5 New Story Additions to Expect in Final Fantasy 7 Remake Part 2
[SPOILER]
We take a SPOILER-heavy look at the Final Fantasy 7 Remake and how it is shifting our expectations away from the original Final Fantasy 7 game. This means there are spoilers for both the original Final Fantasy 7, as well massive spoilers for Final Fantasy 7 Remake. There are also spoilers for Final Fantasy 7: Crisis Core (PSP).
Read at your own discretion.
Here I review top 5 plot additions to the Final Fantasy 7 universe that have already slipped through “fate’s” fingers, and how they will impact the new world of the Remake.
In this article, we cover:
1. Avalanche HQ
2. SOLDIER
3. Neo-Midgar
4. Aerith and Meteor
5. Bonus: World Travel
In this article we will discuss the top 5 new story additions that have already slipped through the Whispers fingers. In the last article we learned how the Whispers became our true enemy by diluting any story advancements or character growth.
We should expect to see some of these new additions appear as new story influences in the Final Fantasy Remake: Part 2. These additions already have the potential to derail the story completely and rewrite both the past and future of the Final Fantasy 7 Remake characters’ journey.
What are these huge new additions to the Final Fantasy Remake journey?
1. Avalanche HQ
In 1997, Avalanche was originally a small troupe comprising of Barret, Biggs, Wedge, Jessie, and Tifa. That’s it. Eventually Cloud and the rest of the main characters get roped into Barret’s Avalanche vision in the Original Final Fantasy 7. But there was no overarching organization, no support to call on, nothing. The Final Fantasy 7 Remake sets us up with a potentially huge Avalanche organization, with Barret’s Midgar Avalanche being one small team.
In the FF7 Remake, we almost immediately hear about Avalanche HQ giving Jessie some codes for accessing Reactor 1. Avalanche HQ makes a big splash in Chapter 3 when they arrive in full military gear to fight Shinra at the warehouse. Avalanche HQ even has a mole in Shinra, Mayor Domino is now overtly an Avalanche sympathizer. Of course, when HQ offers to help pick up the main characters to save them from Shinra Headquarters, I was surprised to see the Avalanche chopper being gunned down by Rufus. I was expecting to see it ripped out of the sky by the Whispers.
Barret’s backstory will inevitably be woven into the Avalanche HQ story. Will Barret and his old friend Dyne have deeper ties to the Avalanche organization? Will we see more of Jessie, Biggs, and/or Wedge in the future? Remember that those cute characters were brutally killed in the original FF7, now they have the chance to live!
No matter the case, I would expect to see more involvement of Avalanche HQ in future Remake parts. They could quickly escalate the conflict of Shinra Vs Avalanche. If Shinra blames the President’s assassination on the Avalanche-Wutai conspiracy, it could even ignite another war with Wutai!
Even at a low level, I expect to see Avalanche sympathizers and agents in EVERY town in future Remake installments. This will be a big influence on the game.
2. Resurgence of SOLDIER
The upper-case SOLDIER division are Shinra’s elite military authority. With the Turks being the CIA of Shinra, the SOLDIER are the elite Marines. SOLDIER had seen hard times prior to the events in Final Fantasy 7 and following the Wutai War. This is detailed further in the prequel game Final Fantasy 7: Crisis Core on the PSP. In it, we see the First-Class members of SOLDIER quickly eroding with members going rogue, turning into monsters, burning down villages, and being hunted by Shinra’s Turks. Both the Director and Chief Science Officer of SOLDIER had disappeared, leaving the organization in chaos.
By the start of the Original Final Fantasy 7, we can assume that SOLDIER is mostly disbanded and only a shell of its former glory. The only Ex-SOLDIERs the player would be aware of are Cloud, Zach, and Sephiroth. You do encounter some SOLDIER enemies as trash mobs during the original game, but they get no mention in dialog or plot. It was only in the prequel game Crisis Core that we learn about an elite team of 1st Class SOLDIER characters including Zack, Angeal, and Genesis, along with more understanding of the organization’s structure.
Early in the Remake we encounter Rosche, a stylish speed-demon of a SOLDIER 3rd Class. Even as a 3rd Class SOLDIER, he is powerful as well as having quite a personality. Rosche did not exist at all pre-Remake (neither the Original or in Crisis Core), but we note that Rosche is never mentioned again after Chapter 3 of the Remake. I suppose any further involvement of Rosche in the Remake would have been suppressed by the “Whispers” of fate to make sure he doesn’t interfere with the story. Without the Whispers holding him back, we might see Rosche and more SOLDIER comrades come into the forefront of the story.
Later in the Remake, we also overhear Hojo in the Shinra headquarters proposing to breed Aerith with a SOLDIER type S or type G. This is a reference to FF7:Crisis Core characters Sephiroth (type S) and Genesis (type G) — two of the most powerful genetically modified SOLDIER 1st Class units. So, we can assume that Hojo has some powerful SOLDIER personnel that are waiting to be unleased upon the world. Not to mention the reveal of countless experiment pods for Hojo’s creations in Shinra Headquarters and beneath Sector 7 Slums (which didn’t exist in the original game, as far as we know).
