The newly-released Ultimate Fantasy VII Rebirth is the second chapter within the fashionable retelling of the 1997 basic Ultimate Fantasy VII, increasing the center chunk of the unique recreation into a brand new 80+ hour expertise. Rebirth is a triumph and a joyful modernization that thoughtfully reimagines the unique and units the curve for online game remakes. It additionally proves that Ultimate Fantasy VII might be the one recreation that deserves to be remade in such a manner.
No different basic recreation has such a following of beloved followers, or such an notorious second that spawned a long time of impassioned discourse. Spoilers for a 24-year-old recreation: halfway by way of, spritely and candy Aerith is abruptly and completely killed by the sport’s villain.
Learn extra: 5 Issues to Do Proper Away in Ultimate Fantasy VII Rebirth
Aerith’s loss of life rocked the gaming world, a lot that it continues to overshadow FFVII’s different groundbreaking qualities: an iconic lineup of foremost characters in a plot that transitions between heartbreakingly critical and comically absurd, a profitable mixture of tragic backstory and goofy minigames. This was all in a recreation with probably the most superior graphics of its day, bringing the storied Ultimate Fantasy franchise from flat 2D sprites to dynamic 3D polygons.
2020’s Ultimate Fantasy VII Remake, the primary in Sq. Enix’s trilogy remaking the unique recreation, set the type and developed the real-time fight system because it follows Cloud and firm by way of their escape from industrial Midgar. From the primary moments of Ultimate Fantasy VII Rebirth, it is clear that the center recreation is a complete new stage of modernization with expansive open world areas full of actions and sidequests, inviting gamers to run from lush grasslands to rocky seaside cliffs to seaside paradises to arid deserts to verdant jungles and extra.
Watch this: Ultimate Fantasy VII Rebirth: Bringing an Outdated Story Right into a Huge Open World
Looming over all of this gameplay grandeur is the storytelling door opened by Remake, which added a meta-level of plot consciousness: characters actually battle future on the finish of the sport, and seemingly acquire the ability to alter the course of the plot we knew from the unique. Thus Rebirth opens with the daunting risk: will Aerith die on this recreation, too?
Rebirth is just like the dialog you’ve got been having in your head for many years, and it ponders the identical factor: can a narrative with out its tragic peak be as impactful? The brand new recreation takes actually till its closing moments to reply the query — spoilers for Rebirth forward — however after a staggering 102-hour playthrough, I can confidently say that regardless of the end result, Rebirth has finished one thing unbelievable: it is boundless sufficient to make me really feel like I used to be taking part in the unique once more.
It makes me ponder whether every other older recreation can — or ought to — get the identical colossal funding to be expanded right into a multi-game remake. It is seductive to need to re-inhabit these worlds that opened our eyes in ways in which enchantment to fashionable tastes, however in need of singular culture-defining works like FFVII, perhaps it is best that different remakes merely modernize the graphics and gameplay, however let our reminiscences do the heavy lifting.
Ultimate Fantasy VII Rebirth: Photograph Mode Screenshots From the Frontier
Of Segways and Sephiroths: they do not make worlds like this anymore
Rebirth is a beautiful and expansive recreation, with care and thought put into the six huge areas you’ll be able to go to. I continuously caught myself discovering ledges overlooking vistas, pausing to admire and take screenshots. The soundtrack — together with a ballad Aerith sings written by the legendary Nobuo Uematsu, who composed the unique FFVII’s music — is a improbable mixture of types with nary a miss in its extraordinarily deep catalog, and I struggled to discover a favourite (however Gongaga’s theme is up there). Dappled mild, grand cinematic views, a lush soundscape — it makes the sport’s world really feel richly textured.
Extra importantly, Rebirth masterfully adapts the tone of its supply materials and makes it sing. The unique FFVII had spiky-haired Cloud and firm pursuing the mass-murdering silver-haired villain Sephiroth between segments driving dolphins and visiting outlandish desert casinos.
Rebirth preserves that stream, with deft tonal transitions — halfway by way of, you are taking a joyful minecart experience to finish up on the dilapidated hometown of one of many characters, destroyed years in the past by Shinra. An hour later, you are in a lodge that appears patterned after Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion, full with costumed staff committing to the bit. It makes the world really feel big, diverse and inhabited.
