally evokes the battle royale giant. In Final Fantasy 7's case, the image is particularly amusing because Cloud's famously serious demeanor makes him an easy fit for "Where we droppin'?" memes.

Hamaguchi's comment does not suggest Revelation is turning its world exploration into a battle royale mode, nor does it mean the Highwind is merely copying Fortnite. The director specifically described the influence as only partial. The underlying premise of flying freely around the planet in the Highwind comes directly from Final Fantasy 7 itself, while the skydiving presentation reflects an effort to modernize that idea for the trilogy's scale and style.

Still, the acknowledgment matters because it shows how contemporary games can inform the presentation of even the most nostalgic mechanics. The remake project has consistently had to balance reverence for the original Final Fantasy 7 with new systems, expanded environments, and a more cinematic take on its world. The Highwind's new departure sequence seems to be another example of that balancing act.

A modern answer to an old RPG problem

Airships have long been a defining Final Fantasy tradition. They often represent a turning point: the moment a party gains greater agency and a world opens up for exploration. In the original Final Fantasy 7, the Highwind carried particular significance because it was both a major story symbol and a practical late-game tool. It made the world feel newly available at a time when the player's journey was entering its final stretch.

Bringing that experience into a contemporary remake is more complicated than recreating a menu option or an overworld icon. Revelation's world is expected to present locations with a more grounded physical scale than the original's stylized map. If players are visibly soaring over mountains, coastlines, settlements, and other landmarks, a transition from airship to ground has to account for that physical space.

A skydive is a clean way to bridge the gap. It makes the trip feel continuous, reinforces the height and scale of the Highwind, and offers a dramatic arrival that can be tailored to different regions. It also gives the developers an opportunity to make travel feel active rather than purely transactional. Selecting a destination is no longer just a command; it becomes a short sequence with personality and momentum.

There is also a fitting sense of spectacle to the idea. Final Fantasy 7 has always embraced huge, unforgettable imagery, from enormous machinery and towering cities to devastating supernatural events. Watching Cloud's party leap from the Highwind into the world below is a suitably bold evolution of an action that used to happen almost invisibly between map screens.

An unusual gap in Fortnite's crossover history

The Fortnite connection is amusing for another reason: despite Fortnite's extraordinary history of crossover events, Final Fantasy 7 remains one of the major entertainment properties it has not joined. Fortnite has partnered with an enormous range of game series, films, television franchises, musicians, comics, and other cultural touchstones. Cloud, Tifa, Aerith, Sephiroth, and the wider Final Fantasy 7 cast would seem like natural candidates for that ecosystem, yet no such collaboration is part of the information surrounding Revelation.

Other games provide closer genre comparisons. Apex Legends has featured a significant Final Fantasy 7 crossover, and its own squad deployment format also involves launching players toward a map. Final Fantasy 7 even briefly entered the battle royale space directly through Final Fantasy 7: The First Soldier, the now-defunct mobile game built around Shinra SOLDIER candidates competing in matches.

Those connections make Fortnite's influence on Revelation's drop sequence feel less random than it first sounds. Skydiving from an airborne vehicle is now a familiar part of multiplayer game culture, and its visual appeal extends well beyond battle royales. The Highwind sequence borrows a recognizable language while applying it to single-player world exploration.

What the reveal says about Revelation's ambitions

The Highwind footage and Hamaguchi's explanation point to a larger goal for Final Fantasy 7 Revelation: preserving major milestones from the original game while making them feel substantial enough for a modern trilogy finale. Players who remember the PlayStation release will recognize the essential fantasy of commanding the Highwind and choosing their next destination. Newer players, meanwhile, are being given a more immediate and cinematic version of that freedom.

That approach carries risks as well as opportunities. Fans are often protective of the original game's defining moments and systems, especially as the remake trilogy moves toward its final chapter. Yet the Highwind is exactly the kind of element that benefits from expansion. Its original function was powerful because of what it represented, not because players needed a literal recreation of every interface transition.

Revelation's version appears to understand that distinction. The airship remains a means of traversing the world. The new skydiving mechanic simply gives that travel a modern dramatic flourish--one that happens to resemble a familiar Fortnite tradition.

For now, Hamaguchi's candid confirmation gives fans permission to keep the jokes going. Cloud may not be preparing for a battle royale match, and the Highwind remains a crucial piece of Final Fantasy history rather than a Battle Bus substitute. But when the party takes the leap in Final Fantasy 7 Revelation, Fortnite was apparently part of the creative conversation.