Game Developer, Narrative Designer, Artist

Final Fantasy VII Remake – how Square Enix renewed its charm offensive

on

Developer(s): Square Enix Creative Business Unit I
Publisher: Square Enix
Platform: Playstation 4, slated for PC and Xbox One in 2021
Hours played: 60 hours

This article is the second part in a series covering Final Fantasy VII Remake. My first impressions of the demo can be found here.

Well, this has been a long time coming. I could not be happier to report, with a degree of incredulity, that Final Fantasy VII Remake is a good game. Better than good. In mainstream criticism, it’s already in contention for multiple ‘Game of the Year’ awards for its blend of action-oriented and strategic gameplay, heavenly music, and bewitching story. Above all those, the thing that had the potential to draw in the most newcomers and piss off the most fans was the portrayal of the characters and world. In the weeks following release, my Twitter feed was flooded with cutesy drawings of girl-power Aerith swinging a chair over a thug’s head. That was when I knew that FFVIIR had pulled off what it needed to do: it made us fall in love with these characters all over again and in ways that feel like they never went away. For a moment, I’m going to put aside the tactical, satisfying rhythms of the new combat system and Tetsuya Nomura’s Kingdom Hearts destiny babble, and talk about how Final Fantasy VII Remake charmed the socks – among other items of clothing – off me.

Thnks fr th (new, HD) mmrs

Final Fantasy VII is replete with memorable story beats both melancholic and humorous. These are the events people make fanart about. These are the moments that inscribe themselves in fans’ brains and help us overlook some more annoying design elements. From the moment fans knew FFVIIR existed, it became a favourite pastime to speculate how these moments would translate into 2020 vision through the processing power of the PS4. For the most part, Square Enix nailed them, making good use of the extra time afforded by splitting FFVII into multiple games. They have added extra narrative layers through humour and reflecting the current discourse around the original’s themes, all with the self-awareness that comes with observing over 20 years of fan reception. The result is a story that draws in the newcomer crowd with some classic Final Fantasy levity and appeases FFVII vets by rendering moments they’re nostalgic for at such high fidelity with creative twists. So, please indulge me as I pontificate about some of my favourites.

The first such scene that hit home for me was the Reactor 7 bombing. The Reactor 1 mission went off without a hitch. It’s only natural that Avalanche would be emboldened to spring another operation. One down, seven to go. Of course, the Reactor 7 operation isn’t going to go as smoothly. Tifa is along for the ride and feeling anxious. The way down to the reactor is surprisingly quiet. The gang notices one of Shinra’s advanced weapons, the Airbuster, and Barret remarks “if they sic this thing on us, we’d be screwed six ways from Sunday”. At this point, even a newcomer to FFVII knows you’re going to need to fight this thing. In the original, that fight is the payoff to this dungeon. In Remake, the writers spin it into this grand middle finger to Shinra. Upon setting the explosive on the reactor, some Shinra droids show that the president has been livestreaming the party’s performance to the whole of Midgar and is going to sic the Airbuster on them the moment they try to escape. What’s more, he’s going to accuse Midgar’s foreign enemies, Wutai, of instigating the reactor bombings. This will stoke nationalist fervour and justify the war Shinra wants with Wutai and distract the public from any… domestic policy failures (remember how I said that FFVIIR develops the themes of the original to reflect current discourse?). The perfect post-truth public execution.

Suddenly, that cheerful pessimism from Barret turns into outright revolt. If Shinra wants a show, we’ll give ‘em a show. The journey back up the reactor to face the Airbuster on air is a defiant march, the complete antithesis of the sheepish jaunt down. Cloud and co. tear through weapons development and in a mechanic that screams Final Fantasy, you can find keycards to weaken the Airbuster as it’s being prepped: you can disable its devastating Area of Effect (AoE) attack, lessen the effect of an annoying stun move, or take its cargo of treasures for yourself. This marriage of game-world interaction and risk/reward systems in combat is one of my favourite aspects of Final Fantasy design and to see it alive and well in Remake reasserted that the game is in good hands. Clever game design aside, hearing Cloud, Tifa, and Barret pump each other up as they charge towards almost certain death, where before they ambivalent towards each other, was the most touching build-up to a mid-game boss I’ve seen in recent memory.

And what an encounter! This is the first time in the game where we hear the iconic FFVII boss theme remixed with Dynasty Warriors guitars and thunderous Latin choir. This was the first boss to really hand my ass to me, testing the spatial positioning, ATB gauge management, and team synergy required by the new battle system. This only heightened the narrative stakes of getting destroyed in front of the city while President Shinra tells our rebels that the public wilfully gave up their freedom for economic progress and security – and sweetened the inevitable victory. Frankly, it’s odd to see just how relevant FFVII’s overtones of climate activism and anti-authoritarianism have remained over the years, but they fit this cast and world perfectly, and I pray they’re pursued further in later games, even as Shinra takes a back seat.

