I boarded the Final Fantasy VII Remake hype train way back when they released the very first announcement trailer in the miraculous Sony conference of E3 2015 — where FFVII Remake was announced alongside the likes of “holyshit how is this even possible?” reveals of Shenmue 3 and The Last Guardian.
I remember waking up to messages from my friends linking me to the trailer and my deep regret at not staying up for the conference because I thought “eh they’re probably not gonna announce anything too important for me”.
I don’t know if I’d ever been more wrong in my life.
I spent that day consuming every sliver of news, watching countless reactions, and was suspended in a general state of euphoria — Final Fantasy VII, my favorite game of all time, was going to be remade?!
I couldn’t believe it.
The year is 2020, you boot up your PS4 (timed-exclusive releases, am I right?) — put the disk in to the ridiculously priced Ultimate Collector’s Edition you couldn’t help but get (because, well, you’ve never really gotten an expensive edition before, but you’ve told yourself that if there was only one game you’d get a Collector’s Edition for, it’d be for FFVII)…
But, of course, after getting some sleep and resuming normal brain function, the doubts and the worries began to creep in.
‘How would they handle the battle system? Would they be letting go of turn-based completely? Why wasn’t Uematsu listed as composer in the trailer? How are they going to handle sensitive content? How much are they going to change the plot? Can we really trust Nomura with this?’
Final Fantasy fans are some of the most passionate yet critical fans out there, and whenever it’s about VII, you can expect a horde of people ready to chime in with their opinions — we all know it, Square Enix can’t afford to mess up with this one.
As the months of waiting turned into years and we slowly got the drip-feed of marketing material, I kept telling myself to expect the worst. I knew that no matter how much I loved VII, there would be something they would show that would inevitably disappoint me. They surely would drop the ball somewhere, and I had to be mentally prepared to accept that.
…only, (my nitpicky dislike of the design for the Carbuncle summon aside), they haven’t?
How is it possible that everything they’ve shown so far — including the latest demo just released — have only succeeded in making me even more excited for the game?
The Theme Song Trailer had me literally shaking with excitement.
I know I’m way past “cautiously optimistic” now — I’ve already even convinced myself the game being cut into multiple parts, and the years-long waits in between them are probably going to be worth it.
…the loading screen looks like it did through your rose-tinted nostalgia glasses. You press “New Game” and are overcome by a sense of… of being transported into another time and space. The music opens up into the city just like it did for you in 2008 when you first laid eyes on it, those six opening notes to “Opening-Bombing Mission” like a herald into the warm embrace of familiarity —but now in crisp, clean, super high-definition, with lighting and atmospheric effects so immersive, you can almost smell the mako in the air.
The opening mission plays out similarly, the bosses and the enemies fully rendered (DON’T ATTACK WHEN ITS TAIL IS UP! is so much more involved now), looking just like you imagined it in your memories. You step into Cloud’s shoes, ridiculous Buster Sword in hand — and suddenly you’re feeling fourteen again, looking forward to a week of vacation leave to emulate those perfect weekends from twelve years ago.
You stroll through the fountain square, buy a flower off Aerith, walk through LOVELESS Avenue, where the dark-green glow of mako paints even the neon lights in its taint. You meet Tifa again, and there it is, the cut scene into that star-lit night at the water tower, where their promises were made.
And for the moment, the illusion is perfect, and it feels almost like it did the first time.
It feels like coming home.
I spent most of my one hour in the demo trying to take in all the environments — walking around everywhere, trying to read all the signs and posters, testing out which things had collision, which things Cloud could break with his sword, talking to characters multiple times to see what different things they had to say… and I’ve honestly never been hit by nostalgia so strongly in my life.
This was almost exactly how fourteen year-old me imagined how Midgar would look if it was in high-definition and fully 3D. They certainly captured the feeling of being in a mako reactor so very well.
All the while, I tried to understand the new battle system, which, amazingly, did manage to feel both deep and strategic, while also being fast-paced and snappy. Like the culmination of everything Square Enix has learned over their past attempts at merging their classic expertise for turn-based with today’s propensity for real-time-action.
It’s just like my favorite line from Final Fantasy XIV: “Look to those who walked before, to lead those who walk after.”
Every mainline Final Fantasy has always been (or at least, aspires to be) a product of the things learned from their predecessors — while also being a step forward into the future of the franchise.
I guess I’m just thankful that this particular amalgamation of skill, experience, resources and tech are going into re-imagining my favorite game of all time.
Thirty hours later and the journey’s almost over for the first installment of the three-parter (because of course it’s in parts). The glamour has started to wear off — hey wait, maybe you do miss the classic turn-based ATB more than you thought you did, maybe they changed that cut scene a little too much, maybe cutting it off just after they escape Midgar isn’t the best place… maybe you’re no longer a troubled fourteen-year-old just looking to get your mind away from your problems.
