MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD for the ending of ‘Final Fantasy VII Remake’ so turn away now if you don’t want to read about the game’s climax!
After spending a nostalgia-filled 40 or so hours with Final Fantasy VII Remake, I emerged from the experience with two thoughts: a) This remake of Final Fantasy VII is a surefire contender for Game Of The Year and b) What the hell is with that ending?
For about 95 percent of the the game, Final Fantasy VII Remake stays relatively faithful to the original narrative while serving up some seriously impressive gameplay mechanics, characterisation, and visual flair. But then it all goes completely off the rails in the final 5 percent.
Speaking of other great 2020 games, the GOAT team talk about ‘Animal Crossing: New Horizons’ on ‘It’s Been A Big Day For…’ below:
The ending of Final Fantasy VII Remake is going to leave many people confused, especially newcomers to the game. But we’re going to try and break everything down as much as possible and what it all means for the future. Just a final warning, there will be Final Fantasy VII Remake SPOILERS AHEAD so turn back now if don’t want to know anything.
As you work your way through Remake, you occasionally encounter these Dementor-looking ghost things that seem to interfere with major events. You probably saw this in the Final Fantasy VII Remake trailer where Sephiroth stabs Barret, something that doesn’t happen in the OG game.
The Whispers end up reversing time and saving Barret because, well, him dying by Sephiroth’s blade doesn’t happen in the original narrative.
There are also various examples of the Whispers interfering with events in Remake that would’ve deviated from the original game, such as injuring Jessie and forcing Cloud to go on the second bombing mission for AVALANCHE.
It is eventually revealed that these dementor rip-offs are called “Whispers of Fate” and their purpose is to make sure the events that unfold in Remake keep in line with the narrative told in the original Final Fantasy VII game by interfering whenever necessary.
At the game’s climax, you end up fighting the Whispers before coming face-to-face with Sephiroth himself, who comes up a lot more than expected throughout Final Fantasy VII Remake compared to the original story. This is where Sephiroth’s expanded role really goes into bonkers territory.
It’s not properly explained how (yet) but Sephiroth (and Aerith to a certain extent) seems to know all about the Whispers and how he will always ultimately lose if they keep interfering with events since the heroes triumph in Final Fantasy VII.
With that knowledge in mind, Sephiroth manipulates events in order to force Cloud, Tifa, Aerith, Barret, and Red XIII to fight the Whispers before facing the party after the dementor lookalikes are dead. After fighting everyone before facing Cloud one-on-one, Sephiroth tells him cryptically that things are different and offers to team up together. Cloud refuses and Sephiroth offers his nemesis seven seconds to change whatever he wants before fleeing to fight another day.
The death of the Whispers causes the skies to clear and the party somehow escapes to the outskirts of Midgar. Here, it is insinuated that with the Whispers gone, the events of Final Fantasy VII are not going to happen as they did in the original since there’s no external force interfering anymore.
Yep, this opens up a massive can of worms where things that happened in the OG game may not happen, such as THAT jawdropping death.
What all this also means is that Final Fantasy VII Remake isn’t technically a “remake” but more of a reimagining in which the events of the original game and its follow up movie, Advent Children, all took place and are acknowledged. One might even call Remake a pseudo-sequel of sorts in a very alternative universe/timeline sort of way.
So how does the flashbacks of Zack and Cloud fit into all this? Well it gets a littme messy but here it goes: Zack was meant to die trying to save a comatose Cloud in the original story but he survives in Remake (apparently due to Cloud taking up those seven seconds offered to him by Sephiroth) and manages to make it to Midgar with Cloud in tow.
When we see Zack walk by Remake Aerith and they sense each other, this implies that Zack may have a large part to play in the new story and could well reunite with Aerith.
The big question now is why did the developers come up with such a convoluted climax for Final Fantasy VII Remake? Why not stick to the original game’s story?
Only the developers know the answer to that, but for what it’s worth this is certainly a very interesting way of telling fans – especially long-time fans – that this project isn’t just simply retelling the OG game’s story. Remake is going to tell it in a new way so there’s no need to think of the original Final Fantasy VII as the story bible because anything could happen from this point onwards.
The ending of Final Fantasy VII Remake will undoubtedly cause a lot of discussion among fans, especially fans of the original game. But it is a bold decision befitting an already-audacious game like Final Fantasy VII and there is arguably no other game that could pull this sort of thing off.
No one has any clue what will unfold next for the Final Fantasy VII Remake project, but that’s part of what makes it so exciting because rather than set our expectations based on a game from 1997, we can just go along for the ride and see where it takes us.
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