[CAUTION: This article contains spoilers of not only Final Fantasy VII Remake and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth but also the entire Compilation of Final Fantasy VII. You have been warned so please enjoy the article.]
If you asked me to recall my favorite moments while playing Final Fantasy VII Rebirth (2024), a huge, silly grin appears on my face. I cannot help but think of all the fun I had with this game and the memorable moments that resonate with me. Whether it was the cinematic visuals of the Nibelheim flashback, the first time stepping onto the Grasslands and experiencing the game’s semi-open world, Red XIII’s Michael Jackson dance off on the cruise ship, the Disneyland paradise of the Gold Saucer, the white-knuckle action setpiece at the Gongaga Reactor in Chapter 9, Yuffie’s youthful dynamic with the group, the heartwarming, passionate kiss between Cloud and Tifa on the Gold Saucer skywheel, or the final date of Cloud and Aerith in the other world, there were so many moments that made me love and appreciate Rebirth as a game. It’s not often a game makes me feel this way, especially after such an engrossing experience.
It’s even more so thanks to that ending. My word…that f***ing ending.
I suspected that Square was going to take advantage of the twist ending of Aerith’s death from Disc 1 of the original Final Fantasy VII (1997) and turn it against the player in some shape or form. Prior to playing Rebirth, I heard rumblings on the game’s ending being “divisive,” more so than Final Fantasy VII Remake’s (2020) ending. I wasn’t sure what to think other than the fact that I needed to see it for myself. I initially had hesitancy on accepting Remake’s ending because I felt that the massive infodump and chaotic symbolism was too much for newcomers — and to some extent older fans of the original game — to take in, especially since it seemingly relies on knowledge of the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII. After a while, I came around on the ending and realized that despite its flaws, it is brilliant and one that challenges the conventional nature of remakes in art. Rebirth’s themes follow suit, providing a metacommentary on the abstract concept of destiny versus nature.
Are the characters’ futures defined by fate and destiny? Rebirth forces the audience to ponder the ethos of the Final Fantasy VII franchise. As I began contemplating the circumstances surrounding Aerith’s death, I soon realized that after watching another content creator’s completed playthrough of Rebirth that the Remake Trilogy (also called the “Re-Trilogy” or “Remake Saga” by fans) could be considered as the first true postmodern Final Fantasy games; a massive analytical, literary deconstruction of the Final Fantasy franchise that has not been done by any other video game in the medium.
The greatest trick Square ever pulled
Final Fantasy VII Remake’s ending left the audience with the impression that now that the party has seemingly “defied fate” they are free to go where they need to go and do what they need to do to defeat Sephiroth and save the world. Most people took that meaning thinking that the next entries (now that we know it’s a trilogy) will not exactly follow the same narrative structure of the original Final Fantasy VII tale. The following DLC story content, Intermission, which reintroduced Yuffie, seemed to confirm that theory considering that Yuffie — an optional character from the OG game — has now been intergraded into the main narrative and has a whole new separate story that features characters who are not meant to be seen this early in Final Fantasy VII’s story and has her go through a serious character development moment that drives her to seek out Cloud and his friends come Rebirth’s story. The possibilities were endless, and nobody knew what to expect from the Remake Saga with these potential narrative changes.
So, imagine the surprise (or unsurprise depending on who you’re asking) of many people when Rebirth finally released earlier this year that the story — for the most part — was fundamentally the same in terms of plot beats and narrative direction. Like the OG game, the party went to Kalm and Cloud tells his story of the Nibelheim Flashback, entered the Grasslands, faced the Midgardsormr, entered the Mythril Mines, went to Junon and met Yuffie in the region, participated in the parade, escaped on a ship, fought Jenova BIRTH, hit the beach at Costa Del Sol, returned to Barret’s hometown at Corel, partied at the Gold Saucer, ended up in Corel Prison, Barret fought Dyne, went to Gongaga and learned about Zack, went to Cosmo Canyon and learned about Red XIII’s backstory, faced the Gi Tribe, went to the newly recreated Nibelheim, met Vincent Valentine at the Shinra Manor basement, learned about the Temple of the Ancient’s existence, teamed up with Cid Highwind and his Tiny Bronco, returned to the Gold Saucer, Cloud has a skywheel date, the party participates in Battle Square to win the Keystone that takes them to the Temple, Cait Sith betrays the party and gives the Keystone to the Turks, the party enters the Temple of the Ancients, they learn about the nature of the Black Materia and Sephirtoh’s plans, Cloud goes insane and gives the Black Materia to Sephiroth, he blacks out and later on awakens and the party travels through the Sleeping Forest and later on arrive at the Forgotten Capital, Sephiroth “shish kebabs” Aerith, party gets pissed and fights Jenova LIFE, and then prepare to travel up to the northern region to get to the Northern Crater to defeat Sephiroth once and for all.
