If you played the original in 1997, you remember Knights of the Round two ways: the hours of chocobo breeding it took to reach the materia, and the summon animation so long that people found a glitch to skip it. Thirteen Arthurian knights, one after another, the strongest attack in the game.
In Revelation, you fight them first. And according to director Naoki Hamaguchi, the first version of that fight got thrown out.
## What happened Speaking to MinnMax (via GamesRadar+), Hamaguchi said combat director Teruki Endo looked at the team's first pass and decided: "We need to make them stronger." Hamaguchi's account of what came next: "So we had an emergency meeting among all the directors, like the art director, motion director, and I had to explain to everyone [that] Endo wants to make this boss entity stronger, so we gotta start from scratch again." He said it smiling. The art and animation teams probably weren't.
His framing: "Given how powerful the materia was in the original, we're making it a very formidable enemy." Like Rebirth's summons, you earn Knights of the Round by beating them, and there's a dedicated storyline around them in the vein of Rebirth's Protorelic quest.
## The other confession Same week, Hamaguchi confirmed what the internet had been joking about since the State of Play trailer: jumping out of the Highwind and skydiving into the map was partly inspired by Fortnite. Square Enix took the meme in stride. It's a good sign. A team that can laugh at the Battle Bus comparison is a team confident in what it built.
## Where the game stands Revelation closes the Remake trilogy. April 8, 2027, PS5 first, then Xbox Series, Switch 2 and PC. The State of Play deep dive on September 3 showed the Highwind you actually fly, Wutai, chocobo combat and the FITS class system. Preorders opened after the Nintendo Direct. The physical disc still needs a download, which Square says was the price of not compromising.
## The read This is a fixture-adjacent story, not a date story. The date aired on September 10. What's new is the process: a studio treating a 30-year-old summon as a boss that has to earn its reputation. For a single-player crowd, that's the detail that says the endgame is being built with care. Seven months out.
## Sources - GamesRadar+, September 13, 2026 - FF7 Revelation's Knights of the Round boss battle wasn't hard enough, so the devs had an "emergency meeting" to rebuild it from scratch: https://www.gamesradar.com/games/final-fantasy/final-fantasy-7-revelations-knights-of-the-round-boss-battle-wasnt-hard-enough-so-the-devs-had-an-emergency-meeting-to-rebuild-the-iconic-summon-from-scratch/ - GamesRadar+, September 13, 2026 - After countless memes, FF7 Revelation boss confirms Fortnite partly inspired jumping out of the Highwind - MinnMax - Naoki Hamaguchi interview (primary)