During the 25th anniversary event of Final Fantasy VII, the announcement that fans of the Final Fantasy series had been waiting for a very long time, the one related to the second part of the remake, finally arrived.
To close the streaming event there was in fact the trailer that unveiled the definitive title of what until a few hours ago was known as Final Fantasy VII Remake Part 2. The name of the new chapter will be Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and, according to the words of the developers, there will be a third part too. In the official reveal trailer that you can watch below and that lasts about a minute, we can observe Cloud and Sephiroth in the first part and, in the final moments, Zack helping a seriously injured Cloud.
To close the trailer is the expected launch window that is next winter. This means that the game will arrive between the end of 2023 and the first months of 2024 and, as also shown in the video, it will at least initially be a PlayStation 5 exclusive. It is not excluded in any case that the game may arrive at a later time also on other platforms as happened with the first part.
But let’s recap what Final Fantasy VII Remake is about.
Final Fantasy VII Remake Overview
Final Fantasy VII Remake (ファイナルファンタジーセブンリメイク Fainaru Fantajī Sebun Rimeiku) is an action RPG video game developed and published by Square Enix for PlayStation 4. It is a remake of the 1997 PlayStation title Final Fantasy VII, which follows the story of Cloud Strife, a mercenary of an ecoterrorist organization known as AVALANCHE, in his fight against the evil company Shinra and the legendary SOLDIER Sephiroth, the main antagonist of the video game. Unlike the original game, the combat system is a fusion of real-time action, similar to Dissidia Final Fantasy, and strategic elements. The game will also be released in multiple episodes.
The decision to release a multi-part Remake stemmed from the team’s willingness to include the original content in its entirety. The team also decided to include additional content and retouch the original character design to seek a balance between realism and stylization.
The first part of the Remake project was released on April 10, 2020, initially as a one-year temporary exclusive for PlayStation 4. On June 10, 2021, an improved version was released for PlayStation 5 and on December 16 for Microsoft Windows.
Some key members of the original Final Fantasy VII staff have returned to the development team to work on Final Fantasy VII Remake: Tetsuya Nomura is back in the original role of character designer and as director, original director Yoshinori Kitase now appears as producer, Kazushige Nojima returned to writing the screenplay and the historic composer Nobuo Uematsu was also involved.
Final Fantasy VII Remake Setting
Final Fantasy VII Remake takes place entirely within the city of Midgar (where the initial events of the original game take place), an industrialized metropolis divided into eight circular sectors and at the center of which is the headquarters of the Shinra Electric Power Company, a greedy and influential energy company that supplies electricity to the entire city using an energy resource called Mako, the main energy source in the world. The Mako is nothing else than the liquid form of the Lifestream, the vital flow of the planet which permeates all existing life forms and which keeps the planet itself alive. For this reason, many criticize the work of the Shinra, as the intensive exploitation of the Mako – while allowing a high quality of life for the population – weakens the planet, killing it slowly.
Midgar is surrounded by eight Mako reactors that incessantly convert the latter into electricity, and its slums (where people live in poverty and have to defend themselves from monsters) are separated from the affluent residential sectors by a circular platform 300 meters high from the land, on which the wealthiest citizens live and where the headquarters of the Shinra are located.
Final Fantasy VII Remake Plot
Cloud Strife, a mercenary and former member of SOLDIER (a group of elite soldiers in the service of Shinra), joins an ecoterrorist group called Avalanche, led by Barret Wallace and which also includes Jessie, Wedge, and Biggs, to storm Midgar’s Mako 1 reactor. The group tries to blow up the reactor with a bomb from Jessie, but it turns out to be insufficient. It is President Shinra, at that point, who secretly orders to blow up the reactor, causing significant collateral damage to the city and the population, so as to publicly accuse Avalanche of being a violent terrorist group.
Cloud and the others return to headquarters in the slums of Sector 7. Along the way, Cloud meets Aerith Gainsborough, a flower girl who is attacked by mysterious entities and has a vision of Sephiroth, a legendary SOLDIER with a mysterious connection to his past. From now on, Cloud’s hallucinations will be more and more frequent, along with confused memories of his past and visions of events that he does not yet understand the meaning of.
In the slums, the group reunites with Tifa Lockhart (another Avalanche member and Cloud’s childhood friend) and prepares for the attack on the next reactor, which Cloud will not participate in. Jessie secretly asks Cloud to accompany her onto the platform to steal an explosive from a Shinra warehouse. Jessie is convinced that the previous disaster was caused by her miscalculation and therefore wants to use a weaker bomb for the next reactor. The two are accompanied by Wedge and Biggs, and, confronting various Shinra soldiers (including a SOLDIER named Roche), the group manages to steal the bomb and then parachute back into the slums. The next morning, the mysterious entities reappear, injuring Jessie and forcing Cloud to go on a mission in her place.
Barret, Tifa, and Cloud then make their way to the Mako 5 reactor but are thwarted by Heidegger, a senior Shinra official. Cloud crashes into the slums of Sector 5, where he is rescued by Aerith. Cloud in turn helps the girl to escape from Reno, a member of the Turks (Shinra investigative group) who has come to kidnap her, unexpectedly helped by mysterious entities.
