Final Fantasy VII Remake - The start of an exciting journey
Final Fantasy VII is one of the biggest milestones in videogame history. It's a game that turned Final Fantasy into one of the biggest institutions for JRPGs in the west, and kickstarted the golden era for a genre that, up until then, was struggling to affirm itself. Just to put that into perspective, in Europe, the only chapter of the series that was ever released was the spin off Mystic Quest Legend! The importance of this game for the genre cannot be understated.
I also got passionate about the genre thanks to this game: I loved its dreary atmosphere in a world close to a climate cataclysm, I loved Nobuo Uematsu’s soundtrack, that still gives me goosebumps to this day, I was impressed by summons like Bahamut and I fell in love with the characters and their stories. Final Fantasy VII brought me in to playing the entire series and to this day is still one of my favourite chapters.
It’s not a surprise then that, with such a huge success, Square has treated this chapter like a cow, ready to milk for all its worth. Just the Final Fantasy VII Compilation project alone has added a ton to this game’s world, with sequels, prequels and various spin offs. It didn't matter how much time passed, Final Fantasy VII was always very alive in the minds of everyone, to the point that a certain wish started to take shape.
How cool it would be to have a Final Fantasy VII Remake!
This sentiment has been alive since way before Remakes and Remasters of old games became a culture that, to this day, has been abused to hell and back. And If I have to lift a finger to who I think is the biggest culprit of this sentiment, I’m gonna point to the sequel movie, Final Fantasy VII - Advent Children.
Advent Children is far from being a perfect movie, in terms of storytelling it’s a bit of a mess, but like all of the Final Fantasy movies, it’s a visual wonder. Almost 20 years later it still holds up incredibly well, even rivaling some of the current 3D productions. Every action scene in that movie is a spectacle, adrenaline rush and feast for the eyes, which is accompanied by a wonderfully re-arranged orchestral soundtrack, taken from the game.
I wouldn’t be surprised if many wished the game could reach the same level of visual prowess, especially since the game has really felt the passage of time. Being one of the very first 3D games, the character models were pretty simple and limited, especially outside of battle, and I can perfectly understand how many struggle to go back to such a visual style.
Final Fantasy VII Remake
About the Plot
The story begins in Midgar, the biggest and technologically advanced city of the planet. This wealth is thanks to Mako, a new energy source discovered by the electric company Shinra, which, thanks to it, has become the de facto ruler of Midgar, extending its influence over the whole world. This type of energy is also used in warfare.
There’s a price to pay for all of this luxury. Mako is extracted directly from the planet’s lifestream. The more Shinra decides to use it, the closer the planet gets to an ecological disaster that could spell the end for humanity as a whole. It’s for this reason there are many resistance groups trying to counter Shinra, among these there’s Avalanche.
A cell of this group, led by Barret Wallace, decides the time is nye to spring into action and destroy the reactors that bring energy to Midgar. Unfortunately his group is short of numbers and most people lack particular combat experience. Until, one day, a blond guy has been brought into the group by his friend Tifa Lockhart and decides to join thanks to some healthy payment. His name is Cloud Strife.
During one of these missions, Cloud meets Aerith Gainsborough, some common looking flower girl of the slums, who turns out to be a person of peculiar interest for Shinra. Sooner than later the two will be forced to join up because something is brewing in the core of the Shinra. Sephiroth, a dark figure from Cloud’s past is about to make his big return, and some mysterious entities known as Numen observe the events from afar, ready to intervene according to their needs.
In the original version, these were the events of roughly the first six hours of gameplay. They gave you an introduction to what our heroes' journey was going to be: not just saving the planet from Shinra’s ambitions, but also discovering the truth behind Sephiroth’s return and his role to play in these events.
Square Enix wisely chose to dedicate more time to this section of the story by giving it its whole game. I’ve often seen Midgar being pointed out as the most interesting section of this Final Fantasy. The majority of people thought that having more sectors to explore, and going deeper on concepts that were just mentioned in the original, would’ve been very interesting.
I was scared about the role Shinra would’ve had in this version. In the original game its impact largely faded in the background after Sephiroth gets introduced, despite even him being a consequence of their own doing. Luckily this didn’t come true. Actually, Shinra in this game is more brutal than ever.
