It looks like it’ll be a few more years before we’ll be able to Sled Fang our way through Shinra soldiers. With the Final Fantasy VII Remake just a short month away from its latest release date, developer Square Enix has announced that fan-favorite character Red XIII – aka Nanaki – won’t be available as a playable character in the first game of the remake series. The reason why? He simply comes into the game too late.

In a recent interview with the folks over at VG247, Final Fantasy VII Remake co-director Naoki Hamaguchi opened up about the decision to keep Red XIII as an AI-controller guest character. “We felt the point at which Red XIII joins the party in the story is very late on so we thought okay, if we’re gonna have him as a full character and try and get the player to enjoy his character development arc and growth as a character through that, it’s not really enough time to do that,” Hamaguchi said.

We thought that the best way to have him involved was as a guest character. Normally throughout the game you’ll be playing as a three-man party, but you will have him as a guest character that fights alongside you during the the last part of the story.”

For those unfamiliar, this essentially means that Red XIII will be assisting the party during their escape from the Shinra building, though it’s certainly possible that Square Enix has extended this part of the game and has a few surprises planned. The decision as a whole certainly seems to be a good one for the reasons given, and it’ll likely make the character as a whole more enjoyable when we finally get to test him out in part 2 of the remake series.

The Final Fantasy VII Remake is slated to release exclusively for the PlayStation 4 on April 10, 2020.

So, thoughts on the decision to keep Red XIII as an AI-controlled guest character? Let us know in the comments section below, and as always, stay tuned to Don’t Feed the Gamers for all the latest gaming and entertainment news! Don’t forget to follow DFTG on Twitter for our 24/7 news feed!