Final Fantasy VII Remake: Perfect, Until Its Not

Years ago a tech demo for PlayStation 3 was released by Square-Enix showcasing what Final Fantasy VII, a beloved classic of the franchise, could look like if done on the PlayStation 3. Fans, myself included, responded with overwhelming delight and began to demand this remake be done for real. But Square would tell us, year after year, it wasn’t happening. And then one day, in the early years of our current generation, Square Enix blew us away with a much welcome surprise trailer… the remake was happening. The cheers that rose up in that room on that day, and even in my own house, we’re loud and jubilant. I couldn’t believe it… it was finally happening...

...And then they announced it would be divided up into episodes, which worried me, at first, but I eventually decided that with the cost of AAA game development these days, this probably wasn’t too unfair, especially if they significantly enhanced and expanded on the game. So then I waited. News was sparse. I read somewhere that they were adding things that hit the cutting room floor for the original, like the whispers. We were told that they were there to add the theme of destiny to the game, which sounded kind of Kingdom Hearts, but okay… if this is going to be a director’s cut of the story, cool beans. As long as the major story beats remained in tact, I’m good. After all, the key to a successful remake is to maintain the original spirit and major story beats, while providing enough technological improvements, story clarification and new material to justify the remake’s production. Much to my frustration, we got exactly that, until they pulled the rug out from under us in what felt like the last fifteen minutes of the game.

First, the good. This game is exactly everything I wanted it to be… until it wasn’t. A gorgeous remake of the original, with incredible (but not flawless) details that bring the world of Midgar to life in an amazing new way. The presentation is no longer over head with  polygonal characters walking around over dated pre-rendered screens. Instead, you are moving around a fully realized 3D version of that world. And the maps at least feel like they’re straight out of the original… mostly. The people around you respond to the events around them (albeit in a much more limited way than I had  hoped for), and the story adds a great deal more nuance than the original had. 

The original was pretty black and white. Shinra bad, Avalanche good. Few would question the actions or motivation of the heroes. Here, the heroes are branded as terrorists, and while President Shinra himself is still cartoonishly evil, the actions the heroes take to resist him are put under a serious microscope. Sure the villains are draining the planet of its life force, Mako, and Mako is and always was a clear allegory to oil, but there’s real human cost to blowing up the Mako reactors, and this is a change that delights me. Both Tifa and Aerith have concerns about what they’re doing. The Turks, lackeys of the core villains, are given a lot more nuance. New characters are brought in from the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII earlier. Previously irrelevant supporting characters, like Biggs, Wedge and Jesse are expanded upon, and in a way that makes their sacrifice later on that much more painful… although we will have to come back to that… And then let’s talk about Honey Bee Inn. We were no where near as humorless and uptight as we are now in the 90s. The humor of the Original Honey Bee Inn absolutely couldn’t be done today… and in its place is a sequence of events that manages to be just as hilarious and just as brave, in the face of SJW screeching on Twitter, as doing a one for one remake of this sequence would have been. Except, I like this better. It’s really funny, and more believable. So I hope by now I’ve established I am not only okay with changes, I embrace them, when they enhance and elevate the story. 

95% of this game does exactly that. They even deepen the choice making system of the original allowing you to chose much deeper romantic choices for Cloud, making the already unresolvable love triangle of Cloud, Tifa and Aerith that much more unresolvable. Making it more difficult is the way that Tifa and Aerith sense they are rivals, but then decide not to let it ruin a great friendship opportunity, then join together to tease Cloud in a way that makes both of them that much more adorable. My story choices always seem to lead towards Aerith, and canonically this is what the story intended originally… until fate made that choice for Cloud… deepening the tragedy for Tifa who, (Spoiler for the Compilation of FFVII) gets her man, in the end, but a man who still has feelings for a lost love. 

The changes to the gameplay were great as well. I was amazed at how tactical this game really is. Taking the best of FFXII, XIII, XV, eliminating the worst, and making a tactical action RPG with a system that feels familiar, yet new, maintaining the Materia system, which lets you do magic and augment your weapons and equipment, and even letting you customize your weapons for additional augments. The system is refreshingly simple and addictive. Combat, in this game, feels really good, and it is not FFXIII where it plays itself. You must act or you will be beaten. I do wish the AI of your team mates was a bit smarter, but when they get caught up doing stupid it’s easy enough to switch over to them and course correct. 