The dystopian reality of a multibillion company like Shinra being in control of the entire world is more than ever felt in this game. You really feel the massive population control, manipulation of the news, constant propaganda that makes them appear like the heroes against the awful actions of the resistance. While behind closed doors they only care about one thing: profit!
The social/environmental message of Final Fantasy VII is more important than ever during these times, where corporations are even more focused on unrestrained profit. Multibillionaires want to meddle with politics for their own good, our everyday life more and more dependent on technology that’s slowly killing our planet. This game is almost 30, and yet this story is still contemporary.
Even the fact that Midgar is this gigantic metallic plate that’s hovering over the ground to elevate itself to the skies above. It’s symbolic of the pride of those who control it, and whoever isn’t worthy to live in the high section of the city is relegated to the slums below. A complete landfill of houses, held together by thoughts and prayers, with dried out polluted earth and where the inhabitants aren’t even allowed to see the sky over their heads.
I feel it’s absolutely important to always remember how the whole culprit of this long chain of events is Shinra! Although I understand how Sephiroth has usurped the throne of main bad guy becoming the symbol of Final Fantasy VII, due to mainly his incredible presence and strength of character.
In this game Sephiroth appears like a tormentor from the very beginning, a spectre ready to prey on Cloud’s mind when he least expects it, especially in places that can awaken some deeply buried memories of his past. Sephiroth is the physical manifestation of Cloud’s PTSD and every time you can feel his fear, how agitated he gets, to the point of reacting on instinct to try and defend himself.
If there’s something this game does to perfection is the presentation, like any other game made by Square Enix.
From the lush metropolis of Midgar, adorned everywhere by dying flowers, to the desolate misery of the slums, filled with trash and monstrous creatures. There’s a ton of attention to detail especially with recreating iconic locations of the original game. Even the design of the monsters are faithful modernized touch up of the archaic Playstation 1 models.
On paper it does feel like all these elements are going to clash too much with the modern graphics, but Square created a well done synergy of these two philosophies, they even managed to include monsters like the Robot House, and made it so that it wouldn’t look out of place.
To accompany all this there’s the excellent soundtrack, composed mostly by re-arranged tracks of Nobuo Uematsu’s iconic score, but it also has some original pieces sprinkled here and there that manages to leave a mark, like the standout Hollow. The best part is the ability to blend many old pieces together to create a new tune, and the usage of dynamic audio constantly doing all these little changes depending on the situation. An absolutely masterful work.
I can’t even describe the effect that this soundtrack did to me, from the very first minutes I was in a mix of nostalgia and ecstasy, that damn feeling that perfectly encapsulates the reason why we keep falling into this trap of wanting to see this classics, that were so important for our formation, being redone in this new light.
If I have to find a flaw in this chapter, it’s wanting to stick way too faithfully to the original game. My hope that I would get to explore the whole of Midgar wasn't fully realized, the game sticks strictly to locations already existing in the original game. This led to a very weird narrative pace, especially when moving from one location to the next.
There are a lot of moments that have been dilated to the extreme, sections that would require from some minutes to an hour have now been greatly extended. My first sign of warning was during the travel between sector 7 to reactor 5, a journey that lasted hours and saw my party going through all sorts of obstacles, from being intercepted on the tracks, to climbing towards the plate, and successive infiltration and escape from the reactor.
As much as the section was visibly stunning and mechanically intricate, it didn’t do enough to distract me from the fact that they were trying to pad the experience out as much as possible. This situation presented itself in many other instances, and I was starting to run out of patience by the end of the game. I would’ve much rather had to deal with more secondary material that helped me gain a more complete view of Midgar.
About the Characters
It’s gonna be weird talking about the characters in this context, especially since we’re still at the very beginning of the story and their evolution process still has to start.
Cloud Strife appears initially as someone that doesn’t want to get involved in Barret’s idealistic crusades. He only cares about money, doing his job and moving on with the day. In reality this is all a facade and it’s clear from the very start. Cloud is traumatized, something terrible happened during his time in SOLDIER, an elite military group of Shinra, something that brought him to a conflict with Sephiroth, which left an indelible scar in his mind.
During the game we’ll constantly see him getting haunted by that memory and also getting afflicted by recurring headaches, like his own mind is desperately trying to reassemble all the pieces of his life. Not just his time in SOLDIER, but also his childhood, which makes his relationship with Tifa a lot more complicated.
