The Final Fantasy VII (FF7) Remake project has been out now for some time initially released on the PS4 back in April 2020. Planned by director Tetsuya Nomura as a trilogy of action RPG videogames remaking or reimagining the 1997 PlayStation One classic.
Disclaimer: The topics presented to you throughout this article contain some story spoilers for FF7 PSX, FF7R1 (Remake), FF7R2 (Rebirth), and Kingdom Hearts 3/Re:Mind DLC. Hopefully, we will see the 3rd instalment to the Final Fantasy 7 Re-trilogy in a few years. The 30th anniversary of FF7 is upcoming in 2027 which could indicate the deadline for the next announcement related to the project.
Unfortunately, the next planned release the second out of the three was put exclusively on the PlayStation 5, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth which was released on the final day of February this year. So now we are at 2/3 of the new storyline, presentation, cast of characters, events, gameplay, graphical upgrades and musical remixes. What was your interpretation of your adventure?
After the claustrophobic sci-fi dystopia of Midgar’s undercity and plates, we finally after defeating Sephiroth at the end of Final Fantasy VII Remake are released from the technologically advanced metropolis of mako reactors and slums to the great outdoors. As you take your first steps on your adventure around the planet you are presented with an expansive world to explore with a great level of graphical fidelity to complement it.
From starting up the PS5 straight into ‘the true nature of reality’ – What the hell just happened Nomura?
Splintered Continuity
As the story and adventure unfold to you the player you begin to see the various nods of fan service towards the beloved PS1 classic married together with brand new elements which occasionally create a polarizing experience.
The broad strokes are there for sure, but occasionally the cutscenes reveal some new takes on the story and some completely new and original ideas that have been executed by Nomura. Sometimes leaving the hardcore FF7 experts scratching their heads.
Those fans who have kept up and who have played and experienced the Compilation of Final Fantasy 7, a series of spin-offs and media based entirely on the groundwork set in FF7 on the PS1 are a bit more informed. Some of these titles include Dirge of Cerberus, a shooter game based on the cool vampire Turk character Vincent Valentine, Advent Children, a short movie based on the aftermath of the events of FF7 and how the characters in the story are dealing with those events after the old threat had been resolved, another fan favourite is Crisis Core, originally a PSP exclusive starring Zack Fair, Cloud’s old friend and his story of rising through the ranks of the Shinra company’s SOLDIER unit. An elite group of super soldiers who serve as Shinra’s private army, public security division and elite fighting force.
Now FF7 Rebirth for the most part handles the fans’ interpretation of the original story well enough, however, as events proceed we begin to see Nomura’s influence become more and more prominent.
“Worlds” – The Kingdom Hearts 4 Connection
One of Tetsuya Nomura’s other complicated works which is quite divisive and you either love it or hate it approach to worldbuilding and complicated stories is the Kingdom Hearts franchise contains several cryptic elements, symbolisms, and nods to earlier games in the series and some continued posing of more questions and fewer answers keeping the fanbase of these games guessing.
After another highly anticipated game Kingdom Hearts 3 released after years of development to great fanfare, it all culminated in a fight against the various big bads of the franchise as well as trying to stop their mission of gaining access to the ‘new’ Princesses of Heart. It was up to Sora and pals to prevent the various Xehanorts in the Organization from unlocking Kingdom Hearts and gaining the power of the X-Blade.
After the events of the game we were given a very head-scratching epilogue featuring some secret cutscenes referencing things within the game we had just played which at first seemed like nothing more than game advertisements in the Toy Box world actually being key story elements and integral to the overall plot.
In these story elements, Nomura would explore the concepts of ‘Unreality’, worlds of fiction and the opposite of ‘Reality’. A world in which Sora finds himself waking up after he uses his ‘Power of waking’ for one of the final times to save a friend after multiple warnings to stop for his own sake. Sora wakes up to a character that appeared in the Kingdom Hearts Union Cross mobile game, the character of Strelitzia who informs him that he has ended up and travelled to a completely different world known as Quadratum on the other side of reality “The Unreality”. Quadratum appears on the surface to be a hyper-realistic looking real-world setting, having been modelled after a real-life Shibuya, complete with massive skyscrapers, regular day-to-day civilians and various real-world objects such as traffic lights, bridges and motor cars.
