In my review of the original Final Fantasy VII (or at least the Steam port of it) I talked about how the conversation surrounding Final Fantasy VII Remake had to do with elements that were less interested in merely retelling the original storytelling, but instead with commenting on Final Fantasy VII's wider impact on pop culture. This was, of course, referring to a brand-new element introduced in Remake, the Whispers, a group of what I can only describe as time ghosts that attempt to impede any attempt for our heroes to take the story down a different road from the original game. I knew all of this going in, and while the concept intrigued me, I'm not exactly sure how to feel now that I've seen them for myself.

So, one interpretation I saw of the Whispers a lot before playing the game, one which I've come to a similar conclusion of, is that they are meant to represent, to an extent, fans. People who hold Final Fantasy VII up on this pedestal, an untouchable masterpiece that cannot be altered or else something will be tainted or ruined. The Whispers actively intervene whenever a character acts in such a way that the plot of Final Fantasy VII will be significantly altered, such as when one gets in the path of Sephiroth's sword to spare Barret, who certainly doesn't die in the Midgar section of the original Final Fantasy VII.

I think the main problem I have with the Whispers is that while they are incredibly invested in preserving the plot of Final Fantasy VII, I don't think they seem to particularly care about the meaning of it. If they are meant to represent obsessive fans, this could theoretically be clever commentary, but given what happens when the characters do change fate at the end of the game, I'm not inclined to believe that much thought was put into this aspect of the narrative. No, instead the Whispers seem to be willing to ignore the fact that several aspects of the story that are meant to be mere expansions on Final Fantasy VII have a noticeably worse impect.

So let's drop the framing device of the Whispers for a second and just look at some ways in which the game tries to recreate Final Fantasy VII and doesn't quite hit the mark. In particular, let's talk about when I first understood how fundamentally different of an experience this remake would be from the original game - the first chapter. I'm not trying to be the type of person who wants to act like this game is terrible from the start, but I genuinely think how the two versions of Final Fantasy VII open is one of the best points of comparison in terms of how narrative is conveyed.



The original Mako Reactor 1 bombing mission is genuinely one of the best intros to a game I have ever played, not because the things the player gets to actually do (in fact, it's a pretty sloppy introduction to what makes Final Fantasy VII's combat work) but because it's such an effective tone-setter. Cloud riding that train while the bombastic music ramps up in intensity, watching the Avalanche fighters hop out of the train and take out some goons, and then within seconds you're put in control of Cloud and told to hurry deeper into the reactor. You have almost no context for what's going on here, you barely know what this game is about yet, but there's such an immediate sense of momentum, and it's all thanks to that iconic soundtrack. In fact, I had to do this section of the game multiple times because of issues with my controller that repeatedly made me accidentally softlock myself in a menu before I reached the first save point. And I hardly cared because this part of the game is just that good.

In Final Fantasy VII Remake, things start off similarly, Cloud riding on the train, although the iconic Bombing Mission score has not quite kicked in. But when we see Shinra goons beside the train, rather than hopping out in over-the-top action movie poses and doing karate moves, we slowly watch them prepare and eventually execute a stealth takedown. Cloud then gets off the train, talks to Barret for a second, and it's only once more goons arrive that the remastered Bombing Mission soundtrack finally kicks in. And it just doesn't quite hit the same way.

For one thing, the pacing was all off building up to this moment, that music kicking in the second our heroes arrive on the scene is the entire point, and the impact is lessened when you delay it. For another, and this is a problem I hadn't expected to consider, the sound mixing is different. I could barely hear the music in the background as I entered the first proper fight of the game. I think this has to do with the fact that due to this being a modern game with voice acting, the music can't be blaring as loud as it used to otherwise you wouldn't be able to hear the other characters, whereas in the original they spoke only through text and the music could be as loud as the developers wanted.