Tifa Lockhart is his childhood friend. The two of them grew up in the remote village of Nibelheim and have always been very good friends. As a teenager Cloud decided to leave the village to enroll into SOLDIER and the two haven’t seen each other since this fateful encounter in Midgar.
Tifa is another character that shows a powerful contrast. For as strong, determined and brave as she appears, she’s a delicate and fragile woman that fears failure and losing loved ones more than any other thing. She’s clearly attracted to Cloud but after their reunion at Midgar she’s more than ever worried about him. He doesn’t look the same in her eyes: the cheerful kid that dreamed of being a hero is gone, and in his place there’s a more cynical and uncaring man.
I loved their interactions because you really feel the tension between them: Cloud doesn’t know how what do with her, not helped by the fact they haven’t seen each other in so long, and Tifa does everything in her power to get closer to him, desperately trying to break that barrier between them, while also weary about being too pushy and ruining everything.
But Tifa is not the only woman competing for Cloud’s attention, there’s also a florist from the slums. Aerith Gainsborough lives in the slums of sector 5, the only place where, by some miracle, flowers are able to bloom and flourish, which allows her to earn a living. Her life isn’t easy though: among the usual hardships of the slums, she has to constantly deal with the Turks, Shinra’s Intelligence group, who torment her since childhood.
For this reason Aerith developed a very bold and brash attitude, a perfect contrast with her sweet innocent look. It’s funny as hell to see her bounce off Cloud, because he’s genuinely bewildered by her flirting and her forward attitude. She also doesn’t miss a chance to tease him, and it makes me laugh every single time.
It’s also nice that, despite both her and Tifa sharing an interest in Cloud, there’s no bitterness between them. They're actually very close and ready to help each other out. When Tifa needed help the most, she was the first one rising to the occasion to help her, even if that meant jumping head first in the most dangerous parts of the slums.
There’s a reason this triangle is so discussed after 30 years, and that’s because of the genuinely great alchemy between all three of the characters, and sometimes you kinda wanna cheer for both of them!
Last but not least for the main cast, we have Barret Wallace! An imposing man of colour with a machine gun arm, a fiery attitude filled with rage towards the powers at be, and desire for a revolution. But he also has a tender side to him that reserves entirely for her little daughter Marlene. He’s the head of Avalanche, very short-tempered, always ready to jump into long speeches about how much Shinra sucks, and hardly manages to contain his anger when something irks him.
Him and Cloud are on very thin ice at first. Not only Cloud has ties to the company that Barret hates the most, but his carelessness to the cause, and focus on money doesn’t help in making them find some common ground. In due time, things will soften between them and Barret starts accepting his place on the team.
Barret is usually the one that mostly ends up filling the role of the comic relief whether intentionally or not: his long winded speeches and exaggerated attitude do skirt the line of making him look like a caricature at times, but the man really believes in the cause, and he’s more than ready to sacrifice everything in order to see it through.
The scenes with him and Marlene are the best of them all, it really shows how much of a loving father he is, and this contrasts perfectly with his grouchy exterior. Also, hearing him singing the victory fanfare at the end of battles always manages to make me slime! It’s a shame we don’t see too much about his past. I know that moment is gonna happen in Rebirth, but it would've been nice to have a snippet in this game already.
This cast was already very strong in the original, and it was only made better by all these little additions and care that are only doable in this day and age.
The same can be said for the secondary characters.
The rest of Avalanche has also seen some improvements to make them more present and less of a sideshow. Wedge for example, was just a comic relief, and for as much as that’s still true here, we also see him evolve into a much braver and active character, which I really end up enjoying! Unfortunately Biggs was kinda left behind, he doesn’t get much screen time and I haven’t seen that many differences compared to the original.
Jessie has completely changed in this game! In the original she was a very shy and clumsy girl who was awful at hiding her crush on Cloud. Now she's more playful and forward in her attitude. She really looks like a big sister to both Biggs and Wedge, and her constant flirting with Cloud is much funnier than in the original. Cloud, just like with Aerith, has no clue how to act when someone is so direct with him.
We also have a brand new mission with Jessie, in which we find out more about her life before Avalanche than it was ever said in the original game! This is exactly the kind of missions I was hoping would be more of in this game! Unfortunately this is probably the only real moment in which the game decides to go off the beaten path.
