Don’t rush the ‘Final Fantasy VII’ canon

Prior to 2020, I’d never truly experienced the world of the classic Final Fantasy VII. I danced around the periphery of it without commitment for decades, getting a glimpse of it through cultural osmosis. Then visually via appearances in Kingdom Hearts and Super Smash Bros. I dug deep, reading from Game Informer magazines and moving to writing about video games. The sights, sounds and beats of the PlayStation classic slowly encroached into my life. By the time I decided to take the plunge, it felt like a bit of a homecoming.

Despite knowing nothing about the events of the franchise, I thought it could be a fun experiment to dip my toes in and play Final Fantasy VII Remake as my first in the series. In the deep stretches of COVID I began to scratch at my backlog. The hype and spectacle that Remake held was intriguing. Of course, after playing through NieR Automata mere weeks prior, not a lot was going to compare. However, Remake did confirm my enjoyment of a sort of emotional, ethereal nonsense. 

Of course that would be my approach, given my David Lynch enjoying ass. There were avenues to help Remake make sense prior to playing it, but I enjoyed it more without it. Playing that way allowed me to focus more on the detailed character work and getting to know the Avalanche crew. 

In 2024, I returned to the series ready to hit the gas. This was a strategy I would slowly  realize was a mistake. I began with the remasters of Final Fantasy VII and the PSP’s Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core Reunion. Then, with the remaining time, I watched the director’s cut of the film Final Fantasy VII Advent Children: Complete, the Yuffie starring DLC Remake: Intergrade, and, much to my chagrin, attempted to make sense of the events of Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII for the PlayStation 2. This is ultimately not a complete review of the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII. I didn’t dig into mobile games like Ever Crisis or lite novels like The Kids are Alright. From a main storyline perspective, this was the best way to fast-track the franchise with the time I had.

Thankfully, all of this was achieved in the month of February, mere days before the release of part two of the Remake trilogy: Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth. The newest entry independently consumed the majority of the free time I’ve had outside of life and work for a good month and a half until one of those rushes to the end that leaves you awake with credits rolling at 1:00AM on a Thursday. But I’ll start from the top. 

Disc 1: I’ll come back when it’s all over

Four years passed after finishing Remake, and I knew part two and three of the trilogy were fast approaching. I wanted to make sure that before they did, I actually buckled down and played the original in earnest. So once I took a significant break from my One Piece binge, I dove back into a Nintendo Switch save file on the outskirts of Midgar and began my adventure onto the grasslands of the world outside the Mako fueled metropolis. 

This put me on a headstart in exactly the place that Final Fantasy VII Rebirth would begin, as for the first of many times, I would mount a Chocobo, see Kalm, hear the Overworld theme, and witness Nibelheim flashbacks galore over these winter months. As a Nintendo 64 kid, I constantly remind myself traveling across Final Fantasy VII’s map that the game was released in the United States mere weeks prior to my beloved The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Every time I remember what the Square Enix team did in 1997, I sit in awe.

Did I use the cheat systems available to me on the Nintendo Switch? Absolutely I did. But just as much, I scanned guides and the overworld for quests to get the coolest weapons, summons and materia; jumping for joy when I acquired the overwhelmingly potent Bahamut Zero after acquiring the four special optional materia. Even two months later, the blue gradient menus for items, equipment and materia sorting are seared into the back of my eyes like a protection free eclipse viewer. 

Within a few weeks, with the fast-forward button on, I could see the main story and most significant side quests that Final Fantasy VII had to offer. Thankfully, I returned to Nibelheim to force Vincent Valentine to join my team because I took him telling me to go away at face value until I realized he was a genuine party member. So, too, I mistook Yuffie’s threats literally and put far too much effort into making the little ninja join my team, yet found her more annoying than the rest despite the quality of her side quest in her home of the Wutai nation.

Somehow, I managed to make it 25 years without knowing the details of Aerith’s death. All this time, I never truly understood the scope and depth this game offers, despite knowing the most major spoiler. Even with that knowledge, I didn’t realize how deep its themes and sense of grief would go.

This scene in the City of the Ancients and its aftermath through the rest of the game, the mourning and the emptiness, made me realize why people love Final Fantasy VII. The lack of her presence, joy, and energy she brought was so deliberately absent in the game’s latter half. It made me realize that even in 1997, Final Fantasy VII was doing something very different with its characters and depiction of grief, even before understanding the intent of co-director Yoshinori Kitase.