Every aspect of that original opening was carefully constructed to push the player forward and get them on board with this adventure before they even knew what the adventure was. In Final Fantasy VII Remake, we are recreating the music and the events, but the actual intent and goals of the scene are not intact. Because we now have the freedom to give every character a voice, we have to give everyone something to say. Because these characters are going to be developed more, we have to give them all more time to show what they're made of. What the player actually experiences and feels as they play the game has been tossed aside for the sake of expanding the story, even as the altered, slower pace turns one of the most iconic video game openings into... a generic tutorial mission.



This is a microcosm of almost every choice Final Fantasy VII Remake makes. Recreating the elements of a scene is far more important than preserving its impact. It's like when you watch a live action adaptation of a book or a show only for the people working on it to seemingly miss the point of what made the original work. Which is a disappointing statement given that the Remake does share at least a few members of the original's creative team. That's not to say every expanded scene doesn't work, in fact there's quite a lot of them I like, in particular Chapter 3 which expands on Cloud and Tifa, and Chapters 8 and 9 which do a similar thing for Cloud and Aerith. These are both key relationships in Final Fantasy VII and all of the new interactions put a smile on my face. But the times where this game falters threaten to cancel out everything it does right.

I'm not sure exactly what to call this phenomenon. I'm sure everyone reading this is already familiar with the phrase "addition by subtraction" wherein, by removing an element from something, you actually enhance it. Final Fantasy VII Remake, in many ways, feels like the opposite. Subtraction by addition. The original Final Fantasy VII was incredibly focused. The story moves by quickly, yes, but it says a lot with a little. Very rarely did I feel like something was underdeveloped or didn't get the time it needed. There are exceptions, like everything regarding Cait Sith, but they were rare. There's nothing in the Midgar section, certainly, that I felt needed more time. And again, this is not to say every new scene is bad, or that I don't even prefer some choices the Remake made, but most of the time it's the opposite, and I came away from a scene or a section of the Remake where I went "wow, this worked so much better in the original" and usually the only substantial difference was that the original game had less dialogue.

Let's look at a really small example of this. About midway through the Midgar section of Final Fantasy VII (or halfway through the Remake) Aerith takes Cloud to her house to meet her adoptive mother, Elmyra. Once Cloud and Elmyra are alone, she pieces together that Cloud was in SOLDIER and asks him to leave in the middle of the night without telling Aerith. We're not really told exactly why she's asking this, but it's not exactly hard to guess based on the violent life SOLDIERs lead. Cloud doesn't even respond, and the only thing the player can do from here is go upstairs and get some sleep. A lot of subtle choices all come together to make a fairly generic beat, Elmyra thinking Cloud is trouble and telling him to stay away from her daughter, feel genuinely sad. A lot is said with very little, and the player is given the freedom to sit with the implications of it for a moment before they choose to go upstairs. This part of the game is basically only a few seconds and yet it's one that stuck with me.

In the remake, Elmyra makes the same request, but then she does explain exactly what she means when she criticizes Cloud and his history, going on to say that SOLDIERs traded normal life for power. It seems she intended to go on about this even longer, but the two get interrupted by Aerith. The player then has no agency in progressing the story, you do not go upstairs as Cloud, we simply fade to black and then cut to him in bed. To top it off, as Cloud leaves later that night, he gets stopped by Elmyra again just so she can remind us that him being a SOLDIER is bad, and telling him to never talk to Aerith again. Technically speaking, the player can choose when they leave the house, but it just doesn't hit the same way. The original worked because just like Cloud would have to spend the rest of the night thinking about what Elmyra said, the player would spend a moment thinking about it too. It doesn't work as well when you move this moment to when Cloud was already on his way out of the door.

In that Elmyra scene, we see a way in which even a small level of interactivity, and when that interactivity comes into play, has a massive effect on the story. Final Fantasy VII is still, obviously, a video game at the end of the day. How the player engages with the story is a fundamental aspect of that story. But the original game had to tell its story through text boxes, and thus had to be much more aware of this fact. I think the remake, in its freedom to tell is story through proper voice acted cinematics, kind of lost sight of this fact. Expanding a scene doesn't always actually make it better. But if I went on about every single recreated scene from the original that falls into this problem, I'd be here all day. Instead, let's talk about one of the biggest scenes and how it's just completely different now.