It was also the mission that introduced me to one of my favourite side characters: Roche! A completely new character for this remake. He’s a member of SOLDIER whose main occupation is road safety, and I can only describe him as a Fast & Furious character dropped into Final Fantasy.
A speed obsessed weirdo who loves his bike and lives for the thrill of a good chase, and is always looking for a worthy challenger. Everytime I faced him I was laughing like a moron, and the chase scenes were just crazy action all over the place. I really hope he comes back in Rebirth!
For the rest of the antagonists I feel inclined to make an honorable mention to Hojo, chief of scientific staff, for being one the most visually disgusting characters I’ve ever seen in a videogame. I really didn’t think you could reach such a grotesque level in a human being’s face, really congratulations to the artist for this game!
In terms of presentation, plot structure, characters and use of music we couldn't have a better start. We're gonna talk about the very much discussed ending and its implications for the story, in the spoiler section… for now, let’s focus on the gameplay aspect.
About the Gameplay
Once again, we find ourselves in front of the age-old dilemma that seems to impact every JRPG this generation: Turn Based or Action? It was expected that the remake to one of the most important games in the genre would’ve stuck to its roots and maintained the classic gameplay. Instead, Square decided to experiment a bit by proposing some sort of in between which, in my opinion, worked really damn well.
Just like the original we have a party of 3 characters. Being an action game, we’re only in control of one character: moving out in the battlefield, attacking enemies, parrying and dodging when needed. On first impact it doesn’t feel any different from other action games, but everything changes once the ATB gets into play.
In classic Final Fantasy, the ATB was an evolution of turn based combat that made battles less static and a lot more dynamic. The battle never stops and it’s up to the player to decide when and how to act, in this game it's used to give more depth to the battles than simply attacking and dodging.
The ATB is split in 2 sections, once one of them is full you can enter a tactical pause where we could: attack with unique abilities of the characters, utilize magic or objects. This tactical pause isn’t limited to the character we control, but applies to the whole party, giving us full control of everyone’s actions.
This tactical pause gives us a ton of depth: planning attacks, deciding how and when to heal, use a charge now or wait for the other characters. Some abilities also require to spend both sections of ATB, introducing a risk versus reward aspect to the combat.
The existence of this tactical pause as an integral part of the game might give the idea that the rhythm, by consequence, will be very slow and disjointed, in reality it’s the exact opposite!
This game is fast, extremely frantic! In spite of the tactical pause the rhythm of the battles is always heart-pounding, at times it’s also easy to completely track yourself and the group. Enemies certainly won’t stay still and let themselves get hit: they also have lots of magics, they have shields that you would have to maneuver around, some of them you’re gonna be able to reach them with a ranged weapon, some attacks might easily stun your character, and in many cases a stunned characters might as well equate to certain death.
Since the ATB bar is tied to item and magic usage, this means that it would be impossible to heal your characters as long as you lack a charge and this can become very tricky to handle. The rhythm of the ATB charging is mainly dictated by your ability to engage enemies into battle. Running in circles in the arena will surely charge the bar but at a much slower pace, and once your character is near death it’s very easy to make mistakes because your nerves got the better of you.
Most of my deaths in this game were all due to engaging the battle without proper preparation. Getting caught by surprise from attacks that caused a domino effect against me, losing track of my character and allies because I was too distracted by the chaos unfolding. This is a game that requires double your attention, not just for moving your character but also to keep track and manage the tactical pause, and this can result in a lot of pressure and be difficult to handle.
Fear not though! Because this game decided to offer an option to those who might have a problem with this by introducing the “Classic” mode. In this mode character movement is automated and the player will only have to worry about managing the ATB. I’ve heard this option has become very popular among some players, but I’ve decided to stick with the more hybrid system.
Another thing that I really enjoyed is how they manage to maintain the same level of versatility characters had in the original Final Fantasy VII, and also manage to improve it further!
The materia system returns: a series of magical spheres that can be added to our weapon’s slots to unlock new magic, new techs or raise our stats. It’s a system I always enjoyed, because of the vastness of options it gives you while at the same time remaining relatively simple. The only limitation is, that in the original, some characters were clearly more oriented towards a certain role compared to others. It’s not necessarily that different in this remake, but there’s another piece to the puzzle that makes the characters a lot more versatile, and that’s weapon management.