‘If I had known this was coming I would have done things differently. These are the feelings I wanted to arouse in the players with Aerith’s death relatively early in the game. Feelings of reality and not Hollywood.” – Editors of EDGE magazine, ed (2003). Edge May, 2003. Future Publishing. pp. 112–113.

Briana White’s performance as Aerith between all the newest games in the series give the story and characters lively momentum. Even when she was a handful of polygons, I am impressed by how much personality she brings. There’s a joy to seeing Aerith alive. When I reflect and think about her after the journey’s end, I want to mourn.

Disc 2: Dilly-dally shilly-shally

I watched Final Fantasy VII Advent Children once upon a time as a DVD rental in high school. Foolishly, I thought I might be able to piece together what was going on from having played two Kingdom Hearts games. I was a fool then, and maybe more so now. After watching the director’s cut the very evening of finishing the original Final Fantasy VII, I can report it still doesn’t make much sense. 

The film offers some satisfying moments towards the end, but even through all the flashy action sequences, I began to worry that the era of the series helmed by Tetsuya Nomura wouldn’t be able to see the forest for the trees. Dead giveaways were details like the exorbitant cell phone product placement, and Barret becoming an oil baron. 

There was a sinking feeling that Final Fantasy VII would stop being about grief, life, and the protection of the planet. What I did get by its conclusion was a reassurance that Cloud and his friends would continue to unearth new connections amongst themselves. That characterization was good enough. Once Sephiroth comes into the picture, the how and why don’t matter because the spectacle is so strong. “I will give you despair” is one of the hardest lines I’ve ever heard and makes me appreciate Advent Children: Complete’s existence for this alone. It does, however, make me wish I sat on the original game’s ending a little longer.

The clock was ticking however, and my roommate tried to pull some shenanigans to get me to either play or watch the spin off starring the beloved vampire, Vincent Valentine. While I can understand the appeal of an edgelord-mallcore shooter at the peak of the style with the voice of Steve Blum behind the character, most of what happens in this game sours what I liked about Vincent and Cait Sith in the original game. The dread that the series was getting away from the genuine thematic aspects that I liked so much in the original set in here. Those concerns I had were thankfully quelled once I was introduced to Zack Fair.

Disc 3:  My honor, my dreams… they’re yours now

A great palette cleanser for this concern was seeing the Madhouse anime short “The Last Order”, which covered the events of the Nibelheim incident in their true form, and gave a taste for things to come. I picked up a copy of the remaster, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII Reunion in 2023 and sat on it until this point. The gameplay for Crisis Core was not only a refreshing departure, it allowed me to admire the fact that Square had been building up to the design in Remake all this time. 

While I was not compelled by the Genesis plot, and now feel cursed with the knowledge of Gackt, seeing the way Crisis Core recreated the events of the Nibelheim incident with such reverence and love for the original game was endearing. That said it almost spoiled me so that by the time I finally experienced the flashback yet again in the beginning of Rebirth, I was feeling like I was some grouchy old fan asking why it was so different. 

The real takeaway from experiencing Crisis Core, however, was finally seeing what all the fuss about Zack was about. Even in his new voice over iteration, Zack is endearing in his enthusiasm, and provides a perfect foil to a young Cloud and the ever maddening Sephiroth. 

He is also the best person for Aerith, and my heartbreak was inconsolable when I realized her selling flowers was not only his idea, but that the broken cart he promised to fix for her when he returns to Midgar would never be repaired again and that’s why she carries her precious flowers from the church in a hand basket. 

While the ending is a bit long in the tooth, as is the case for many of the Nomura led entries, Zack’s final stand to protect Cloud might stand out as one of the best endings, and death of a main character that I’ve seen in any video game. Then I remembered that I had seen Zack somewhere once before, at the end of Final Fantasy VII Remake, miraculously alive.

Disc 4: Seven seconds to the end

The problem with this herculean effort to finally give myself solid ground in the Final Fantasy VII canon is that I did all this with mere days to spare before the release of the new game. Because of this, I gave myself an unfair disadvantage. Not only did I not have much time to sit with the implications of the lifestream’s grand entrance upon the end of the original game, or the melancholic conclusion to the hero Zack Fair, but I set myself up to be thoroughly exhausted by Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.

So I will be allowing myself to take that time in writing. Where I didn’t mosey my way through the game itself in the month that I played it, I will not force it to be in conversation with the likes of Dirge of Cerberus. To discuss Rebirth, we’ll need to veer off into a separate adventure.

Stay tuned for Part II.

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Featured image credit: © SQUARE ENIX