You find that the experience is actually more like coming home to visit your parents after spending months away in college— it’s the same house you grew up in, but it feels… it’s just not the same.
Maybe revisiting what’s already a perfect, well-aged, crystalline memory with a fresh coat of paint wasn’t worth it.
You’re scared that at the end of it all, it’ll feel like coming home to an unrecognizable place, where all the neighbors have moved out and been replaced by strangers, where it looks similar but feels very different — very wrong. All your old things are stowed away in different places, and you’ll have to ask your mom where they keep the towels now, where the scissors are, you’ll notice there’s a thin layer of dust on your room’s surfaces because no-one’s been there in ages — and your dog doesn’t even instantly recognize you anymore.
It’s no longer a place you can really call home — at least, not in the same way, not the one from your memories… because it’s too different now, and too much of the little things that mattered are gone.
That’s the thing about remakes isn’t it? Especially one they’ve pushed as more of a ‘re-imagining’ of the original, of an ‘expansion’, like they are with Final Fantasy VII. All the new parts clash with what you already remember, and even the smallest change from established canon will feel like a retcon, and the feeling of having the rug pulled out from under you would be inescapable.
What if having each character’s reaction fully-voiced and fully-animated clash with how I imagined it in the original? What if they butcher the pacing? Expand things too much that it’ll feel like unnecessary padding? What if the backstory and background head-canons I’ve conjured up over the years to fill-in Reeve’s motivations for becoming Cait Sith clash too heavily with what the Remake presents? What if the Cloti versus Clerith debates come out of the woodwork and make the fandom a toxic cesspool where every little detail is nitpicked upon and presented as evidence for either side to mud-sling at each other with?
What if… the Remake doesn’t feel the same not because it’s too different, but because I’m too different?
Twelve years is a long time to love a game — there’s a few re-playthroughs of the original in there, along with getting a PSP for Crisis Core, countless re-watching sessions of Advent Children (and Complete), hours of watching analysis/critique/retrospective videos, reading fan fiction, browsing (and trying to create) artwork, reading through ancillary material… but so much has changed about me and the world around me.
I’m not the same awkward fourteen-year-old still adjusting to her new STEM-focused school, trying to make new friends, struggling to keep up with math, and just discovering a deep appreciation for RPGs and pretty much anything Japanese. I’m not even that close to the same eighteen-year-old that clung to FFVII during the darkest, most hopeless days, where going back in to re-tread the well-worn and familiar was the only thing that still made sense because it distracted from just how… pointless everything in reality felt, and escaping into another world would be the closest thing to actually disappearing.
Things are much, much better now. But I’ll always be thankful for this game for helping me get through it.
Final Fantasy VII was my gateway into RPGs — I’d already grown up playing computer games, but this was my first long, character-focused, sprawling RPG. I was the game that really got me into video games, and started a now more-than-decade long love for the Final Fantasy franchise, JRPGs as a genre, and video games as more than just a hobby.
It’d be impossible to erase all those years of experience with life, and with so many other video games, and all the expectations that come with those.
I’d even recently started a new play through of Crisis Core in preparation for the remake and… the battle system feels so much slower than I remember.
But then you hear it, you start seeing it over the internet — above the racuous din of “we never asked for this change” and “the series has gone downhill since IX” — there are new people, looking forward to the next installment, new people who can’t wait to uncover the mysteries of Gaia — one time, a few years later (once all the parts are out), you read a comment about how Cloud’s tumultuous journey inspired them to keep going, keep fighting and living, despite their flaws and weaknesses, just like it inspired you all those years ago.
You smile a little — yeah, it was worth it. Even just for that.
That’s why VII is your favorite in the series, favorite game of all time — not just the fancy visuals (which were already dated in 2008 when you first played it), not just the fantastic musical score, not just the fleshed-out, flawed and relatable cast, not just the sweeping story across a vast world… it was all of that, but most of all, it came in at the perfect time to be the game that kept you going. Even through the darkest days, when there was nothing left to hold on to except the comfort that when you come back to Gaia, it’s always exactly as you’ve left it before.
It’s because Cloud is so flawed, so weak, so scared, so broken — but saved the world with his friends anyway.
If someone else ends up feeling even a fraction of what the original FFVII gave me because of the Remake, then that’s enough.
I’ve already accepted that the Remake probably won’t mean as much to me as the original. It probably won’t hit as hard, or in the same way, and there’s even a chance that it’ll leave a bad taste and make me want to distance myself from something I’ve loved for so long.
Maybe it won’t. Maybe it’ll be everything I’ve ever wanted from a video game.
But even if it’s not? If it ends up becoming to someone else, what the original was for me?
Then it’s all well worth it.