One of the most important events in the Midgar section of Final Fantasy VII is when Shinra drops the plate hanging over Sector 7 just to wipe out Avalanche. It's a small resistance group of only a few people, but Shinra is petty and cruel and ultimately won't be significantly harmed, so they do it with little hesitation. By the time our heroes arrive on the scene to try and stop Shinra from committing such a horrible act, it's already too late to save Biggs, Wedge, or Jessie. They're already dead or dying. Half of Avalanche died essentially off-screen with little fanfare just trying to prevent this atrocity. Barret is still at the top of the pillar trying to make sure they didn't die in vain. But unfortunately, much like with the other Avalanche members, it's already too late to do anything. Shinra drops the plate. Sector 7 is destroyed.

In the aftermath, you're just left with this profound emptiness. So much destruction, so many casualties, and now even Barret has lost a majority of the people who once fought alongside him. All that remains of Avalanche is himself, Tifa, and Cloud who was basically just a contractor up until now. It's the kind of thing that makes him question what he's even fighting for. But his daughter is safe, and now Aerith, the one who protected her, has been taken by Shinra, and he finds new resolve in helping Cloud and Tifa rescue her.

There's a lot that can be said about how the remake changes this section of the story. For one thing, Avalanche is established to be a much larger resistance than just Barret's group. This change is entirely superfluous, adding absolutely nothing to the story and kind of taking away from the ragtag group vibe we had in the original. Barret's resistance felt truly organic and makeshift, instead now they've just splintered off from some larger organization. Not to mention, now when three members of the resistance die, it's not some huge blow to the cause. Avalanche will endure even without them. Sure, they vaguely gesture at the idea that Barret's group splintered off because HQ wasn't really doing anything, and that only Barret is actually making progress in the fight against Shinra, but it still just doesn't hit the same way.

For another, we can look to the fact that very few people actually die in this version of the Sector 7 plate incident. Because earlier chapters spend so much time building up the community and characters in the Sector 7 slums, there are now people there you'll remember. People who might have unfinished stories. So the game goes out of its way to establish that there's an evacuation so that everyone you recognize actually survives and can go on to appear later in the game and possibly even in the upcoming Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. But what this means is that the plate incident doesn't really feel like this event of mass death. Despite Shinra pinning the events on Avalanche, their propaganda news doesn't even seem to mention casualties, only destruction. Did anyone actually die in this version of events other than Jessie?

Oh yeah, that's right. Biggs and Wedge survive this, too. Biggs gets a death scene (and we'll talk more about why I think this is a mistake too in a second) and pretty much spends the rest of the game presumed dead, at least. He only seems to survive as a result of the characters actively changing fate in the final chapter of the game (which we'll also talk about later.) But Wedge, on the other hand? Despite us seeing a bunch of rubble fall on him, he somehow survives the plate incident, even though that's where he died in the original game. The Whispers don't seem to notice this until the game is practically over, attacking him and pushing him out a window, but the game cuts to black before it's even clear if he's dead for real or he made another miraculous recovery. So yeah, even the few named characters who died in the original version of this scene make it out okay. Jessie seems to be the only one who actually stays dead for real in this version, and even then, given how this game ends, literally anything could happen so she might end up returning in Rebirth somehow anyways.

But I think my biggest issue with this scene comes down to the attempts to develop Biggs, Wedge, and Jessie more before it happens. It's time for a hot take - Biggs, Wedge, and Jessie should have stayed one-dimensional characters who die anticlimactically. I understand why people prefer the new version, I get why it could be more heartbreaking seeing them die when they've been rounded out a little more, but I think that misses the point. When you give these characters backstories and personalities leading up to drawn-out death scenes with tearful goodbyes, it can be emotional, but you're feeling those emotions for them as individuals. That's not the point of their deaths in the original game, or at least not why they were effective to me. Those deaths for me are effective precisely because they're so anticlimactic.