Like in any RPG, the further you go in the adventure, the better your gear becomes, making the older weapons completely obsolete. In this game instead, not only does every weapon have a unique ability for the character to inherit, but they can also level up throughout the game, becoming individually more powerful and thus never useless!
Do you wanna play the entire game with Cloud’s iconic Buster Sword? In this remake you easily can do it, without it necessarily becoming a self imposed challenge. Your weapon at the end of the game won’t be as weak as it at the beginning, and since every weapon has a different build focus, this gives you a lot more possibilities depending on your game style. I feel this is perfect for those who are more into micromanaging and experimenting.
For example, I always gear towards weapons with the most materia slots available, might not be optimal, but it gives me more options to mess around with in battle, and that’s the thing I always had the most fun with the original combat system.
With all these ingredients together we get the best action Final Fantasy game that Square has ever made until now. It’s very fast and frantic, the battles never drag, bosses can be very complex even on normal difficulty. There have been some boss fights that frustrated me, but I was surely never bored for a second.
It’s actually insane to think that the game that was built in with a tactical pause in mind, ends up being more involving and quicker than a game like Final Fantasy XVI which was meant to be played entirely in real time. And it’s not just thanks to the party aspect, because even in contexts when the game can only be played with a single character, it ends up completely eclipsing his successor!
Final Fantasy VII: Intermission
With the advent of the Playstation 5 during summer of 2020, Square Enix decided to offer an incentive to those who still haven’t gotten the game: to wait for a bit and buy it on the new console instead. Thus Intermission came out, an episode contemporary to the events of the main plot which sees the ninja Yuffie Kisaragi as the main character in a mission to sneak into Shinra to steal the so-called Ultimate Materia.
Unlike the main game, we won’t have a party to control. Yuffie will be accompanied by Sonon Kusakabe, fellow countryman from Wutai who’s acting as a spy against the Shinra. I don’t have much to say on Sonos’s character, he’s more like a babysitter to Yuffie, which in this game is a bonafide livewire!
Being the youngest of the party, she is a very impulsive hothead, extremely confident in her abilities. She rarely thinks before acting and is so full of youthful enthusiasm that she’s always very loud in every scene she’s in.
As fun as Yuffie was, and I feel she’s also a great adaptation of the original character, they kinda wasted the opportunity to dig deeper into her character. Mostly because this entire DLC only lasts a couple of hours, just the time to give those who bought the new console a little appetizer and also trying to push some new visual effects that would’ve made the old Playstation 4 struggle.
I enjoyed this chapter for two reasons: the characters that appear at the end and Yuffie’s gameplay in general!
Yuffie is one of the funniest characters I’ve ever played in an action game: she’s extremely quick and has amazing mobility, has both close quarter and ranged options thanks to her shuriken, she can switch between physical and magical attacks with the push of a button, and her parry is devastating. Thanks to Sonon acting as a support she can unleash pure chaos on the battlefield.
Intermission has been able to keep the gameplay just as fun and involving despite getting rid of the party mechanic, which really shows how solid this new system really is.
In the eternal debate of turn based versus action games, I feel that Final Fantasy VII Remake has been able to find the perfect compromise that might be able to make the game perfectly enjoyable for both parts and I feel these are very important and solid foundations for the future.
In Conclusion
It’s hard to say how this series will evolve moving forward, the ending opened the door to a huge status quo change which caused a big deal of controversy from the fans.
Personally, I’m deeply satisfied from this new beginning, despite its flaws and dilated dungeons, we have a very interesting gameplay style, characters adapted and evolved very well and a graphical style which is top notch for the genre.
I can understand that many are annoyed by the changes, I’m also really affectionate to the original story and wasn’t really that open to big twists… but in due time I’ve realized something very important: the original game is still available!
If you wanna play the original Final Fantasy VII you can find it on every console at a very affordable price. We always have the ability to go the original story as it once was, which also includes the very dated Playstation 1 graphics.
Now more than ever I feel it’s important to have a remake that doesn’t aim to completely replace the original, but instead giving us a new interpretation while also allowing both to coexist.
Final Fantasy VII Remake has been the best Final Fantasy I’ve ever played since Final Final Fantasy XIII and I cannot wait to see how the story will evolve in Rebirth, what new elements are gonna be introduced and what surprises are waiting for us.