Two other moments that omnislashed me in the feels feature everyone’s favourite flower seller Aerith. Her dynamic with Cloud – teasing him and seeing through his gloomy, masculine exterior – is electric and nowhere moreso than when they’re crossing the rooftops of Sector 5. The pair navigate the junk heaps surrounding the church, playfully winding around debris, sliding down broken pipes and scaling rusty ladders. These blossoming steps in the relationship are accompanied by a beautiful rendition of Aerith’s Theme. For what is essentially a forced walking segment with some twisting geometry, this scene makes me smile every time. 

And now, the one. The burning question on FFVII fans’ lips leading up to release. What were they going to do to Wall Market? Midgar’s seedy pleasure district was a highlight of the original game. The situation is serious: Tifa has been kidnapped and forced to marry the mafia-esque boss of Wall Market, Don Corneo. The solution is a little less serious: with his irresistible androgyny, Cloud needs to dress up as a woman to woo Don Corneo in Tifa’s stead and bust her out of there. Again, in FFVII original, this was the punchline. In FFVIIR, the Wall Market segment sees Cloud get a suggestive massage and take part in a cheesy anime tournament arc with Aerith complete with over-the-top commentators and reaction shots from Don Corneo’s advisors. To call Aerith innocent in these interactions does her a disservice. Like her 1997 portrayal, she is streetwise – moreso than ex-military-boy Cloud – but uses her innocent veneer to stay positive in the face of danger and trick  those who would exploit her. In essence, this extended operation to save Tifa is also a backdrop for Cloud to lighten up. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Wall Market’s crowning achievement: the dance scene. 

The Honeybee Inn in FFVII original used its primitive graphics to hint at shady goings-on behind closed doors. The low-polygon suggestion of what might be happening behind closed doors was enough to disturb players. This wasn’t going to be an option in the fully-voiced FFVIIR, so Honeybee Inn is transformed into this amazingly campy and infectiously fun set-piece. To wow the fabulous Andrea Rodea, one of Corneo’s advisors, Cloud needs to prove that he can MOVE. And boy does he move. The incongruity of this glum merc (who stated “I don’t dance” in a previous chapter”) absolutely tearing it up on the dancefloor had me tearing up. This was Cloud Strife, a character I had known, or thought I had known, for years. Yet here he was, cutting the filthiest shapes as Playstation button prompts fly around as if to say “remember that game that sold the PS1 and put Sony on the map? This is it now”. It’s a thematically relevant moment, too. Aerith watching on wide-eyed, cheering Cloud on to drop his inhibitions, hammered home what FFVIIR’s story is about for me: an angsty, spikey-haired mercenary repressing a lot of trauma learning to let loose and lean on his friends sometimes. I think back to the iconic opera scene in Final Fantasy VI. If that moment perfectly encapsulates the game’s wider theme of love in all its forms, then Final Fantasy VII Remake’s silly dance perfectly encapsulates its story and respectfully expands on the original’s messages. These are the kind of narrative layers that justify the remake’s existence and multi-part structure. 

Moseying through Midgar (now in full 3D)

Speaking of parts, this first one’s promise was a broader story about Midgar and what it’s like to live there. A lot has been made in reviews about how Midgar “now feels distinct and lived-in”, and the devil really is in the details here. You see Midgar from a lot of different angles, often in the main cast’s periphery. Instead of the opening shots of the cosmos in the original, Remake begins by tracking a bird soaring across a barren wasteland, showing the environmental effect of mako energy before the city it powers. Then, we see postcards of Shinra’s perfect suburbia. It becomes easy to forget the wastes outside the city walls and the people living in progress’ shadow. President Shinra tells AVALANCHE that nobody revolts against inequality and the destruction of the planet because they’re thankful for the technology mako has given them: the well-to-do plate-dwellers are thankful for electricity and entertainment, the slum-dwellers that they might get to commute upstairs and for the fact that the plate above hasn’t been dropped on them… yet. It’s in how the plate and slum inhabitants interact with the other side that the most interesting worldbuilding occurs. The Biggs, Wedge, and Jessie trio infiltrated my heart when I got to go topside and visit Jessie’s family home. While the gang enjoy a pizza prepared by Jessie’s mum, Cloud sneaks into her father’s bedroom to steal his Shinra employee ID for the next mission. What Jessie doesn’t tell you is that her dad was left comatose after an occupational accident involving mako from which he may never wake up. That was when Midgar became a living world for me, when I saw this dying father, awarded a spot in one of the city’s most privileged neighbourhoods through his work for Shinra, failed by that same system. Shinra fails everyone in the end.