One of the key themes in Kingdom Hearts comes from the various “worlds” scattered around the main and spin-off games in the series. The majority stem from Disney movies and properties but many are their own Kingdom Hearts exclusive worlds such as Hollow Bastion, Destiny Islands, Twilight Town and Traverse Town.
SEPHIROTH’S KNOWLEDGE
In FF7 Rebirth we see some of these thematic elements from the KH series rear their head in the FF7 Remake project. We see this in various late-game conversations within the cutscenes seen within the strange multi-reality dimension Cloud and Sephiroth hang out in during the end sequences of FF7 Rebirth. Within this strange area, Sephiroth begins to talk of transient worlds saying:
“When the boundaries of fate are breached, new worlds are born.”
“The planet encompasses a multitude of worlds, ever unfolding.”
“Some quickly perish…while others endure.”
“Yet even the most resilient worlds are doomed to fade.
Many lines of dialogue reference a “homecoming” yet to be seen, as well as the continued use of the word “reunion”, a potential sub-title for the next working title.
Within this strange lifestream area, many flashes of visions of past sequences from the various games surface depicting significant story moments across the games. At one point two energies seem to combine in a spectacular light show. Sephiroth exclaims “We are to bear witness to the reunion of worlds.”
These cryptic clues Sephiroth imparts during this section along with various visions for Cloud and the player to confront leave both the spikey-haired stoic EX-SOLDIER and the player’s heads spinning and ever since many have experienced the game’s ending sequences have got the fandom theory crafting and giving their own interpretations online.
Potentially we could get some more Final Fantasy VII Remake content in Kingdom Hearts 4 or even see elements of KH4 in the FF7 Remake continuity considering the dialogue, the themes presented and how both games’ director shares a similar vision to each property.
TIMELINES, MULTIVERSE THEORY, PARALLEL UNIVERSES IN MEDIA
In several works of fiction, we see the concept of timelines, multiverse theory and parallel universes. From the series Sliders, Marvel’s comic book series EXILES which go into details of how many Marvel Universes could crossover with one another as well as movies such as Endgame that have the idea of time travel and changing fate and destiny as their main themes.
We see these concepts explored again and again in fiction. Be it in Steins Gate a visual novel and anime and its own more scientific take on time travel and diverging timelines as well as the time travel role-playing game Continuum Roleplaying in the Yet which has a whole setting built on the idea of paradoxes, time travellers and the concept of timelines being integral to the fundamental makeup of reality. These types of themes get extremely complicated and interesting in various works of fiction.
Another concept of time travel has been seen recently in the Scarlet and Violet 9th generation of the Pokemon games. In which we see the various past and future forms of many different kinds of Pokemon such as the prehistoric Sandy Shocks an ancient form of Magneton and the futuristic Iron Bundle, an artic robot with a box that conducts extremely low temperature cold water.
FF7 Rebirth’s Various Worlds
Bringing things back to Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, we can see these elements coming up again and again. Many fan theories held by fans state that these are “worlds” rather than “timelines” or “parallel universes” but it is all much of a muchness when you boil down the elements. In my opinion, you can call these things what you will because they all seem to be connected elements of the plot and all these terms seem to hold weight when we begin to get granular and look into the various story elements being presented.
These worlds in the case of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth encapsulate diverging timelines, parallel universes and multiverse theory. The hypothetical set of all universes is presumed to comprise everything that exists or ever will. Many universes, a hypothetical collection of potentially limitless possibilities and a diverse range of dimensions that each decision, choice, result, action and outcome could potentially form.
In the case of FF7 Rebirth, we see these plainly within the final sequences, we are given and shown many different potential universes within the FF7 Rebirth setting form and unform. We see references to storylines and major plot threads from the original game which stay canonical but at the same time end up completely differently from what we originally had thought they would go if we did play the original FF7 on the PSone.