The metatextual data of Aerith’s potential coming demise looms over the entire recreation, so it is a aid that Rebirth finds methods to deepen your reference to characters by way of joyful, goofy moments. You get loads of unhappy backstories, however they’re cushioned by levity and mischievous playfulness amongst heroes and villains alike. Sure, you are still pursuing Sephiroth, however you gotta take just a few hours to experience a segway round Costa del Sol’s seaside city. When a plot second has Cloud and firm posing as Shinra troopers, you’ll be able to come across a secret social membership patronized by the ever-serious antagonist Impolite — and you will be practically kicked out for not assembly the hilarious membership standards.
I might rattle off two dozen such standout moments within the recreation, however I will not for the way a lot poorer they seem on paper. Their silliness broadens and enriches the sport. I needed to exist on this planet the place Cloud and firm stumble into such antics on the path of a world-threatening villain.
A few of these moments are modernized variations of the originals, however many others seem for the primary time in Rebirth. With beautiful landscapes accompanied by top-notch music, nice real-time motion and simply over 100 hours of recreation to chew by way of, Rebirth seems like I am being reintroduced to FFVII for the primary time. I do not know if every other basic recreation’s expertise may be revived in fairly the identical manner.
In a well-known second within the unique recreation, Pink XIII re-examines his personal previous tragedy.
Which different video games need to be revisited like this?
After over 100 hours of taking part in, I imagine that Rebirth comes the closest of any remake to creating me really feel like I did after I first popped open an previous CD jewel case and let a soon-to-be-iconic recreation wash over me. What’s stored and what’s modified is a beautiful alchemy, displaying the problem of modernizing a bygone basic for present audiences. Which different basic title would profit from being expanded right into a three-game trilogy?
Each gamer has a pantheon of formative video games, defining their style and difficult their worldview from a younger age. I battle to think about video games that achieved FFVII’s trifecta: unbelievable recognition, revolutionary-for-its-time gameplay and graphics and a storyline so dynamic it continues to encourage debate. The latter particularly is what makes Sq. Enix’s Remake challenge so apt for revisiting, so fertile for re-examining with a contemporary lens, even when — not less than to this point — its adjustments are extra supplementary than critical, extra philosophical than plot-diverting.
It is laborious to think about a basic recreation that’s price taking the time to do in another way. What could be gained by altering the plot of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time? Maybe the unique Steel Gear Stable would go well with an introspective remake, however is there sufficient fodder to increase into a number of video games? Most recreation studios shrewdly select retcons and reboots for his or her new variations of older titles, like then-Sq. Enix did with the 2013 Tomb Raider sequence, which admirably reset protagonist Lara Croft as an adventuring survivor however did not go a lot farther to re-examine tenets of the unique recreation that will have aged poorly — like, say, raiding tombs to pillage different cultures’ artifacts.
Admittedly, not each recreation’s universe helps a re-examination in the midst of play as Remake and Rebirth do with their destiny-enforcing Whisper ghosts and Sephiroth’s imprecise mission to discover a universe the place he will not lose ultimately. FFVII’s mixture of fantasy and science fiction specifically permits reality-altering weirdness in ways in which others do not. That may most likely be powerful to do with, say, the Resident Evil remakes we have gotten in recent times, that are extra targeted on revitalizing its gameplay than dramatically altering the unique story.
There’s nothing improper with simply updating an previous recreation to fashionable tastes, and it is definitely much less of a threat to easily reproduce an previous recreation as gamers keep in mind it relatively than tease large adjustments this time round — after which take care of the results whether or not the plot differs or not.
Okay, however DOES Aerith reside? (Spoilers)
This part will delve into spoilers. That is your final probability to depart it a thriller whether or not Aerith dies on the finish of Rebirth.
Prepared?