Another way the scope of this city and the nuanced experiences of the people who live there are conveyed is through barks. No matter where you go, you’re likely to hear snippets of NPC dialogue: a businessperson complaining about how they’re going to get home to their family with the train line blocked; someone decrying the terrorist group AVALANCHE; somebody else defending said terrorist group; someone being seduced by the scent of a Midgar delicacy; someone being seduced by the excesses of sexual pleasure on offer at Wall Market; complaints about power failures; hatred of foreign enemies; fear for loved ones. Text like this adds so much texture to the world and since it’s sprinkled into real-time gameplay it doesn’t come across as filler. You can wander around taking in the cries of the city or dash straight past them because this is your hard-mode playthrough and you’ve got no time for little Timmy wanting a pizza. Many lines reference places that players haven’t even visited yet, creating an expectation of what they’ll see when they arrive there. Many of the lines may sound silly when interpreted as spoken utterances, but viewed as stray thoughts swirling around in the city’s neuroticism, they cement Midgar as a melting pot of worries, hopes, and dreams. Turns out these barks have a lot of bite.

Y’know what isn’t charming? Filler!

Up until this point, I’ve highlighted how Square Enix expanded on the plot of Final Fantasy VII in meaningful ways, but they aren’t all winners. Some design choices slow the pace of the game down to such a crawl that I can only charitably call them filler. It’s a shame because a lot of my issues with Remake aren’t inherently negative but are compounded by the game’s structure, its status as the first episode in an incomplete series, and…

Forced walking! I thought AAA games were slowly moving away from forced walking segments but that must have been overly optimistic because slow-ass party members constantly gate progression in this game, normally to limply congratulate each other. I praised the Reactor 7 mission for showing how Barret, Cloud, and Tifa motivate each other on the way to the hardest fight of their lives, but affirming every tiny task the player performs gets patronising very quickly. By all means, give me fun verbs like “press triangle to high-five Aerith or leave her hanging for some fun hidden dialogue”. That makes sense for her character and in the context of trying to get Cloud to loosen up. Do not make me sidle through debris, duck under fences, or cut my max speed in half because that’s what you think my character would do in that situation. If some of these portions exist purely to mask loading times, then I would have preferred another long corridor to neutering my speed. 

In its attempt to appear like a fully-fledged RPG in its own right, rather than a 10th of a game from 1997, FFVIIR has sidequests. The opening 10th of that 1997 game is very linear, with optional quests only really opening up as the world does after leaving Midgar. With so many events dramatically locking off parts of the map at a time, the question is “how would Square Enix implement sidequests without invisible points of no return making them inaccessible?” Clumsily. In FFVIIR, there are three allotted instances where the story slows down and players can complete a set of sidequests. You have to complete them there and then before progressing the story because they become inaccessible the second you go towards the next area. Compared to the rollicking ride that is the main story, backtracking down the same corridor eight times to fight some monsters for an NPC is an unattractive prospect. The context behind some of these quests is dull and a lot of fun context is explained away by saying “Cloud. You’re a mercenary. Go do a good thing”. Being forced to do them back-to-back in a pretty restricted order does little to mask how underwhelming they are.

To be fair, it seems SE were aware of this and made attempts to make the optional content meaningful. Most sidequests end in a confrontation with a unique monster with a unique strategy. The game lets you fast-travel back to the quest-giver upon winning the appropriate fight which is a godsend in modern RPG design. The reward for completing all the sidequests in a chapter is a ‘discovery’ moment with Tifa and Aerith that has an effect on a future event. Some of the quest-givers have some fun banter and some become fleshed-out characters who fit the FFVII world perfectly. One such recurring character is Mireille, an old woman who lives in the Sector 5 slums. She informs Cloud of a kind of Robin-Hood figure in local myth called ‘the Angel of the Slums’. After an admittedly funny questline (or thinking about how informed she is for two seconds) it becomes apparent that Mireille herself is the Angel. Considering it seemed as if AVALANCHE were the only real rebels in this overtly oppressive society, learning about this enigmatic, badass woman who uses her knowledge of the slums to deceive the super-rich is a reward in itself. I’m also delighted by how the sidequests illuminate parts of Cloud’s character. When the children of the Sector 5 slums ask Cloud and Aerith to neutralize the ‘toad king’, mercenary Cloud naturally tells them that it’s gonna cost. After realizing that the children can’t pay and are resolved to face the monster themselves, Cloud lowers his rate to three gil and says he’s running “a special discount on toad kings”. That’s cute and feeds into his broader character arc. And, of course, the concerned teacher who gives the quest turns up later in Wall Market as a dancer at the Honeybee Inn and begs Cloud not to tell the children about her side hustle. A minor character shows us the secret lives the people of Midgar are forced to lead in order to survive and follow their dreams. They become human beings with as many tribulations and aspirations as our main cast.   