Biggs, Wedge, and Jessie don't get heroic last stands or anything in the original game. Sure, dying to protect all the people in Sector 7 is noble, obviously, but it almost feels disgraceful just how easily they're tossed aside. We don't even see how they died. Whatever random Shinra goons killed them are either already dead or long gone. When you find them, there's nothing you can do. All you can do is keep moving forward. And it ends up being for nothing in the end, as the plate drops anyways. It's not just sad, it's deflating. To meet such pathetic ends only to not even succeed in achieving what they died for. They die not as heroes, not as individuals, but as mere casualties. They don't die in a way that matters. They just die.

This was not a bug, it was a feature. It's what gives the plate dropping such weight, and why these characters die (other than explaining why they don't become party members.) A sudden death is emotional in its own way, but sometimes it just takes longer for it to hit. But now when Biggs and Jessie "die" I'm only being asked to feel sad for them as individuals. To feel something as the life slowly goes out of their eyes. To be sad that Biggs can't go back to see the kids at the orphanage again, to mourn the fact that Jessie can't get that date with Cloud she was so desperate for. The plate dropping, the thing they actually fought and died for, seems to fade into the background. Despite the drawn-out pre-rendered cutscene when Shinra finally succeeds, where we watch Cait Sith (who is here all of a sudden to confuse anyone who didn't play the original) fall to his knees in horror at the untold destruction, I felt nothing when that plate dropped. Not in the same way as the emptiness of the original, but rather a sense of boredom.

I think Jessie's death in particular doesn't work for me here because I don't think the attempts to flesh out her character particularly work. I was actually on board with what they were doing in Chapter 4, giving her a backstory and a reason she eventually joined up with Avalanche. The problem is that none of this actually matters. Genuinely, how does any of the things we learn effect Jessie's character going forward? I guess we learn why she likes making pizza? It's new backstory, sure, but filling out a wiki page doesn't actually equate to character development. Jessie doesn't gain a character arc from all these new additions or anything.

So what does she do with all of her scenes in the present day? Well, I'm glad you asked, because apparently the only thing the Final Fantasy VII Remake team can think to do with a new female character (or I guess a fleshed-out version of one that technically already existed as a blank slate) is to create a third love interest for Cloud that exists to prop him up. In fact, I don't think there's anything about Jessie's dynamic with Cloud that we don't already get from Tifa and Aerith. Jessie is an Avalanche member who seems to have a particular affinity for Cloud, trying to vouch for him to Barret who is still skeptical of him, a thing that Tifa seemingly already did to get him in on the Mako Reactor 1 bombing mission. And personality-wise, she's fun and adventurous, trying to crack Cloud's cold exterior, the thing that makes Aerith's character so memorable and effective. So really, what do I get from this character that makes her a meaningful addition to the story? Another love interest of Cloud who can die to make him sad in a way that's far less meaningful than with Aerith? Is that really the best they could do with Jessie?



Again, all of these new additions that ironically end up taking things away get frustrating when you consider the Whispers. The Whispers are here to prevent things from veering too far off-course from Final Fantasy VII. And yet, so many times in this game I was practically screaming at the Whispers to show up and fix a scene that was done way worse than the original. They're actually really bad at their jobs, as it turns out. As long as the basic skeleton of Final Fantasy VII is intact, they're surprisingly forgiving. And there's no one they're more forgiving of than the one-winged angel in the room. You didn't really think I'd go this whole review without mentioning what they did to Sephiroth, did you?

Sephiroth does not show up at all in the Midgar section of the original Final Fantasy VII. He barely even gets mentioned. The first time we hear his name is in a flashback to Cloud and Tifa's childhood, where Cloud says he wants to become a SOLDIER to become a hero like Sephiroth. This was a shocking moment to me when I played the game for the first time a few weeks ago. Obviously with the whole one-winged angel thing going on, I should have assumed there was some fallen hero angle for him, but still, it's worth nothing that for first-time players in 1997, that is the first thing you learn about him.

