“Final Fantasy VII: Replay!”

Alright! So I just finished Final Fantasy VII: Remake last night and I came up with this idea while in therapy today.

Who is planning on replaying (or is already replaying) the original FFVII? I’m going to do just that and play the real story like God intended. My poor wife having to watch that ending without any experience playing the original. My poor self having to watch that ending with experience playing the original. It’s time to put FFVII: Remake behind me knowing that it’s not a remake. There’s a place for fan fiction, sure, there’s an argument for that.

Anyway, the story is already done and waiting for us back in 1997 so I’m inviting you, if you’re so inclined, to play through the original FFVII with me. Let’s share our progress on social media with the tag #FFVIIreplay! That’s what I’ll be doing, complete with screenshots, wisecracks, comparative criticism, and the heaps of appreciation for the most successful entry in the most successful RPG franchise of all time.

So once again, I invite you to play the original game with me, or if you’re already playing it right now we can all use #FFVIIreplay to keep track of each other’s progress and share our thoughts! Have fun!

I need to rinse the flavor of FFVII: Kingdom Hearts out of my mouth, anyway. There’s a full rundown of my take on the end of 7R below, interspersed by memes I made haha! But be forewarned: SPOILERS!

Hullo, friends. Some folks asked me for my take on the ending so here it is. It’s long so I thought I’d share it all at once and if you want to chat about it we can:

My take on the ending is Nomura lost his mind and just wanted to do a lame overly-familiar played-out metaphysical mumbo jumbo JRPG ending with a gigantic Heartless boss and jargon about destiny like his pet project Kingdom Hearts.

I can’t believe they called this game a remake. People telling me after completing it that it’s the same story are nuts. Nuts! There’s a big difference between changing and adding a few things (upgrading) and then dramatically changing the structure of the world of your game (transforming). God I just hope that Barrett dying by being stabbed and then immediately coming back to life because of time ghosts that won’t let you game over isn’t any kind of foreshadowing about Aerith’s death. Those whispers are some of the worst story gimmicks I’ve seen in a video game, a way for the producers to insert themselves into the story in order to tell whatever story they want rather than the actual one. Why they didn’t just make a new Final Fantasy, I’ll never know, because this isn’t FFVII.

On the one hand, it’s nice that they’re doing something different and we’re getting something different. On the other hand, I spent the past 6 odd years waiting for a remake. I’ll keep waiting for a remake, I guess.

Protecting the canon of FFVII I understand, on the note of understanding the ending, but that’s not what actually happens, anyway. All kinds of deviations exist before and after the ending. “Fate” is such an artificial term here, you could get a game over from the difficulty spike dogs in Shinra HQ but “we can’t let Barret die because we already know he survives”, and how exactly that constitutes a remake of the original story is beyond me, not to mention it completely sucks the tension and stakes out of the story’s immersion. By its nature, the original story couldn’t reference itself. So they prevent Barret’s death and then Biggs is alive at the end for no reason at all, other than fan service I guess? If this is actually the last we see of this really stupid narrative gimmick, the whispers, then good. I’m skeptical it’s the last we’ll see of them. We already “defeated” Sephiroth but he got away. I have a feeling that’ll be the end of every part because of the nature of sequelitis and always having to top oneself, but with the story wide open to changes, it’s a fan fic, it’s a reboot, it’s a sequel. It’s definitely no remake, and that’s what I bought it for. As it is, I’ll just wait until it’s all out and then play it. Kind of disappointed I picked up this first part and got tricked into thinking it’s something it isn’t.

Calling it the “FF7 Remake project” as the devs have done is super disingenuous. The next episodes might stick more to the original, they might not, now that the whispers are “defeated”, but with this launching point, it’s clear they’re out to mangle the original source material. Why even make this project then and not a new FF when the whole point of referencing VII was to get people excited for the project who loved the original, the people who would get all the weird references and cutscenes from the end of the original game? Now that it’s not a remake, I don’t have to care anymore. It is freeing! lol

The good news then is that nothing in the last chapter of 7R made me excited to play the rest of their “remake project”. And that’s a shame considering I enjoyed the Shinra HQ segment immensely as *actual* story actually adapted from the original. Now that I know that’s not what they’re doing, remaking VII, I don’t have to pay for something I don’t want to play which they’re evidently making up as they go along, what with not knowing how many parts or what kind of parts they’re going to release in the future. Of course they don’t know! They’re not remaking FFVII.

That whole ending is just a bunch of cryptic noise. Turning the characters like Aerith into time traveling or alternate universe gimmicks makes them less than characters. 7 seconds, edge of creation, it could all mean anything. It’s vague enough. I saw a ton of different fan theories already and honestly at this point you could look up a fan fiction on Deviant Art and probably get a good idea of what’s to come.

They can go ahead and prevent Aerith from dying and ruin one of the most iconic, memorable, and moving deaths in gaming that people still talking about to this day, what with their time magic storytelling, but at least that’ll mean the original will always be FFVII, no matter what this turns out to be. It’s like Nomura was watching Back to the Future and was like “ooh make that” and just use stock characters from FFVII because everybody loves that game. Since this is no longer about that game, I don’t need to care haha. Like I could care about a *new* Final Fantasy without being tricked into playing a new Final Fantasy that’s supposed to be a remake of FFVII.

My prophecy before this came out was it would be more Advent Children anime than the original FFVII, and lo and behold that ending. The only thing I didn’t predict was just how Kingdom Heartsy it was going to be.

And that’s that! 🙂

Red formerly ran The Well-Red Mage and now serves The Pixels as founder, writer, editor, and podcaster. He has undertaken a seemingly endless crusade to talk about the games themselves in the midst of a culture obsessed with the latest controversy, scandal, and news cycle about harassment, toxicity, and negativity. Pick out his feathered cap on Twitter @thewellredmage, Mage Cast, or Story Mode.