Highlights

  • Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth expands on iconic locations from the original game, modernizing and adding depth to familiar settings like Cosmo Canyon.
  • The remake's version of Cosmo Canyon adds a bustling cityscape, sacrificing the original's ethereal mystique for a more grand and lively atmosphere.
  • Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth introduces open-world exploration to Cosmo Canyon, enhancing the player experience with new side content and a larger canyon area to navigate.

Though it rocked the boat by not technically being a true "remake" of the original 1997 game, Final Fantasy 7 Remake received some incredible praise upon its April 2020 launch. While its story may not have been a one-for-one recreation of the original, Final Fantasy 7 Remake still went above and beyond in recreating some of the original game's most iconic Midgar locations, including the Sector 7 Slums and Shinra Headquarters. And now, four years later, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth succeeds in continuing that legacy.

Covering the original 1997 game's second act, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth takes players out of Midgar and throws them into the outside world. Following a nearly identical structure to the 1997 Final Fantasy 7, Rebirth takes players to Kalm, Junon, Costa del Sol, Corel, and Gongaga, all of which have been lovingly modernized and expanded upon. Of course, Final Fantasy 7's Cosmo Canyon also appears in Rebirth, featuring some impressive changes that definitely change the overall vibe of the classic setting.

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth Minigames
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Comparing Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth's Cosmo Canyon to the 1997 Original

One of the last locations players will visit in both Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth and the second act of the original Final Fantasy 7, Cosmo Canyon is the hometown of Red XIII, the birthplace of Avalanche, and a pilgrimage hotspot for the in-universe Planetology religion, making it one of the most subtly important locations in the entire game. Generally speaking, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth's version of Cosmo Canyon absolutely nails the aesthetic of the 1997 original, but there are some major changes that give the area a bit of a different atmosphere in the remake.

By far the biggest change in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth's version of Cosmo Canyon is its size. In the original 1997 game, Cosmo Canyon is a fairly small village that looks deceptively large due to its buildings being wrapped around a tall mountain. In actuality, the original version of Cosmo Canyon only consists of a handful of explorable buildings, including an inn, a shop, and Bugenhagen's observatory. The lack of buildings and the lack of NPCs walking around gives the original Cosmo Canyon a rather empty feeling, but one that matches the area's more ethereal themes quite well.

In Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, however, Cosmo Canyon has become a bustling area filled with people and various buildings. No longer a simple settlement built around a small mountain, Rebirth's Cosmo Canyon stretches across the entire canyon, with large bridges containing shops now appearing above the canyon, and the city winding up a much larger mountain. Rebirth's Cosmo Canyon is a city filled with people, most of whom are there to practice Planetology. While this gives Cosmo Canyon a much grander feeling, and places a much greater importance on the Planetology religion, it does mean that the original area's mystique has been lost.

Cosmo Canyon Now Features Open-World Exploration

Another major difference between the original Cosmo Canyon and Rebirth's is that the remake's version stretches into a fairly vast open-world area. In the original 1997 Final Fantasy 7, players accessed Cosmo Canyon from the world map, simply walking up to the settlement and appearing on its front steps. In Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, Cloud and the rest of the gang have to manually make their way through the surrounding canyon area on foot before they reach the city. This canyon area is surprisingly large, featuring plenty of side content that, obviously, wasn't there in the original game.