He mostly goes unmentioned for the rest of Midgar, until suddenly, after getting captured by Shinra, something strange happens. No one is trying to keep them in their cells anymore. The building is an ominous quiet. As the heroes head up to the top of the building, they find President Shinra impaled with a katana. Cloud immediately recognizes what this means, saying that Sephiroth did this. And when the others seem to think this indicates that Sephiroth is on their side, Cloud corrects them. Sephiroth has his own, nefarious agenda here. This is a reveal. Sephiroth is a bad guy. And he's already left with what he came here for. Cloud's new drive is to find him and put an end to him once and for all. It's not until after the heroes escape Midgar that he finally explains what's going on, his history with Sephiroth, and how a war hero became this murderous monster. Sephiroth is a presence long before he ever actually shows his face. You're forced to understand him as a part of the world before you really know who he is. So there's a weight in that slow burn building up to the payoff in the flashback at Kalm, one that finally pulls back the mystery on Sephiroth, but also many of the secrets Cloud has been hiding about himself.

But wouldn't it have been so much better if Sephiroth showed up like 5% of the way into the game as a hallucination and starts taunting Cloud by saying "IT'S SO SAD THAT THE PLANET IS DYING BECAUSE BEING ALIVE LET ME KILL YOUR MOM" instead? Look, I get why this happened. Sephiroth was popular and it was difficult to imagine doing an entire 30-40 hour remake of Midgar while still leaving him absent the whole time. And to an extent, he is a very personal villain for Cloud, so it makes sense that Cloud might be tormented by him like this. But keep in mind, this game will be some people's first experience with Final Fantasy VII. They will have heard the hype about Sephiroth. Imagine this being your first impression of one of the most iconic villains in video game history. Sure, it's not the real Sephiroth, but it is still the first time any version of Sephiroth appears. And it sucks. (Mind you, Cloud's mom dying isn't even directly addressed in the original game, it's just a thing you have to infer from context when we learn about Sephiroth burning Nibelheim in the Kalm flashback.)

And this isn't the only Sephiroth vision. There's a lot more of these, a lot more of him taunting Cloud in hallucinations, or Cloud having random flashbacks, all so we can hear the words of Sephiroth for the sake of fanservice, I guess. Not to mention that he does show up in the flesh in the final few chapters of the remake. Despite how much time I've spent comparing this game to the original, I don't want to be a Whisper here. I don't want to hold the original Final Fantasy VII up on a pedestal and insist that the developers can't change things. But for one, the Whispers don't intervene, and I question their judgement if they don't consider Sephiroth's early presence a fundamental alteration of the original story. For another, even as I tried to be open to the idea of Sephiroth showing up early (since I knew this about the game going in) the debut of the real Sephiroth is undermined by all of those previous hallucinations.

Not to start getting into rewrite mode like my previous review, but imagine, if you will, a version of this game in which we did not hear Sephiroth speak at all in any of Cloud's hallucinations. If he were instead this vague figure from Cloud's past that still weighs heavily on him, but one who does not get characterized at all beyond that. Sephiroth is still an utter enigma, but perhaps we know from earlier on that he is a malevolent presence and one that effects Cloud personally. Cloud himself remains a mystery a consequence of this too, as we don't know about Sephiroth burning his village and killing his mom. And then, at Hojo's lab, our heroes finally awake and attempt to finally evacuate the Shinra building, only for Cloud to once again see the face of his enemy - Sephiroth. Only this time, the others see him too. He's real. And he knows how heavily this weighs on Cloud, saying "Don't deny me. Embrace me." And suddenly, Cloud lashes out violently, as we realize just how personal this conflict actually is. Do you see how much effective this scene that already exists in the remake is if you do it without pointlessly telling us Sephiroth killed Cloud's mom at the start?

