The Final Fantasy VII Remake is making people thirsty for the Turks, and for some reason, President Shinra is an enormous hologram?
For the longest time, we dared not dream that the Final Fantasy VII Remake was going to be good. In fact, we were downright worried about it. The best we hoped was that it didn’t entirely besmirch the memory of one of the greatest games ever made, and anything over and above non-besmirchment? That would have been a bonus.
Then, at E3 2019, we finally went hands-on with it. And it is glorious. Even Dan, a Final Fantasy naysayer, was impressed. I, on the other hand, was practically swooning. The net effect was that we couldn’t wait to see more of the Final Fantasy VII Remake.
Today, as part of the opening of the Tokyo Game Show 2019, Square Enix has released another trailer for the Final Fantasy VII Remake, and it fills in a lot of the gaps, of things we’d not yet seen.
That. Looks. Brilliant.
Some assorted thoughts and musings:
- We get a good look at the Turks, the Shinra Corporation’s shady secret police, and they’re… kinda hot? Everybody’s drooling over Reno with his shirt open, but look at Tseng and his glorious, glossy hair!
- We also get our first look at President Shinra, in the middle of the second bombing mission. In the original Final Fantasy VII, he arrives on a helicopter to spout at our heroes, before dispatching a big, nasty robot to kill them. In the Final Fantasy VII Remake, he’s a massive hologram for some reason? It kind of makes sense. Barret’s got a gun on his arm. Hologram taunting is safer than actually being there.
- We get our first look at Don Corneo. He’s even more hideous and creepy than before, somehow.
- There’s Aerith in her dress from the infiltration of Don Corneo’s mansion, and also, a look at the gym-based minigames we didn’t think were going to survive the cut. Maybe Cloud’s dressing up adventure will be there, too? We can but dream.
- Tandem parachuting is weirdly cosy.
- Ditto motorcycle riding, an activity that Cloud does alone in the original Final Fantasy VII.
- There’s a small glimpse of Marlene, Barret’s daughter.
- And a tiny glimpse of Tifa’s Seventh Heaven bar, with Cloud playing darts. (Another minigame?)
- And an even tinier glimpse of Sephiroth. (Possibly in a flashback?)
- Some summons! (Ifrit and Shiva.)
- Frog status! (Look at froggy Cloud and his tiny frog-sized Buster Sword!)
- Music in the Final Fantasy VII Remake is just perfect. New arrangements and updates to Nobuo Uematsu’s classic score feel just right.
- The trailer is cut together with a lot of shots of the defence of the Sector 7 Slums tower, which is going to be even more horrific in this level of detail.
- And ends on a shot of Sector 7 in the aftermath. Damn.
One of the things we still don’t know about the Final Fantasy VII Remake is just where the “episodic” splits will fall in the game’s overall narrative. We had previously been working under the assumption that the first part – releasing on March 3, 2020 – would end with the infiltration of Shinra Headquarters, and the subsequent escape from Midgar.
Perhaps it’s just the way this new trailer has been cut together, combined with a desire not to give away all of the goodies, but the footage above kind of makes it look like the first episode of the Final Fantasy VII Remake could end after the defence of the Sector 7 tower?
We’ll have to wait and see, but March 3 can’t come soon enough.
