With the Final Fantasy VII remake coming soon, there’s been much talk about what should change and what shouldn’t. I’ve already listed 10 Changes The FF7 Remake Needs, but today I’ll address one thing that shouldn’t change: the death of…a character. This is your only warning: I will spoil things from FFVII, The Lion King, one early bit of The Last of Us, and book #1 of A Song of Ice and Fire, “A Game of Thrones.” Get out now if you want to.
Long before the days of patches for console games, fans directed emails, letters, and bulletin board posts at Squaresoft begging for Aeris (or “Aerith,” whichever you prefer) to be revived in a new version of the game. She must survive, they begged in all manner of phrasing. Two leading campaigns were wanting her to either avoid her death or be resurrected. Unlike Aeris herself, we see this spirit revived today, with talk of story changes and Aeris possibly avoiding her grim fate.
In the 90s, early internet trolls wrote up detailed resurrection FAQs, which I’ll admit I made more than one attempt to follow. I’d been through the game where Aeris dies, and I shared the common desire for revenge — for spite. In my second play of the game, knowing what lied ahead, I actually made sure to not sell Aeris’s first weapon, The Guard Staff, so that I could throw it at Sephiroth at the end.
That’s just human instinct. Of course we want our friends back. Of course we want to talk to, laugh with, and hug those who’ve passed on. It’s also what separates Aeris’s death from most others. She knew well ahead of time that it was coming. She had plenty of time to think about it and went ahead with it anyway, all while keeping it a secret from her friends.
To take out her death is to take out the very backbone of Final Fantasy VII, and I don’t just mean because of the plot points where she was the only one who could pray and stop meteor.
In a game filled with memorable moments, that one stands out as the defining part. It always comes up in conversations not just about FFVII, but about RPGs, about games of that whole era, or about gaming moments in general. “Did you cry when Aeris died?” was a common question kicked around by gamers of the time. Heck, there are even t-shirts out there memorializing this sequence.
Her death wasn’t just a character completing a mission, thinking all was well, and then taking a surprise sniper bullet to the head. It was more than being on the losing end of a struggle to fight off an evil. It wasn’t a typical fight for survival. No, she figured out that before anyone that she would not be surviving the journey. And she took every step with a smile.
Consider other famous deaths. Tess made a heroic last stand in The Last of Us, but she was already doomed from having been bitten. Despite the sadness and stress, that loss of a character made its game better. Would The Lion King have been better if Mufasa had survived the stampede? No. Would A Song of Ice and Fire be better if Ned lived? Nah, not really. His death set the tone and serves as a demonstration that no one is safe. It shows what kind of world that series takes place in and affects your emotions and expectations all series long.
Instead of altering this plot point, Square Enix should be proud that it created something so monumental, so talked about, so beloved. They should keep that sequence in the game for sure, as it deserves the power of modern visuals and audio.
A character death done right brings about emotions that we need to feel. We think of them as bad, yet they’re necessary to the human experience.
To flirt with crushing or dangerous experiences without actually being subject to the lasting negative consequences is one of the primary attractions to video games. We can live the heroics of shooting up 5,000 bad guys in a war while we don’t actually have to deal with PTSD or a long list of killed friends. We can save the world without actually putting our lives on the line. We can race cars at 200 mph without actually crippling ourselves in the crashes. Just as Aeris’s death will always be a drag, it’s a drag that must always be.
FF7 Remake Changes
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10 Changes the Final Fantasy VII Remake Needs
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Slightly Modify Materia System
The materia system lays the groundwork for some very fun RPG combat, but wasn't without problems. What I'd like to see fixed is summon materia, specifically. Your early summon monsters are brutal when you get them, useful for a couple of hours after, and then a huge waste of MP. Even if you get Shiva, Ifrit, or Choco-mog up to level 5, the damage doesn't hold up to one and two-star summons acquired shortly after them. They become pure garbage way too fast. Adjust that.
I'd be interested in combining some materia and other small to moderate changes as well. Or what if more than two materia could link together? Lots of possibilities here.
And while you're at it...
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Selectable Difficulty Levels
A conservative estimate says I've spent well over 300 hours in this game world already. That's five or six beginning-to-end runs and a whole bunch of half-completions and picking up from the middle and stuff. And I know I'm not exactly the world champion. So challenge me, Square Enix. Let me know I'm in a fight.
I'm playing this game on my Vita right now, in fact, and this is some easy stuff. Yes, I realize that it's easy because I'm in my 30's instead of in my teens, and because I've learned from in-game experience. But you can bet a whole hell of a lot of people buying this game will have already been through the original, probably multiple times. That's kind of what happens when you're talking about one of the most beloved games of all time.