We also see the director Nomura play with our expectations, include his own new content and begin unravelling his new vision for both Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy 7 going forward in this new modern era. Clearly, he has his plans for the upcoming games Kingdom Hearts 4 and the yet-to-be-titled third entry to the Final Fantasy 7 Remake project. It is fascinating to see what bubbles up from the creator’s mind!
Cloud’s Headaches – Jenova Cells and Sephiroth’s Influence
Throughout the newer versions of these games Cloud unfortunately during several moments of the game for whatever reason experiences extreme headaches and distress, often hearing a glitchy staticky noise complimented by Sephiroth’s whispers in his ear like the devil on his shoulder. Cloud is often referred to as a puppet of Sephiroth or sometimes even a clone in the original Final Fantasy VII. Cloud’s constant deteriorating condition mentally begins to take a toll and makes his friends very concerned, especially Tifa, Barret and Aerith.
Jenova and Sephiroth are the culprits. If you know the story, Jenova is a malevolent alien life form that crash-landed on the planet and was studied by Shinra, the Electric Power Company, an evil corporation that uses the planet’s precious life energy to create man-made advancements in technology and power various machines and the city of Midgar itself.
Jenova cells were used in several of the mad scientist Hojo’s creations throughout FF7 and the various robed men or ‘Sephiroth clones’ appear to be SOLDIERs who are going through a period of degradation and suffering from Mako poisoning. Mako is the liquid form of the planet’s life stream that can sometimes crystallize into an important element in the story “Materia”.
When experimented on by Hojo, these SOLDIERs are given both Jenova cells as well as Mako, and prolonged exposure to too much Mako concentrated can be dangerous resulting in “Mako poisoning”. Heavy degrees of exposure are capable of completely disrupting a person’s cognitive faculties to the point of reproducing various experiences, sensations, and memories relevant to the various souls and spirits that exist still within the lifestream. The complicated disorder of this Mako poisoning can affect a person to the point of complete catatonia.
Often we see Cloud act not himself and even begin acting more like the sinister Sephiroth who manipulates him constantly, appearing to become much more evil during some moments, more uncaring and outright diabolical at times. He even acts like Zack his higher-ranking SOLDIER friend from the past who he struggles to recall as well as how some story events went during the past.
Sephiroth clearly has an effect over Cloud either due to the Jenova cells in his body or the fact that Sephiroth is now within the life stream pulling the strings of all his ‘Sephiroth clones’ the robed men who seek the reunion as he does. In the original FF7, this reunion simply meant Sephiroth wished to reunite with all his ‘other selves’ in the world which contained Jenova and Sephiroth’s DNA. But now with the various worlds, multiverses, timelines and parallel universes being introduced the term ‘reunion’ takes on a completely different meaning.
A Confused Fanbase
Many eagerly await the answers to be revealed from the plot in this new series of games. The Final Fantasy 7 Remake project continues to be successful and received critical acclaim from many different people across the world of gaming. With a continuation each time the narrative was first introduced in 2020, the Remake project reimagines the world, the cast, the music, the real-time combat system and so much more.
Remaking this popular PS1 classic is a great idea that fans have been hungrily anticipating for many years so to see it come to fruition from the Tech Demo on PS3 back in 2005, to now the releases we see in the 2020 era is fantastic to behold with Remake and Rebirth. Seeing Cloud Strife and his ragtag group of friends in current generation technology as well as their various adventures complete with voice acting is a joy to behold and experience. Many classic tracks are remixed and redone brilliantly.
However, the fan base certainly sees these newer renditions of the classic FF7 PS1 game to be very different to what they had initially expected. The remake project games continue to polarize and remain controversial to some fans of the original game. With all these new confusing story elements and complex narrative elements being chucked into the mix of old classic moments definitely leave some fans scratching their heads and left figuring out what is next to come as well as how all of this is going to be handled in the next release.
We still have a few years to wait until we receive new updates both for Kingdom Hearts 4 and Final Fantasy VII Part 3, but I think many fans remain optimistic about how the creator will conclude the remaking of this much-beloved series.
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