Final Fantasy 7 Remake isn’t nearly remaking a basic game, regardless of the title. It’s about recontextualizing a complete beloved world.
This article will stay spoiler-free from particular particulars, however will focus on the broad strokes of Final Fantasy 7 Remake’s method to narrative. The spoiler delicate ought to come again later.
Final Fantasy 7 Reimagined is undoubtedly a much less snappy title than Final Fantasy 7 Remake, but it surely’s most likely truly a extra evocative title to summarize this game that followers have waited so lengthy for. To reimagine and recontextualize is what this game does; it’s its raison d’être. It extracts the content material from the unique game and makes use of it in a completely completely different context. Sometimes that results in scenes enjoying out precisely as you keep in mind them, others it results in minor adjustments and additions, and typically it results in issues being considerably completely different.
The response to this has naturally been combined. Some followers, like myself, have been fairly pleased with the concept. Kirk’s emotions have been combined, as detailed in our spoiler-filled ending discussion. Others are much less torn and far much less comfortable; I’ve learn loads of discussion board posts and twitter diatribes over the previous couple of days from followers who’re deathly, severely upset. But I don’t assume they should be. The adjustments are okay. In reality, I’d argue, they’re wholly crucial.
Where Resident Evil 2 and 3 have tried to promote themselves as a extra straight-up remake of a PS1 basic, the staff behind FF7R, a mixture of those that labored on the unique game and youthful workers who keep in mind enjoying it with slack-jawed glee, clearly know it’s inconceivable to make Final Fantasy 7 once more. The strange ‘do what you want’ growth surroundings that existed for the unique FF7 can’t exist in a contemporary massive price range growth pipeline, for one. The world has modified, too – gamers know these characters and their tales, making brilliantly paced twists and surprises out of date. In a extra critical vein the optics of telling a narrative the place the leads begin out as lovable insurgents and terrorists has undoubtedly shifted after over the past twenty years.
Probably most essential, as ever, are the individuals. Square Enix has made a lot of the truth that lots of the unique workers are returning for the remake, however these builders are nonetheless older, completely different individuals, little doubt softened in locations, hardened in others and usually molded by the ebb and circulation of life over the past 23 years. They have gone from reckless younger upstarts chasing Dragon Quest to trade leaders and elder statesmen.
Perhaps this stuff are what led the builders to their conclusion that merely making what they already did earlier than once more could be boring, even when they constructed it round trendy gameplay techniques. So in locations, they take a flip. In some areas that flip is far sharper than in others.
That shift in context is essential, and FF7 Remake’s advertising and marketing hasn’t been completely up-front on this sense, presumably for worry of spoilers. This isn’t as a result of FF7 Remake solely covers the Midgar part of the unique story – that was made fairly clear. But by the tip of the game small however important adjustments to occasions will stack as much as imply that the established order and tone on the finish of FF7 Remake may be very completely different to that within the unique game while you first step out of Midgar.
The flip aspect is that in some ways the title now makes extra sense. Resident Evil 2, a really trustworthy, close to beat-for-beat recreation of the unique. To many the phrase remake evokes the concept of creating the identical factor once more, however the Oxford English Dictionary denotes that the phrase remake can even imply to make one thing otherwise. Had this been as trustworthy as Resident Evil’s take, maybe it will’ve simply been known as Final Fantasy 7: Part 1.
I’m braced for this debate to proceed to flare on-line within the coming weeks. When a piece is accomplished, one can argue it ceases to be the property of its creator and turns into the property of its followers. That idea is much more fiercely true for a property as beloved as FF7. Final Fantasy 7 Remake is the event staff at Square Enix asserting its possession over these basic characters, their world and their story. This has occurred earlier than with the Compilation of Final Fantasy 7 prequel and sequel works, however followers had a get-out clause with these initiatives. Siloed off from the core game, they may ignore the additions in the event that they needed. As a retelling of the occasions they love and the brand new tentpole manufacturing of the FF7 world, Remake isn’t so simply dismissed.
While some followers are inevitably going to really feel short-changed and pissed off with any one of many adjustments – although some greater than others – I’ve to say I respect the choice that Yoshinori Kitase, Tetsuya Nomura and their staff have made. To uncurl the impasse grip followers attempt to take of characters and a narrative like this to do one thing daring and completely different takes balls, particularly when parts of the response are virtually assured to by no means be fairly.
And actually, what’s the various? A tepid, protected retread remake that provides little new aside from prettier visuals like Disney’s 2019 Lion King do-over? Resident Evil obtained away with such a easy remake method partially due to what a brisk rollercoaster that game is and in addition partially due to how a lot the horror style can acquire from a perspective change and extra real looking depiction. I’d argue that for a thirty-hour RPG that hopes to arrange a complete sequence of games, one thing extra was arguably required. For good or for sick, the later hours of FF7 Remake ship on that one thing extra in spades. Even if it goes off the rails whereas travelling in a radically completely different course sooner or later, it will have been worthwhile.
This is my take, and I maybe am much less disillusioned by adjustments as a result of I used to be much less considering a remake within the first place, preferring to see FF do one thing new. But even so, to the offended followers already screeching concerning the adjustments I say: attempt to chill your beans. This is a brand new story and a reinvention – and what else is Final Fantasy meant to be about greater than reinvention? The sequence now now not one-shots its worlds and characters – in reality, it always revisits them. But this visitation is at the least ready to carry agency with the spirit of the sequence by doing issues otherwise.
The biggest reward of all is that we nonetheless have the unique game. Perfect then, and nonetheless fabulous now – totally unchanged, and simply begging to be performed. Still.