In the Remake, when we first fight the SOLDIER 3rd Class units while climbing up towards the Shinra Headquarters, Cloud warns the team to be cautious of their strength. So, they are setting up SOLDIER this time around as fearsome opponents, not just a couple of trash mobs like we saw in the Original.
What does this all mean? We can expect to see more SOLDIER class units give chase to the protagonists, with possibly being woven more into the story! We may see Roshe come back, new named SOLDIERS, Hojo’s SOLDIER-monster hybrids, or simple unnamed SOLDIERS fighting for Shinra’s interests.
3. Neo-Midgar
From the Original Final Fantasy 7, we knew that Shinra’s endgame was not simply world domination. They were chasing after Aerith (and her mother before her) to understand the location of “the promised land.” In this promised land would be potentially limitless wealth and prosperity, especially with advancements of harvesting Mako energy from this bountiful plane. The Neo Midgar (New Midgar) project would build new Mako reactors in the promised land in a utopian society.
We never find any “promised land” in the original Final Fantasy 7, although it seems the Northern Crater offers a concentration of LifeStream energy. The “promised land” for the Cetra (the Ancients) seems to be simply returning to the LifeStream, as their version of Heaven at the time of their corporeal death. The Neo Midgar concept seems mostly abandoned as the original story of Final Fantasy 7 evolves, especially as we travel the globe and Shinra fights against new calamities such as the Weapons.
In the Final Fantasy VII Remake, this is the first time the player gets to see a concept drawing for Neo Midgar. Something about this reveal of the Neo Midgar concept makes it real for me. The board room meeting they practically decide to abandon Midgar already in favor of Neo Midgar. Strangely there is more immediacy in this discussion than the original FF7.
Perhaps Hojo obtained enough data to select a suitable location for Neo Midgar? Or maybe Shinra is moving forward with Neo Midgar pre-construction without knowing the exact location Promised Land? This isn’t the last we hear of Neo Midgar, in one way or another we will hear more about its developments in the Remake Part 2.
4. Aerith and Meteor: Is it still our fate?
With fate being demolished, should we still expect the calamity of Meteor to be the major catastrophe that we must save the world from? Do we still expect Aerith to die of the same causes?
Several points we see prophetic flashes of meteor and the destruction of Midgar. Cloud sees a flash of Aerith’s death, and sheds a tear. We are told that these are the future that the Whispers are trying to ensure. Without the Whispers, are all of these scenes avoided completely? Or are they just one of infinite possibilities now?
We get the feeling that Aerith and Sephiroth are somehow aware of their original fates from the original Final Fantasy 7. With Aerith’s original destiny to die, and Sephiroth’s fate to fail at destroying the world with meteor.
I would expect to see Sephiroth trying to accelerate his plans for the world’s destruction, or in the very least he will secure his objectives through alternative means. If he is aware of how he was thwarted in the original fate, perhaps he will try to Macbeth-style try to alter his own fate.
Aerith might have accepted her death as a necessary part of saving the world. But now that fate has been eradicated, and Sephiroth actively trying to subvert the original fate, then perhaps her death is now irrelevant. In fact, keeping her alive might actually be better for Sephiroth’s plans, to avoid letting her join the lifestream too soon.
This is the crux of destroying fate in the Remake. The potential for a brand new calamity, or multiple calamities.
5. BONUS: Travel Away from The Steel Skies
In modern RPGs there is a dilemma. Back in the days of the original FF7, traveling between major locations the characters will appear on an “Overworld” of sorts. In this scheme the character is somehow a GIANT that makes great strides across a World Map. This “Overworld” of old often depicts the character as nearly the same size of the town they are about to enter, making them a Godzilla-like scale of a being. Suddenly entering the town, they shrink back down to a reasonable size.
With the beautifully-rendered anatomically-correct characters in the Final Fantasy 7 Remake, suddenly becoming giant and walking a couple of steps over to the township of Kalm from Midgar would certainly pull the player away from the realism of the new graphics. Modern players would subconsciously reject such a jarring abstraction of the “overworld” mechanic. As we saw the progression of Disney abandon 2D animation, to 3D art, and now remaking their features in live-action — we will see the abandonment of abstract video game mechanics in favor of realism that is easier for our soft brains to accept.
We saw the Final Fantasy series struggle bridging this gap over the years. We have Final Fantasy 10 and 12 simply eradicate the Overworld, connecting major areas together with interesting pathways and landscapes. Then comes Final Fantasy 13, where most of the game plays out in the Midgar-Esque city of Cocoon, only later to be abruptly plopped into the open planes of Gran Pulse. And the pinnacle is Final Fantasy 15, a game featuring an incredibly vast landscape. However the massive landscape of FF15 feels underutilized, and only filled in with pointless side-quest “Bounty Hunts” as a way to encourage the player to explore more of the landscape.
Whatever the method, we will likely be seeing some interesting modes of transportation in the upcoming Final Fantasy Remake installments.
Conclusions:
All of these new story elements were suppressed by the whispers in this first part of the Final Fantasy 7 Remake. However, we can see that the combined power of all of these new elements have the potential to completely rewrite the original story of Final Fantasy 7 into a completely new direction in Part 2. Are you excited for it? Or concerned?