Sure, Aerith nonetheless dies on the finish of Rebirth. In a selection that can absolutely divide followers as a lot as her first loss of life rocked players’ hearts within the unique, Rebirth teases that her destiny lies on a knife’s edge: as Cloud fights off each Sephiroth’s affect and the literalized forces of destiny (the ghost-like Whispers from Remake) bending his sword to take Aerith’s life as she prays to the planet, our hero resists and even deflects the killing blow from Sephiroth’s personal sword. A couple of moments later, this potential future is recorrected (seemingly by Sephiroth) and Aerith falls, mortally wounded.
From a literal perspective, it is a cheat for the participant, who’s proven saving Aerith moments earlier than. It is also a betrayal of kinds to the promise that the entire trilogy arrange: on the finish of Remake, after defeating destiny and transferring past the knowable plot, Aerith says that forward of them lies “boundless, terrifying freedom.” For probably the most half, Rebirth follows the unique FFVII story, beat by beat, main as much as dropping Aerith — who upon returning to the planet’s Lifestream walks as a spirit round her mourning mates however just for Cloud to see, and the sport ends along with her waving goodbye as they proceed the hunt.
Likely, some gamers will revolt, teased by the likelihood that issues might’ve been totally different. Heck, there’s a complete subplot in Rebirth the place aspect character (and Aerith’s past love) Zack Truthful, who initially dies simply earlier than the occasions of FFVII, seems in Midgar just for his final destiny to boil all the way down to surviving in an alternate universe, however not this one. That appears to be the case with Aerith as effectively, and the radically totally different Rebirth we might’ve gotten — the place Aerith lives or Cloud dies or one thing else detours the recognized into the unknown — stays a dream for gamers.
There’s an argument that saving Aerith lowers the stakes for the third recreation to return, or that it might dilute the enduring affect of the character. We have but to see what occurs within the third chapter, which might comply with Remake and Rebirth with, say, a Reunion that reconciles the opportunity of totally different outcomes and the unhappy acceptance that we won’t change every part. (Or maybe even… a Resurrection.) Whether or not it is honest to gamers or not, even teasing a unique destiny offers gamers a lot to chew on that it reinforces FFVII’s enduring enchantment, which Sq. Enix acknowledges and tinkers with proper in entrance of gamers.
Whereas Sq. Enix finally reined in Rebirth’s prospects, it is nonetheless extra self-awareness than we have gotten in most media revisitation of previous concepts. It is one in all a handful of current tasks that thoughtfully re-examine — and generally transform — the unique story. The Scott Pilgrim Takes Off anime Netflix launched final 12 months, for instance, dramatically altered the plot to recenter the story on Ramona Flowers and different aspect characters given brief shrift within the unique materials, which led to the introspective skewering of poorly-aged components of the Scott Pilgrim comedian and Edgar Wright movie adaptation.
I am nonetheless disillusioned that Rebirth did not get the identical radical change to its plot, however the Remake trilogy has up to now finished loads of work to reimagine characters and beats in quieter moments sprinkled by way of the video games. Whereas Aerith does not escape her destiny, she’s much more self-actualized and given an actual friendship with Tifa. In a aspect quest, Barrett wonders aloud how good of a father he’ll be to his adopted daughter Marlene. Upbeat Yuffie mourns her former accomplice. Barrett and Tifa get to toast their previous Avalanche comrades. As an older gamer, these character moments are what draw me deeper into the video games I play.
I am reminded of one other iconic nerd expertise that lately bought up to date — the basic Lego Galaxy Explorer set bought a contemporary re-release, protecting the previous colours however with new components in order that it feels such as you’re taking part in with the unique whereas interesting to fashionable, extra advanced tastes. The quiet message of that’s this: You may’t return and play with the very same toy and count on to really feel the identical manner. Recapturing that surprise takes experimentation of what to alter and what to maintain.
Finally, veteran players shopping for Rebirth to revisit the story are chasing the excessive from once they popped the primary disc into their PlayStation a long time in the past. Greater than different remakes, Rebirth succeeds in resurrecting that have by difficult participant emotions on how the most important gamer occasion of their childhood went down, and whether or not it must be modified. The trick of nostalgia is that it’ll by no means hit prefer it did all these years in the past, particularly at formative ages. To paraphrase the closing strains of Stephen King’s Stand By Me, I by no means play video games like I did after I was twelve. Man, does anybody?