Just a nice selection of Easy, Normal, and Hard will do nicely, supposing that those descriptions are accurate. If I'm on Hard Mode, the fights when I can just press X to win should be pretty damn rare.
Ruby and Emerald shouldn't be the only tough fights.
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More Zackstory Backstory (Spoiler Alert)
This slide contains a HUGE spoiler. If you're new to FF7 and want to go in fresh, skip this. We good? Okay then...
At first I thought maybe Zack's untimely death could be added as the beginning of the new game, but I don't think I want that legendary opening to be replaced. Aeris walking out followed by the bombing mission is so iconic, I do kinda want that to stay. I'd still be cool with a change, though. If Crisis Core's ending is FF7 Remake's opening, that might be kinda cool.
Or maybe added in as a memory in the form of a dream Cloud has one night?
The best way to do it might be to simply expand upon what was shown in the original Final Fantasy VII (both in and out of the secret cinema). Whether that's through inserted flashbacks, memories, soliloquy, or what, I'm not sure. I suppose that's why Nomura's getting the fat director paycheck and not me.
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Takeharu Ishimoto
Did you hear the Crisis Core soundtrack? Take a listen to what Takeharu Ishimoto did with those Uematsu compositions. His original stuff is great, perfectly fitting for FF7's dark world; and when you add in his ability to remix Uematsu like a boss, this guy is a shoe-in for the composer. Just look at his picture. Look at him not giving a shit. What a fucking dude.
I'll bet he writes music and then just slides CDs across his boss's desk and says, "Here ya go. I'm out," then pulls out a gun to shoot off the doorknob and walk out. The door wasn't even locked, he shot that fucker just because.
The core music backbone has gotta be the legendary Uematsu compositions, but for new stuff, let Ishimoto do his thing.
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Badass Freaking Fight Scenes
Remember that scene of Tifa versus that one dude, in the church, in Advent Children? That was badass. If more of that is inserted, I ain't complainin'.
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Improve Graphics Without Wasting My Time
There's a fantastic game series called Yakuza, which regularly makes fun of cheesy direction with its over-the-top sequences of simple things like answering the phone or taking a picture. Please, please, please don't make Final Fantasy VII the very product that Yakuza is satirizing. We don't need epic zooms on boots in water or dramatic camera swoops for shooting a basketball.
I'm excited to see FFVII's world brought to new life with PS4 visuals, but I'm hoping those summon spells can be skipped. Flash and style are great, but not when we have to watch the same 30-to-60-second cinema in every other battle. The original had a problem with that in the summon spells.
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Fix the Translation
Good gravy.
The famous "This guy are sick" gets all the jokes, but the script is riddled with more than just grammar errors. Lines that don't make sense, whole speeches that seem to lack context, and other problems actually interfere with the story itself. -
Expanded Gold Saucer
I think we can safely say the Gold Saucer could use an extra wing after 18 years, yeah? Even knockoffs of other mini-games that haved been in Final Fantasy over the years would be fine with me, because now they're in FFVII, too. That could be neat.
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More Little Surprises, Mysteries, Reasons to Smile
With more power and a bigger world, there are more opportunities to immerse gamers both new and old. As someone who as written shitty stories himself, I know that even after something is finished, you find little side stories in your head that you want to share with the people who liked your work. You want to say "Yeah and you know what else! THIS happened!" In my case, that's to an audience of like eight or nine people, but in Final Fantasy VII's case, you can multiply that by a million or two.
You just know that 18 years later, there are little side stories, fun bits of narrative, and other things they'd love to show us. And I'm ready and willing to eat 'em up.
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Aer...um?
To English speakers, the flower girl was originally Aeris, but later Aerith. To the creators, it was the reverse, and her name remains a topic of debate. It was originally written with the 'th' ending, but appeared in the English game with an 's' instead. So which should it be? The name we were supposed to see, or the name we actually did see and consequently grow up with?
Some people cite the Japanese pronunciation, which is certainly closer to "Aeris," because the language lacks anything close to a "th" sound. Even as a Japanese resident, I find this argument weak, because to be consistent, you'd have to also call Cloud "Ku-ra-u-do," and Cid "Shiddo," and so on.
But I like the sound of Aeris better. I don't care for the name Aerith. It feels dumb on my tongue and sounds dumb in my ears. Alas, I know that asking for an entire separate English recording is a bit much. Aw well. It'd be nice to be able to change the text of the names like before, though. If the game is voice acted, will changing names will be allowed? I wonder.
At least for text, give us the option. Please? What if I use a smiley face? 🙂