And let’s not forget the music. The original score was amazing for its time. Here we have multiple versions of those tracks rendered for the purpose of this remake, and it is, quite simply, the greatest game score ever recorded. I pre-ordered this soundtrack. I can’t wait to have the whole thing. FFVII inspired me to pick up the violin, and I can play several of these tunes, poorly, as I am self taught. But hearing them fully realized as amazing orchestral pieces, or snazzy jazz pieces was pretty amazing. 

I could go on and on about how much deeper this game is, how well written the characters are, even celebrating that Aerith is finally spelled and pronounced correctly! Since I was a kid people have argued with me that it’s Aeris, and I am tired of having to explain that was a translation error… but while this game has so much to celebrate it pulls the rug out from under you in such a messy, ridiculous way that I am fuming out my ears. Not because things changed… but because a change was made so that the developers, and the director could stroke their own egos at the cost of a great story.

And here’s where we have to get into the bad. Let’s talk about the gameplay blunders first. First, summons aren’t found anymore. They are unlocked in a VR Simulation. And to earn new ones you have to complete menial tasks that are a chore to complete… especially if your like me and developed a Rhythm early in the game and didn’t figure out what was happening with the summons until late game. One of those quests never got finished because it requires you to master all twelve magic Materia in the game, and the game just didn’t have any good grinding spots. Sure there’s a chapter selection in the post game, but I am not a completionist. The VR missions are actually boring. Finding new summons in the original was a delight because it usually meant actually uncovering a secret. I do miss that.

In the early game, around the sector seven slums, a large number of textures don’t load right, and much of the area looks like something out of the N64 era. Seems like they could patch this, if they wanted too. Chain link fences throughout the entire game look terrible, and there is a sequence towards the end where you are climbing a wall, and the background looks like something from the PS2 era. A number off side characters also lack detail, and look like they would have been more at home on the PS3. It’s shocking that, with as long as this game was in development, that these problems cropped up at all. Especially as a project directed by Tetsuya Nomura, who usually has quite an eye for details… even if his stories seldom make any sense. And speaking of stories that don’t make sense…

Nomura has made some changes that are as convoluted, confusing, and out of place as anything he did in the post KHII era of his crown jewel series. Almost as if to preemptively lash out at fans who would be unhappy with changes, he introduces us to the meta commentary on the meta commentary, the whispers. Meta only works for me if it’s funny, and this meta commentary wasn’t the least bit amusing. These ghostly figures show up any time something is going to deviate from fate. We are told they are the will of the Planet… who we are trying to save, but are now suddenly opposing… without explanation. What we aren’t told is what happened that allowed these deviations to occur. We assume it has something to do with Sephiroth… maybe? But they’re inconsistent. They save some characters from certain death, kill another that was supposed to die earlier, but didn’t, but then another character that was supposed to die survived, and they don’t finish him off. Granted we didn’t know that character survived until after the end battle, but they would have known. They also don’t stop clear deviations, like how and when President Shinra is killed, or how and when the team ends up in a cell with Aerith… they were captured originally, but here Cloud passes out so they take him there. Why did the whispers not Interfere when Cloud ends up in a dance off instead of a hot tub? They don’t interfere with new characters being brought in that weren’t in the original, they don’t stop the people from escaping the collapse of the sector seven plate, when few escaped in the original...  they don’t stop the expansion of Jessie, Bigs and Wedge’s stories… Like I said, they are wildly inconsistent, permitting some changes, but not others, and that makes them a product of bad writing. I’m sorry, but it does.

I don’t mind the early appearances of Sephiroth because, in the original, Cloud would often suffer blackouts where an unknown voice would torment him. I always assumed this was Sephiroth anyway… or at least his cells… as Cloud was genetically tampered with using his “S-Type Jenova cells”, though we don’t learn that until way past when this game ends. But Sephiroth’s appearance at the end felt forced. Granted, it wasn’t really him, it was one of the test subjects taking his form, but even so, it felt forced. Moreover, he now talks of saving the planet, Aerith suddenly knows who he is, but says he’s wrong, all wrong, as if there’s something not right about him in general, not just his ideas, but we aren’t told what. And then it’s made clear, he is trying to defy fate. 