Sephiroth is the biggest case of subtraction by addition (other than the Whispers, who we'll revisit in a moment) in this entire remake. Every time Cloud has a vision of something Sephiroth has done or is going to do, or hallucinates something Sephiroth never even did, it inherently undercuts his presence. It's as though the developers were unwilling to put any trust in the player to be patient enough to wait to see and hear Sephiroth in the flesh, so they had to cram as many scenes of him as they could into the narrative before then. And when you do that enough times, it doesn't just undermine Sephiroth himself, it makes this narrative harder to understand if you haven't played Final Fantasy VII. Because if you're writing this with people who already played that game and are hyped for Sephiroth in mind, you've chosen them over the new people experiencing this story for the first time. And that decision applies to more than just Sephiroth himself. Okay, I guess it's finally time to talk about how the Whispers actually impact this story.



Throughout the game, there are constant allusions to the future events of Final Fantasy VII. Cloud's second Sephiroth hallucination sees Sephiroth put a hand on Aerith's shoulder and tell him he can't save her, clearly alluding to the fact that eventually Sephiroth will kill her, which you'd know if you played Final Fantasy VII. This scene also marks the first appearance of the Whispers, the invisible arbiters of fate trying to keep him, Aerith, and every named character on the path of the original story. It's telling that we first see them swirling around Aerith, as we'll get to in a moment. But for now, what's important is that as they start appearing, we start to see glimpses of not just the past, but also the future.

One of my least favorite moments in the entire remake comes not long after this. After Cloud returns to Sector 7 and is given an apartment by Tifa, he is suddenly awoken by strange sounds coming from his neighbor's apartment. He goes over to inspect, and finds a strange man in a black robe with a number tattooed on his arm. This is cool! It's a way of establishing the black hooded figures that work with Sephiroth later on in Final Fantasy VII. Sure, them sort of popping out of nowhere is part of what makes the return to Nibelheim so effective, but I think there's a case to be made that this is still a change with more positives than negatives. But they couldn't just leave it as this cool little mystery for new players that would get revisited later on. They had to turn this into fanservice. Because when Cloud touches this hooded man, he suddenly gets a vision of all the hooded figures heading to the Northern Crater as one of them says "Reunion... Reunion.." Remember the Jenova Reunion? Remember Final Fantasy VII???

This is what most of the visions of the future in this game actually feel like. Sure, they're supposed to be about gradually building up to the reveal of the Whispers as arbiters of fate, showing characters events that have yet to be. But these visions are lacking in context, and don't even seem to affect the characters in any particularly meaningful ways. It's not as though there's a moment where someone sees something that happens in the future and goes "well that sucks, we should change that future." Instead these flashes seem to exist moreso for the audience, who will recognize these out of context snippets and turn into that gif of Leo DiCaprio pointing at the screen. I can't tell you for certain how these things would play to someone who lived under a rock and knew absolutely nothing about Final Fantasy VII, but I have to imagine these wouldn't come across as cool mysteries, but instead random and confusing.

This all comes to a head in the final act. For the most part, leading up to this point, the Whispers were a weird and vague subplot, barely interacting with the main story in any meaningful way. But then we suddenly have one saving Barret from a death that he did not meet in the original game, and then shortly after that we get the iconic motorcycle escape sequence and things truly go off the rails. The Whispers begin swirling around the Shinra building for reasons I'm still not entirely clear on. We suddenly cut to what appears to be some kind of alternate timeline of the ending of Crisis Core (which I have not played but watched the last few cutscenes of) in which Zack's fate appears to be changing, as we see Whispers swirling around Midgar in the background. And back in the main timeline, our heroes suddenly find Sephiroth at the end of the highway where ordinarily they would have merely rappelled down and left Midgar. He opens up a portal and walks through it. And here is where the game comes as close as it gets to making a statement.

