496 Words About: Baby Chocobos Final Fantasy VII Rebirth
I had barely taken Cloud and the party ten steps out of the city of Kalm when a little yellow bird appeared and began to dance around my feet. The little dude just appeared out of nowhere and had a coconut for a butt. After screaming “OH MY GOD IT'S A BABY CHOCOBO!” for half an hour and crying at how freaking adorable the little spud was I realized that he was trying to lead me somewhere.
Obviously, I followed him.
He’s a baby chocobo, how could I not follow him?
Along the way my party of Tifa and Aerith stumbled into the path of a few fiends, and we dispatched them quickly. Before the game finished calculating the XP points we acquired, the baby chocobo reappeared, and I resumed following him until we arrived at a disheveled and obviously abandoned structure that resembled a public bus-stop. The game provides a lore drop that this used to be a station established by the former Republic that provided transportation and that such places tend to attract Chocobos. It was noted by Red XIII that we would likely find similar structures across the continent.
It didn’t take too much investigation to determine that this was a side-quest.
The objective of this mini-side-quest is to lift up a fallen sign by the bench and thus establish a fast travel location on the interactive map. Players control Cloud who will follow the Baby Chocobos that will appear once the player reaches the spawn site for these ridiculously adorable npcs (non-playable characters). Once at the bench the player only needs to perform a button press-and-hold action and they will watch Cloud lift the sign up much to the joy of the baby chocobo who will hop about and chirp happily.
If you think I didn’t scream at how flipping cute this was, do you even know me?
Spoiler alert, you don’t. I’m just some dude on the internet.
But I did scream because, O.M.G. he’s stinkin’ adorable.
In this post-Ubisoft, post-Skyrim, post-PS3 era we videogame players find ourselves in, there is no shortage of open-world games with colossal maps filled with objects and locations to collect. Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth is not a traditional open-world game because there is a main storyline. Certain locations have to be triggered to become accessible rather than stumbling across them. Nevertheless it is also a gargantuan enterprise, and later portions of the game require the player to fast travel from place to place. It makes absolute sense to make fast-travel locations.
The genius is in the design.
I know this is yet another collectathon in yet another massive open-world…but gosh-dolly-darn it that Baby Chocobo is sweeter than ice cream, and I can even give him pets!
The visual charm of watching this little bird dance about recreates what is now a familiar task.
It’s no longer: one more bench to find.
Now, it’s another Baby Chocobo to help, and pet.
Easy choice dude.
Joshua “Jammer” Smith
5.4.2026
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