All the events that happen in Rebirth are no different than what happens during the second half of Disc 1 of OG FFVII. The difference between the second iteration of the Remake Saga and the OG events is how they happen and what transpires during said events. While a good portion of the fanbase was relieved that most of their favorite moments were kept intact, there were some who ended up being disappointed that not enough risks were taken with the narrative and felt that Square may have walked back on aiming for a new story direction after some fans decried the possibility of having an unrecognizable Final Fantasy VII experience. Some even felt that the developers do not deserve the benefit of a doubt with the new twist ending of Rebirth because they feel their expectations have been betrayed and Square does not have the capacity to deconstruct their own work.
At first glance, that might seem to be the case. There is a possibility that Tetsuya Nomura, the creative director of the Remake Trilogy, and his team are “flying at their seat of their pants” with the Remake Saga and didn’t have a direction to go on for each entry. It wouldn’t be the first time they found themselves in this predicament. But I would like to think that there was more thought and care for the direction and themes of the story than most cynics want to admit.
Why would anyone think that Square would be abandoning the themes and narrative structure of Final Fantasy VII for the Remake Trilogy? The party beat the metaphysical representation of “narrative restrictions” so they should automatically do something different. That’s usually the go-to reason.
But that reasoning right there is the greatest trick Square pulled on the audience. The metanarrative twist has been hiding in plain sight from the audience. It’s just that some people have actually bothered to dig deep to understand the messaging of the past two entries in the Remake Saga.
You see folks, Square didn’t necessarily lie. They just “half-truthed” their intentions. The audience are still getting the FFVII experience. It’s just coming with new elements to keep folks on their toes.
The point is that the characters’ fates are not defined by destiny or it being a remake. It is defined by their choices and identities in the world of Final Fantasy VII and those choices will determine the outcome of the entire Remake Saga.
Predestination vs Nature
The cast of the Remake Saga want you to believe that their lives were dictated by a higher power. While there is some truth to that — the Planet, named Gaia, is a living, breathing, sentient natural satellite that created the Lifestream and what have you — the matter of how the party live their lives was never truly defined by fate per say. It was defined by themselves.
The series presents an intricate theme of predestination vs nature. Predestination is the theological belief that an omniscient, omnipotent force (God) has predetermined the fate of the entire universe and there is no deviating from it. Everything that is happening has been deemed by “God’s will.” It is often referenced as the religious variation of predeterminism, the philosophy that the past, present, and future of life has been decided by an unknown omni-being (God, fate, or Destiny), including human actions.
If you attribute these theological and philosophical themes to Final Fantasy VII, “the will of the Planet” is the predetermined fate of all life on Gaia and there is nothing the party can do to oppose against it. It has already been set in stone due to the game’s nature as a “remake” of Final Fantasy VII. This is why the Whisperers, the Arbiters of Fate, were created. They are the living, metaphysical “time police” of the Planet who resemble the Ghost of Christmas Future from Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. They enforce the Planet’s “will” to ensure that something (or in this case, someone) does not try to fight or deviate from said “will.” However, at the end of Remake, the party believed that they needed to defeat the Arbiters of Fate to create a new, better future for life on Gaia. Sephiroth definitely wanted the party to defeat the Whisperers but his reasonings were not as altruistic as he actually wanted to obtain the powers of the Whisperers to continue his desire of — once again — becoming a god. You see, in the OG timeline, Sephiroth met his end at the hands of Cloud (three times!) and this time around he wants to create a future where he can guarantee his victory.
When Cloud and his friends defeated the Whisperers, they inadvertently gave Sephiroth the power to control a variation of them as we see in Rebirth. His manifestations of the Whisperers are black colored as opposed to the neutral, gray colored form that they had in Remake. The Planet had to create new Whisperers and these ones are white colored and they continue to battle Sephiroth to maintain the status quo of the “Planet’s will.” The fight for Gaia’s future will seemingly be decided between the desires and wishes of the Planet versus those of Sephiroth’s. However, it’s likely that the result is right in front of our eyes, and we just don’t see it.
You could say that a certain character could be argued as the single most important representation of the Remake Saga’s themes of predestination vs nature. I am, of course, talking about Z̶a̶c̶k̶ Biggs.
Yes, you read that correctly. It’s Biggs. The de-facto second-in-command of Barret’s AVALANCHE cell, the team’s battle strategist, tactician, and tech support is the most important representation of the Remake Saga’s philosophical themes.
In the OG game, Biggs dies at the Sector 7 plate assault by a hail of gunfire from Shinra troopers. He makes his peace with Cloud before he passes on. The plate holding the Sector 7 pillar is destroyed by the Turks, killing most of the civilians of Sector 7, including other AVALANCHE members Wedge and Jessie. The scenario is fundamentally the same in Remake. Biggs is severely wounded in his fight against the Shinra troopers at the pillar. He once again makes his peace with Cloud and tells him to look after the kids at the orphanage where he teaches. He dies along with Jessie after the plate is dropped on Sector 7. Wedge dies later at the assault on Shinra Tower.
