Thoughts on the Final Fantasy VII Remake

Random thoughts on the Final Fantasy VII Remake

In a week full of VALORANT coverage, Animal Crossing: New Horizons events and League of Legends and the NBA 2K Players Tournament hitting ESPN, I didn't expect the Final Fantasy VII Remake to take up as much of my time as it did.

I'm a big Final Fantasy fan, and FFVII is one of my favorites from the series. I've completed the original about a dozen times. That said, it's an evergreen game; I wasn't going to miss out on anything by playing it a day from now, or a week from now, and everything else on my docket was a *right now* kind of deal, you know?

But I made the mistake of firing up our review copy of the FFVII Remake the night before release, and I just. Kept. Going. The combat is challenging, the reimagining of areas I memorized in my childhood is mesmerizing, and the constant question of what's new and what's next drove me to some sleepless nights (with apologies to my wife and our puppies).

What follows is a stream of consciousness from the first 8 ½ chapters of the game, from leaping off the train at the start to a fair stopping point for avoiding spoilers for new and old players.

I'd seen it a bunch of times already, but that guy stomping on Aerith's flower still gets me way more tilted than I have any right to be.

The soldiers' outfits pretty much confirm that XCOM and Final Fantasy exist in the same universe.

Showing the Materia slots in the weapons is a small but oh-so-nice touch.

Cloud being a jerk without dialogue options to be nicer like in the original hurts me a bit. Wedge is so wholesome. Stop hurting my son's feelings.

As my colleague Emily Rand said during our demo, Heidegger had a major glow-up.

I'm only a half-hour in, and if Barret never screamed again, I would be so, so happy.

Not sure how I feel about this newfound romantic tension with Jessie. If she goes from just one of the gang to a love interest, that'd be a huge swerve on the original.

"Look, I'm involved in things." Same, Cloud. Same.

Really like the adjustments to how the reactor went down and the humanizing of it. The fact that the group was just OK with people getting hurt in the original game never sat well with me. To that point, seeing Shinra employees living in the slums really hits you. They aren't some far-off villain anymore whom you never see humanized.

Chapter 3. I have finally run into a graphical thing I don't like. Gwen's mouth animations, at least on the pre-release patch, remind me of Mass Effect: Andromeda's. Her facial contortions will haunt me when I sleep.

The one-on-one "missions" like the one with Tifa are such a great addition. This is what the remake is all about: making connections with characters you didn't have before. Character-building missions and the quests to flesh this out were really cool concepts.

"Sorry to keep you thirsty boys waiting" is a hell of a line, Jessie. No one will take that the wrong way at all.

The reappraisal of Cloud as a guy looking for a quick buck rather than someone who seems like a legendary mercenary is a welcome change. It makes it clear that this guy just kinda popped up out of nowhere, which feeds into ... well ... future stuff! Spoilery stuff. If you know, you know.

Wedge is way, way, way faster than I gave him credit for. Crazy stamina, too. 10/10 would squad up again.