Aerith accompanies Cloud to Sector 7, but the two meet Tifa on her way to Sector 6 to investigate Don Corneo, a mob boss who appears to be interested in Avalanche, and they decide to help her. The three infiltrate the villa of Corneo, from which they learn that the Shinra intends to collapse one of the support pillars of the platform above sector 7 to eliminate the Avalanche. Corneo then sets off a trap and hurls the three into the sewers.
Back to the surface, Cloud and the others make their way through the Sector 7 train graveyard and see Barret and the other Avalanche on the pillar, under attack from the Turks and Shinra. Aerith heads to the slums to rescue Marlene (Barret’s daughter) but is later found by Tseng of the Turks and forced to go with him. Cloud and Tifa instead climb the pillar to prevent it from collapsing, but Reno and his partner Rude manage to blow up the support, causing the platform to collapse. Cloud, Barret, and Tifa manage to escape in time, unlike Wedge, Biggs, and Jessie, who get caught up in the collapse. In the distance, a mysterious anthropomorphic cat watches helplessly at the scene.
Cloud and the others head to Aerith’s house, where, as hoped, they find Marlene safe with Elmyra, Aerith’s foster mother. Elmyra explains to the group that Aerith is the last survivor of the Ancients, the original people of the planet who, according to a legend, are destined to reach the “promised land“, a place that Shinra believes is rich in Mako. Elmyra welcomed Aerith as a child, orphaned after she ran away with her real mother from a laboratory, and Shinra has always tried in vain to convince Aerith to help them find the promised land.
Cloud and the others decide to return to sector 7 to see the damage. A collapse causes them to fall into an underground Shinra laboratory, where they find an unconscious but still alive Wedge. Upon returning to the surface, they take Wedge to the house of Elmyra, who asks them to save her daughter. Tifa suggests returning to Corneo to ask him how to secretly get on the platform, but in sector 6 they discover that Corneo has escaped for avoiding the Shinra, who wants to kill him for revealing the plan for the collapse of the pillar. However, they manage to convince Leslie, one of Corneo’s men, to help them, and the group finally manages to make it to the Shinra palace on the platform.
Having infiltrated the building, Cloud, Barret, and Tifa, also helped by the mayor of Midgar, Domino, an infiltrated member of the Avalanche, manage to get to the upper floors of the building. Here they attend a meeting of the leaders, where they discover President Shinra’s intent: to find the promised land of the Ancients and build a new Mako city, “Neo Midgar” there.
Arriving at the laboratory of Professor Hojo, Shinra’s major scientist, they manage to save Aerith. Red XIII, a talking animal held captive by Hojo, is also accidentally released and decides to follow the group. Red XIII explains to the group that the mysterious entities that have persecuted them are Numen, guardians of fate who hinder anyone who tries to alter the course of events to oppose the already written destiny of the planet. Aerith hints that the planet is in danger, not because of the Shinra but something far worse.
Wedge informs the group that the original Avalanche faction is attacking the Shinra palace, then suggests that the friends escape through the roof. Along the way, Sephiroth manifests in front of the group and hurls Cloud to the lowest point of Hojo’s laboratory. Cloud manages to reunite with the others and make it to President Shinra’s office, discovering that Sephiroth has stolen the mysterious Jenova experiment from the laboratory and witnessing the murder of the president by the legendary SOLDIER. Sephiroth also mortally stabs Barret, but the Numen rush to save him.
After that, the group discovers that the one in front of them is actually Marcat, a hooded man with a number tattooed on his arm who lived in sector 7 and who took on the appearance of Sephiroth. Marcat transforms into Jenova and attacks the group, but is defeated, then another hooded man with a number on his arm and the likeness of Sephiroth escapes taking Jenova’s body with him.
Then the son of President Shinra and vice president of the company, Rufus, arrives on the roof. Cloud fights him while the others look for an escape. Wedge meanwhile is dragged by the Numen out of the building, causing him to fall into the void. Cloud and the others gather and flee the building, chased by the Shinra soldiers, while the Numen completely surround the palace.
Before being able to leave Midgar, Sephiroth manifests himself in front of the group and the Numen block their way. Sephiroth opens a portal and invites Cloud to follow him. Aerith modifies the portal and asks the others to help her stop Sephiroth, the real threat to the planet, explaining however that by doing so they will profoundly change the fate of the world and of their own lives.
Crossing the portal, the group faces a herald of destiny made up of a large mass of Numen, witnessing numerous visions of the future that destiny has in store for them. The group then confronts Sephiroth himself, who eventually transports Cloud to a dimension on the edge of the world, where he invites him to join him in stopping doom. After Cloud’s refusal, Sephiroth leaves cryptically reporting that “there are seven seconds to go,” and that the future is in his hands. Finally out of Midgar, Cloud and the others decide to go in search of Sephiroth to stop him and save the planet. Meanwhile, Biggs awakens in a house in Sector 5.
At an unspecified time in the past, around Midgar (completely surrounded by the Numen), Zack Fair is facing numerous Shinra soldiers. Succeeded in defeating them, the Numen that loom over the city disappear, and the SOLDIER laboriously walks towards Midgar taking with him a young unconscious Cloud, and at the same instant, almost overlapping, the Cloud of the present leaves the city together with his friends.