At this point we could assume he has traveled back in time because he knows he is going to lose. But we are not told this. So what he is doing, why he wants to defy fate, why he’s even acknowledging Cloud at all at this point all remain a mystery. And yet… the heroes do exactly what he entices them to do, again without explanation. If the whispers are the will of the planet, and we are trying to save the planet, why help Sephiroth destroy them? Especially since he then absorbs them, and is seen using them when you fight him shortly thereafter, because of course you fight him... 

In the original, Sephiroth barely acknowledged Cloud until he couldn’t ignore or use Cloud anymore. Old fans will know that Cloud and Sephiroth became mortal enemies, but what about new fans? Yes they probably know who Sephiroth is… but that doesn’t mean they would know the dynamics between him and Cloud. The original did a great job building suspense, making you terrified of Sephiroth. You didn’t encounter him at all in the Shinra building, you saw the aftermath of his being there. Not a sparkly purple goo, a trail of actual human blood, hallways filled with the dead, all leading to President Shinra at his desk impaled by Sephiroth’s Masamune. Later, when Cloud is retelling his version of the events at his hometown, we get the story of a near godlike being who went mad. Then, we encounter a massive giant snake impaled on a tree, Sephiroth was there. In this remake, none of that tension is there. Characters who are killed are brought back to life by whispers, or after the defeat of the whispers, and the final fight with Sephiroth is actually one of the easier battles in the game. Granted, it was one of the test subjects, but Sephiroth takes possession of these clones… so it’s not him, but is him… and that battle was far from epic. It was an utter disappointment. 

Had I been writing this, that whole sequence wouldn’t have made the cut. It diminishes Sephiroth, doesn’t explain anything about the whispers, has you do something that benefits Sephiroth, but then fight him and the only purpose I can figure for it was Nomura slapping fans, preemptively, who might be upset with him for making exactly this kind of nonsensical change. He knew “whispers” like myself were out there, and couldn’t help himself in biting his thumb at us, even though most of the changes that were made were, in fact, well received. 

So here we are now, destiny destroyed, Sephiroth defeated… and oh, Zack is alive. “Who?” You may ask if you are new to the series. Exactly. More bad writing. Long time fans will know Zack. New fans won’t. But Zack’s tragic death is critical to Cloud’s origin story. So naturally the game tosses a curveball that gives us a visual clue he’s on a parallel timeline, because of course he is. So now we have Destiny, time travel and alternate timelines because of course we do. And if you don’t like it, screw you fan! How dare you ask for a FFVII remake in the first place?! The great Tetsuya Nomura wanted to do something else! And something else he will, under the guise of a “Remake.” If he did not want to retell a story that Square already told, why do this at all? 

Time travel, parallel universes… these are all devices that are really hard to do well. Even Avengers Endgame botched it, as far as I am concerned. I generally don’t like these kinds of stories because they always fail. They’re always quick to break their own rules, and are a lazy, over used quick fix to retcon things that should probably be left alone. And to all those who have faith in Square? Where is that coming from? FFXIII was awful, XV was narratively broken and Kingdom Hearts has become an incoherent mess. This remake started Square-Enix on the path of redemption. They started so right, and then kicked it all to the curb to embrace the sort of broken narrative and incoherent nonsensical bull that has plagued their games for years. But yet… I’m intrigued… (warned you in my Facebook posts there would be a subversion for subversion’s sake.) I do want to know where they’re going with this, and there is still a narrative flow that might work here… IF Nomura is willing to embrace consequences as a narrative theme… usually he doesn’t, you defy destiny for defiance sake and nothing bad ever comes of it, because Disney… but what if he does break from his usual narrative tropes?

FFVII is a tragedy. It’s not supposed to have a happy ending. That’s Disney, not Hironobu Sakaguchi. Aerith was an allegory of his mother. She died as an expression of his pain. His religious and environmental views about the planet and our relationship with it shaped and informed the original. It’s his baby, not Tetsuya Nomura’s. At the same time, I am also writing a retelling of an old folk legend. So I understand the plight of the re-teller. Whenever you retell a story you must justify that retelling. Most creators do so by adding new layers. The earliest versions of King Arthur were just about the King, Merlin and Gwenivere. Later versions added the layer with Lancelot, and the Holy Grail was added even later. Yet the main beats of the story remained in tact. If the whispers, time travel and parallel universes become that new layer, I will be pleased… but we’re not off to a good start.