At some point during her earlier capture by Shinra, it seems Aerith downloaded some knowledge from the Planet, unconsciously learning about the nature of the Whispers, souls of the Planet crying in anguish because Sephiroth is a malevolent force that wants to reign over the Planet as God. Aerith wants to stop Sephiroth here and now, but she knows it's not their fate to intervene. But through that portal is the power to change destiny. As Aerith explains, once they cross this threshold, they'll find "limitless, terrifying freedom." And given that this is a remake of a story that's already been told, it's impossible to interpret this scene completely literally. A statement is being made about this remake within the context of the original. Aerith is saying that once they go through that portal, once they cross it, the Final Fantasy VII remake trilogy will no longer be obligated to follow any of the events of the original game.

And so they do. The heroes go through it, and are confronted by the Whispers making one last stand in the form of the Whisper Harbinger, seemingly the true consciousness that all other Whispers are merely extensions of. And when they kill it, fate is now seemingly entirely within their hands. They can do whatever they want with their freedom. And again, through that meta lens, it now means anything is possible in this story. We're free to diverge. But this is where I have to question something - why? Change is good, I fully embrace remakes wanting to change things, but what exactly do they want to change so badly? If the whispers are fans who demand a straightforward recreation of the original, then I struggle to see what the developers intend to change. I watched all the trailers for Final Fantasy VII Rebirth this morning, and honestly, it still looks like they're just telling more of the same story as Final Fantasy VII. Remake even ends on the characters leaving Midgar to scour the world for Sephiroth, just like the original. And I can't imagine the climactic confrontation of the final game in this trilogy won't still be a battle against Safer-Sephiroth.

That's not to say that some things don't change as a result of the characters' defeat of the Whisper Harbinger, but I hope and pray that what happens at the end of Remake is not indicative of the type of changes they want to make going forwards. Because you want to know what the first thing that happens is once the characters seize control of their destinies? What happens immediately after Final Fantasy VII Remake says "we're going to tell our own unique story now"? They have a big, over-the-top fanservice fight with Sephiroth.

A grand new version of One-Winged Angel starts ramping up intensity as the fight progresses, Sephiroth eventually even sprouting a black wing after taunting us with black feathers the whole game. This is what we do with limitless freedom. We let the characters fight what feels less like Final Fantasy VII's Sephiroth, and more like the flanderized ideal of Sephiroth created by all of his appearances in other pieces of media. It's so fanservice-y that it feels intentional, so if the Whispers as antagonists are meant to comment on fan expectations, why does killing them result in catering to a slightly different group of rabid fans?

I knew going into this that there was a climactic fight with Sephiroth that wasn't in the original game, but I was hoping the developers would have at least a little more restraint. Sephiroth being the "One-Winged Angel" wasn't actually a huge part of his character in Final Fantasy VII. There isn't any sort of explicit angel motif with his character until literally the final battle, when we see him with a single red wing in his Safer-Sephiroth form. I was shocked to learn that the black wing I often saw him depicted with in human form was never in the original Final Fantasy VII when I played it for the first time, it had just become cemented as a part of his identity by later media. Similarly, as iconic as the One-Winged Angel theme is, it's not actually some main theme for Sephiroth, it's only used in that one battle against Safer-Sephiroth because it was designed to fit that specific fight. Sephiroth's actual main theme is Those Chosen by the Planet (which thankfully, the developers did at least remember to use in every scene of his before the new fight against him in Remake)

These aspects of Sephiroth's character worked precisely because they were built up to. Now when the remake inevitably does still try to do Safer-Sephiroth, the impact has been robbed. We've already heard One-Winged Angel. We can't even do the iconic final stand-off between Cloud and Sephiroth in the void now, because they decided to recreate that as a cutscene in this game. Unless this remake trilogy veers off into such an absurd direction that Sephiroth is no longer the main antagonist of the story, the third game has essentially already been ruined by the first game. These aren't changes that present some bold new narrative direction. What they've done by breaking free of the shackles of following the original story to the letter is just cram in as much fanservice as they could.