But wait! Darts?! Dancing?! Thinking about how FFVIIR’s sidequest dumps could have offered more freedom while telling a linear story, I was reminded of another Japan-designed, district-wandering tough-guy who is surprisingly good at dancing.

That’s right, everyone. Take another shot  because Charles mentioned Yakuza again. I believe future FFVIIR games could learn a lot from Yakuza sidequest implementation. The comparisons are begging to be made. Both games use sidequests as a way to show different aspects of the protagonist’s character. Both tell involved stories but aren’t afraid to get a little silly to keep the tone light. Where Yakuza trumps FFVIIR, however, is in its writing and player freedom. The former is self-explanatory: a typical Yakuza substory’s writing is more entertaining than the awkward delivery of some of FFVIIR’s NPC dialogue. In both games, you know that the quest will likely end in a fight but Yakuza entices players with rewarding interactions once the quest is completed. The quest giver will often show up to thank Kiryu and reassure him that they will go on to follow their dream, or they’ll reveal that everything was just a funny misunderstanding, or the giver and antagonist will reconcile in a touching display. Whatever happens, Kiryu will become a stronger person from it – both gameplay and story-wise. In FFVIIR, the sidequests are contextualised as Cloud becoming a better merc and gaining jobs through word-of-mouth, but what does that rapport mean when the gang ends up leaving Midgar as fugitives anyway? The luxury Yakuza has in being able to set most of its story beats in discreet buildings or outside the district of Kamurocho would not work for Final Fantasy VII, not without a substantial rewrite, but perhaps the more open future games could play to the strengths of recurring minor characters without the story limiting where players can go. 

Far from final

Most of the examples of worthwhile expansions I’ve mentioned come from the first two thirds of the game and that isn’t a coincidence. The game languishes from its last sidequest dump all the way to the denouement. It’s ambition to establish plot threads to follow in the next game end up detracting from this one. Hojo’s lab is the absolute pits: it manages to combine slow switching between parties (with patronising dialogue telling you when to do so), a party member who won’t be playable until the next game, and little story significance but to pad out game time. My favourite things. Again, SE tried to break up this slog to the end by adding a VR simulator with some side missions and the canteen you find it in has some charming dialogue, but it’s a small consolation if you’re already sick of combat. There are some throwaway, bait-and-switch story moments that seem to exist purely for shock value before returning to the status quo. As a rule, this section feels like it strains the most under the knowledge that Remake is the first in a series.

This is to say nothing of the baffling ending. In my review of the demo for Final Fantasy VII Remake, I stated my concern that we’d be seeing Sephiroth a lot more throughout this expanded story just to remind us that he is the big bad. I have to confess that I did let out an audible groan when Sephy and his long sword popped out of the rubble a little under an hour in to grace me with his presence. That said, I reserve my judgement of his portrayal, as well as of the heavy-handed addition of ‘destiny’ to the theming mix, until the Remake project is complete. As tacked on as Sephiroth and ‘destiny’ feel at the end of this game, I commend Square Enix for their ambition of not wanting to make a frame-for-frame remake, for reviving speculation and excitement for a story that is over 20 years old. I like the interpretation that the Whispers, the arbiters of destiny, are analogues to fans like me who want to steer the characters’ courses to play out the original game’s story, while Sephiroth wants to defy it. That said, Square Enix have got to deliver on these concepts next game if they want them to cohere with the potpourri of activism, identity, trauma, and inequality that FFVII already gives off.

Conclusion

Did this remake need to be made? Well, money talks (particularly loudly for Square Enix) and it made a compelling argument for FFVIIR’s existence: in August of this year, Square Enix revealed that FFVIIR has sold over five million units physically and digitally. Creatively, I think Remake’s biggest boon, and the legacy it will leave in Final Fantasy history, is that it reminded Square Enix of what we love about this series. It gave new blood the chance to breathe new life into characters they grew up with and that passion radiates from so many corners of this game world. The game often cited as propelling video game storytelling to the next level showed us that it’s still got it and there are still meaningful narrative juices to be squeezed from this cast. It’s a creative journey Square Enix needed to go on. Now they just have to make sure they don’t cock up the rest of it. The sidequest structure, antiquated design trends, and pacing hint at room for improvement. A multi-part JRPG is a daunting proposition for any gamer, let alone one where each part could cost up to £70. For now, though, I think our characters are in good hands.

P.S. Please give us data transfer of some kind. I don’t want to go through 5-10 hours of having a few abilities and some damage items before combat opens up again!

Related posts

Tags:
Video Games