We’re I blessed with the chance to scenario write for the next game, we would be just getting started with the whispers. I would have a small side story for each town involving them. And we would learn that what we did was a bad thing, as it birthed multiple timelines that threaten to converge at the seven seconds before the end… when the meteor falls. And if one meteor in one timeline successfully strikes the earth, the planet will be destroyed in all timelines. Sephiroth also knows that if Aerith dies, Holy will be triggered. Not only that, but she will rally the lifestream to defend the planet against meteor. Therefore, Neo-Sephiroth, who is the one we met at the end of Remake, pits the team against destiny at every turn leading to a moment where Cloud is able to save Aerith… and then Neo-Sephiroth merges with Sephiroth, and they become whole. There is a fight, and Aerith still loses the white Materia. Sephiroth still manages to get the Black Materia, but now there’s no way to stop meteor, and yes, Holy came too late in the original, but now Aerith is not in the life stream to rally it to save the planet. In saving Aerith, Sephiroth has won, and now the player has to deal with the consequences of challenging destiny. For me, the end game would have to be trying to find a way to undo the bridge fight, especially after learning that the four creatures they fought weren’t whispers, but themselves from the future, trying to stop them from making a major mistake, and it turns out that the big harbinger is, in fact, a post death Aerith, acting on behalf of the planet. In killing her soul, the lifestream has now become infected with Sephiroth’s taint, granting him more power than ever. So now, the heroes have to set things right. To add another layer of complexity, I would work in the parallel timelines idea found in Ultimania Archives Vol. 2 from the original design documents. I think this is what they’re doing with Zack and Aerith anyway. The two find a way to impact each others timelines. They both learn they have to die in order to stop Sephiroth, and both have to come to terms with this, and convince their respective parties to help them set about putting things right. Then, they have to become the harbinger and it’s minions, Rubrum, Viridi and Croceo, but Aerith is alive and can’t become the big harbinger. They are now returning to the crossroads to stop themselves. They win. The timelines converge, but the whispers are now not gone, and Aerith and everyone else has full knowledge of what’s to come. Flash back, Zack has returned to his moment of death, and let’s go, allowing himself to be killed for the sake of the planet. Flash forward to that big moment. That other seven seconds… Cloud is there, crying as he now knows what’s about to happen, and that if he wants to save the planet, he can’t save the love of his life, who has resigned herself to her fate. The white Materia is lost again, but now there’s full knowledge of what’s to come, and Cloud breaks, completely. After delivering Aerith to the lake, he becomes completely despondent. And this sets us up for the third and final chapter. Now, I’m not done with the whispers or fate, or Neo Sephiroth, who isn’t able to reunite with Sephiroth, since Aerith’s death was not prevented... we also later would learn he is experiment #2, not the actual Sephiroth, but he would continue to try and meddle where he can, so the team has to stop Sephiroth on two fronts, the OG Sephiroth, who is trying to destroy the world with Meteor, and Neo-Sephiroth, who is trying to ensure that the real Sephiroth is successful. On the whole, we would have many of the original events, this would just be woven into the tapestry of the original. But ultimately… we’ll, I don’t want to give away my ending… but this is  what I could do with what they did. We will have to see what they do, but given their recent history, I don’t have the faith that they can stick the landing. But I hope I’m wrong.

As angry as I am about this ending, And Nomura’s sticking his thumb in they eye of long time fans before we’ve even done anything, I am still curious to see where this goes, and I can’t deny that the vast majority of this game is, in fact, everything I wanted it to be in the first place. It is a shame they had to muck up 5% of this game with Kingdom Hearts convoluted nonsensical garbage about defying destiny, but if they can resist the urge to make this the Disney version of FFVII and remember this is a tragedy, it may yet tell this classic story, from a new angel. 

4.4 stars out of 5. It would have been 5/5… but #IAmAWhisper…