The few other changes we see in Remake don't really fare much better. That random cut to Zack eventually does result in Zack surviving, and even though that takes place before the events of Final Fantasy VII, the fact that it's intercut with the characters breaking the shackles of fate implies Zack's survival is a direct result of their actions. So presumably, in whatever alternate timeline or pocket dimension or whatever we see Zack in, he's survived and will probably show up to have a tearful reunion with Cloud or whatever. More fanservice. Biggs also survives too, but I can't imagine such a nothing character had many fans before Remake fleshed him out, so maybe there's something more interesting they're cooking up there (especially as we do see him run into Zack in a trailer for Rebirth) but I can't imagine whatever is going on with him will be so interesting as to undo all my previous concerns.

Again, I just have to ask, what are we actually trying to say here? What was the point of all of this? Conceptually, I really like the idea of the Whispers. I like the idea of a remake gradually tossing out the very idea of being a remake and veering off into its own direction. I like idea of the Whispers representing the kind of fans who would obviously object to that. But I'm not seeing that promising new direction, for two reasons. The first reason Final Fantasy VII Remake itself isn't some drastically different take on Final Fantasy VII's story. For the most part, it is just a straightforward remake, just a massively expanded one. There's just a bunch of random fanservice and Whisper nonsense sprinkled on top to confuse anyone who hasn't played Final Fantasy VII. The other reason I simply don't buy this "new direction" the remakes are taking is that I'm not seeing anything in the future of this series but more of the original Final Fantasy VII's story, except this time no one dies. Most likely not even the most significant character to die in the original game, Aerith.

It's pretty much impossible to play Final Fantasy VII Remake and not go "is Aerith even going to die in this continuity?" As I said, the Whispers are first introduced to us when they surround Aerith. Later on, when Aerith enters the story properly, she's the first character to introduce the idea of being concerned about her future being set in stone. And although this is partially due to her nature as an Ancient, she's the one who first gains insight into the Whispers, even if we weirdly hear it from Red XIII due to her passing the knowledge on to him. Still, she's the one who gives the big speech about changing their destinies in the final chapter. Aerith is tied to almost every step of this entire meta thread about changing the story of Final Fantasy VII. And what is the most iconic scene from that game? What is the main thing that happens in the future of these characters that they would want to change? Yeah, it seems like we're building up to Aerith's fate being altered in some way.

I'm not sure what to make of any of this. I've spent this whole review being a negative nancy, but it's not out of some fundamental hatred for this remake and everything it's trying to do. I still enjoyed most of my time with this game, despite how it sounds. If nothing else, I'm enjoying the combat and that's enough to keep me playing these games for as long as they make them. But I'm also still trying to keep an open mind with regard to the story. There's a chance Rebirth suddenly introduces the clarity I've been missing, that all these trailers showing what looks like a straightforward retelling of the next major chunk of Final Fantasy VII's story are a lie, or that it does follow the same story but manages to deliver some kind of interesting message by having the characters still end up following that original path anyways.

But they've really written themselves into a tricky corner, because they've alienated a lot of potential newcomers with all of this Whisper nonsense, and they've made it hard for people who liked the game to not wish they hadn't even bothered with the meta angle and instead that they had went with the basic approach of telling a stretched-out but straightforward version of Final Fantasy VII. I'm a bit more open to what they're doing here, I want AAA games to be more ambitious and that means trying to embrace the kind of artistic freedom this remake is seemingly advocating for. But with freedom of expression also comes the freedom to be criticized. Freedom is good, but the art that results from that freedom is inherently neutral.

This team still has to prove they're doing something good with that freedom. Otherwise the Whispers feel less like a criticism of a type of toxic fan, and more like the developers essentially creating a shield from criticism. Like they're saying "if you don't like what we're doing here, you're just whining that it's not like the original game." Which I would hope is not the message here. But if we're just to follow the story of Final Fantasy VII with only a few divergences along the way, then they're probably better off not doing any more of this meta stuff. If they really want to continue to reckon with Final Fantasy VII's legacy like this, then they need to be willing to examine the original under a more critical lens instead of just using this freedom to do more fanservice. Because as of right now, I'm still not sure what these developers think was so wrong with the original Final Fantasy VII to warrant all of this to begin with.