If you still haven’t played it, the game is very easily accessible on all consoles and I suggest you play the Intergrade version directly, so you don’t have to pay extra for the Yuffie DLC. I’ll anxiously await your opinions of what it looks like is going to be a very turbulent trilogy.
For everyone else who already played it, let’s move on to the…
SPOILER SECTION - Proceed at your own risk
The ending is maybe the most controversial moment of the whole experience. From the start I could hear everyone talking about it online, but I was able to remain mostly spoiler free. I was really curious to find out what the hell happened, so let’s talk about the Numen.
Numen are a new element introduced in this remake. I originally thought they were specters sent by Sephiroth considering that, the first time you see them, they were tormenting Aerith while she was selling flowers. And it’s the fact that Cloud comes in contact with her to give him the ability to see them.
Numen during the game are a constant presence, mostly an obstacle, sometimes allies. It was clear they had their own agenda in this. For the entire time they were the mystery that kept me the most engaged, trying to figure out what they were in the grand scheme. But this is revealed only at the very end.
Numen are an entity tasked to keep the flow of events in check, let’s call them continuity guardians. Their goal is to ensure the events follow the path that they envisioned. We can see it with them trying to obstruct Biggs, Wedge and Jessie during the battle at sector 7, with them even blocking up Wedge’s escape route just so that he has the least amount of chance possible to get out of there alive.
We face a giant construct of all the Numes by the end, which is more than ever determined to prevent us from leaving Midgar. And it’s during this battle that we see a glimpse of another even, in the past, where even there the Numen were blocking the access to Midgar, preventing a person from entering it. That person being Zack Fair, which is readily ambushed by a full regiment of the Shinra army, a battle that will end with his own demise.
But it’s just at that very moment, when our party destroys the Numen that something happens. Like throwing a rock into a pond, the ripple effect of the Numen’s defeat reaches a dying Zack, who gets completely healed by his mortal wounds, ready to reach Midgar while also carrying an unconscious Cloud over his shoulder.
Zack is a very important character for Final Fantasy VII, his sacrifice against the Shinra army is a vital piece to Cloud’s character in this story, it’s the event that more than anyone has shaped his character. This change is a twist of massive proportions! It’s in fact revealed by the end of Intermission, that this event took place in an alternate universe, a separate timeline in which Zack survived and everything we know about Final Fantasy VII is about to be turned upside down.
What does this change mean for the future? Who knows… But I’m more than ever curious to play Rebirth after these events to see where they are heading towards.
Numen were already an extremely metanarrative concept, almost like a stand-in for all the people that expected the same exact story as the original, faithful to a flaw. A figure such as this becoming the final boss of the adventure kinda feels like the writers wanted to put an exclamation point on the whole thing by saying clearly…
“From this point on, there are no rules!”
Realistically speaking, I feel that Rebirth, just like Remake, will try to follow the events after Midgar as faithfully as possible, but the possibility of a couple of curve balls is definitely interesting!
I understand: watching the story that made you passionate about the genre being changed so arbitrarily, is scary. There’s always that subtext that if you change something, it’s done because the original was bad in some fashion, and that makes us instantly go defensive.
In reality, I don’t think it’s necessarily better or worse, it’s just different! It’s up to us to decide whether we want to engage with this story, and its changes, with a new perspective… or just keep playing the original, like I said, it’s still these and readily available for everyone.
The thing that was the most fun for me was catching up on all the hints and foreshadowing, playing with previous knowledge of the original. I like how they’re also trying to include elements from the entirety of the compilation, like the presence of Nero and Weiss, directly from Dirge of Cerberus, at the end of Intermission.
Even everything surrounding Aerith: why was it necessary to get in contact with her to see the Numen? Why when the first time she met with Red XIII, the latter had some kind of vision that pacified him instantly? How much does Aerith know about what’s happening to the planet and what awaits us in the future?
I won’t lie, having all these elements together is scary, not having the certainty of how the story is going to evolve is frightening, the fear that some narrative choices might turn everything for the worse is still present… But I also don’t wanna drown in pessimism about this!
This uncertainty about the future is also what makes this all so much interesting, and considering how much I enjoyed this game until now, I’m more than ready to see what the last stop of this train is going to be!
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