Critique: Final Fantasy 7 Remake
A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
What is the point of nostalgia?
Square Enix has been on a tear the last decade, remastering its most loved games and bringing them to modern devices. However, of all the PS1 and PS2 era JPRGs, Final Fantasy 7 was the most in need of a remake. The graphics did not endure, and the translation is apocryphal. However, the story is one of the most memorable and enduring of all video game stories from the 20th century. When Square Enix announced the remake would only take place in Midgar, what originally represented about 10 hours of the original game, many imagined new content stuffed between major story beats to draw out the nostalgia as long as possible, like a high school essay padded with adjectives and adverbs to reach the minimum word count. However, if you asked a fan to come up with new content for the remake, they’d have an idea in their head of what they wanted, and that’s mostly what this is. Until it isn’t.
The best of the old beats are all there; some word-for-word. You can climb fifty flights of stairs, and hear the same jokes you heard twenty years ago. You can ponder the Don’s question after he reveals his master plan. It’s all assembled in a way that shows clear reverence for the source material. However, because it’s only the first 10 hours of the source material, there’s a lot of time to kill.
Infill is mostly achieved through a more developed supporting cast. Some, like Jessie and the rest of Avalanche, get more screen time. Others are spun whole cloth or pulled from extended material, like Marle and Leslie, but woven seemlessly together with original plot points. Those who haven’t played the game in decades will find it difficult to remember whether Chocobo Sam is a new character or not. Indeed, you could imagine these people in the original, just out of frame. All of it serves to raise the emotional stakes when the inevitable plate drop occurs.
Except what really are the emotional stakes of a story when you know how it goes? FF7R shares a lot in common with prequels, like knowing that this cute Anakin kid will grow up to be Darth Vader. You know none of the new characters or plot threads matter to the main story, so as polished as the new content is, there’s cynical detachment instead of suspense. There’s no mystery or meaning to it.
Which leads me to the inevitable ending. I was both thrilled and frustrated to discover the plan of the remake all along was to take the story in a new direction. I’ve long held — ever since this game was announced — that the best thing it could do would be to tell an identical story up until that fateful moment in the Forgotten City, and then — BAM — Aerith lives. FF7R is a fantastic opportunity to explore our relationship with nostalgia and the stories we grew up with through carefully managed dissonance. Square seems to think so, too, since the final boss is a metaphysical representation of the original plot.
This should be good news, right? Maybe it will be as the sequels come out. For now, however, the reveal falls flat, like a joke that needs explaining. If the subplot about changing the original plot were removed, you would have…the original plot. It leaves us wondering what the point was, and why it needed to be directly fought by Team Cloud.
There’s lots to like about the remake. It is the best modern Final Fantasy to date, learning from the lessons of XV. The combat is fun and feels a lot like the original in spite of the radical updates. The characters are well realized. However, it unintentionally exposes the deepest flaw of 21st century Final Fantasy: it can’t tell a story worth a damn. All the best story elements are the ones that are decades old. It reminds us what this franchise has lost.
FF7R could have stood on its own as a shining example of nostalgia done well, with future installments gradually building audience dissonance. We could have basked in our reminiscence long enough to reflect on it. The audience could have come along for the journey. Instead, we’re treated to the promise of new storytelling, told just at this one was told: without subtlety or significance.