That is until the ending of Remake showed a version of Biggs that survived the plate fall.
Apparently, when Cloud and his friends defeated the Whisperers, they also inadvertently “broke reality,” making the Lifestream create brand new, separate worlds in the process as evidenced by the different versions of Stamp, the Shinra propaganda mascot of a dog. The main timeline features a Beagle version of Stamp. In consequence of the party’s actions, we later learn that the Biggs that survived is from the Terrier world, separate from the Beagle world where the main party is. This is where he meets the Zack Fair that survived his final stand against Shinra outside of Midgar. Both men discuss the weird circumstances surrounding their existence. They knew they weren’t meant to survive. Yet, here they are, living and talking to each other, not knowing how to handle this second chance of life they have been given. It doesn’t help that the Terrier world is seemingly coming to an end due to a massive rift in the sky that spells its doom.
Biggs is conflicted because he feels he doesn’t deserve to survive. All of Barret’s AVALANCHE cell members (Tifa, Wedge, Jessie, and Barret himself) are dead in this world. He wanted to take the fight to Shinra but without fellow members to support his cause he feels he has lost his purpose. Zack tries to encourage him to use his time to help others (slyly referencing Barret’s daughter, Marlene) and appreciate the second chance of life he has been given. Unfortunately, Biggs misinterprets this message and decides to take the fight to Shinra by himself. He tells Zack via letter that he intends to bomb Mako Reactor 5 which frightens the SOLDIER as he tries to figure out how to save Biggs as well as this world’s Cloud and Aerith.
We later see the results of Zack’s actions in another world featuring a Pug version of Stamp. Biggs could not blow up the reactor for two reasons: the reactor already sucked the Lifestream dry, and that the world is about to die, and his bomb’s blast agency wasn’t even powerful enough to destroy the reactor, making his efforts fruitless to begin with. Zack tries to once again encourage his friend not to feel like a failure and continue to explore new ways of living a second life.
Before Biggs could take up Zack’s offer, he’s gunned down by Shinra troopers much to Zack’s shock and horror. In the end, Biggs dies the same way as his prime world version did: at the hands of Shinra. It doesn’t matter that it happened elsewhere. The result was essentially the same.
This was always going to happen to Biggs no matter the world he lived in. The minute he made his decision to continue his war against Shinra he was always going to die by their hands. Biggs saw no other way to live his life. He easily could’ve returned to being a teacher at the orphanage in Sector 5 or be Marlene’s caretaker with Elmyra.
But he couldn’t change who he was. Biggs was always a rebel. He was always going to get killed by Shinra. It was in his nature.
The characters’ fates are defined by their identities, trauma, and choices
One of the most pivotal moments of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth happens at the Temple of the Ancients, the game’s “true” final dungeon (The City of the Ancients doesn’t count since it’s three main areas and no exploration). Each of the party members (except Cloud) go through a trial orchestrated by the Cetra as a means of confronting the most pivotal traumatic moments of their lives for the purpose of self-discovery. Of course, the cryptic Ancients do not explain the reasoning behind these trials. Only that the party needs to go through them and figure out the messaging on their own. Red XIII remembers being captured and tortured by Professor Hojo, Tifa remembers the destruction of Nibelheim and her father’s death at the hands of Sephiroth, Yuffie remembers the death of her closest friend and brother figure Sonon at the hands of Nero the Sable, Barret remembers losing his wife and the destruction of his hometown by Shinra, and Aerith remembers losing her biological mother and being alone in Midgar. It’s a harrowing experience, and the game’s definitive emotionally impactful moment when you realize how much these wonderful people you have grown attached to during their adventures have suffered and how far they have come.
After the trials have ended, it’s abundantly clear that the group are shaken to the core of being reminded of the most distressing periods of their lives. They have no idea how to even respond to what they experienced or what this means for them moving forward.
That is until Aerith says the speech of the game and the one that highlights the very point of Rebirth.
“Y’know…if you think about it, life and death are just two sides of the same coin. Our bodies may disappear when we die, but our spirits still live on. We return to the Planet, rejoin the Lifestream, and — in time — give rise to new life. I get it. I really do. Knowing that the people we love aren’t really gone? It doesn’t make it any easier to let them go. It still hurts. So, we can’t just think of it as a “homecoming.” ’Cause it’s not that simple. We’ve all experienced pain. We all have our regrets. What we’ve done — what’s been done to us — that’s set in stone. The past is forever. But the future — even if it has been written — can be changed. It’s true that the pain and the anger we carry can make us stronger. But at what cost? What toll does it take? I believe true strength doesn’t come from any of that. True strength comes from our ability to forgive — to forge ahead in the hope of making things right. It comes from ourselves. So, focus on the future — not the past. Do that, and not even Sephiroth will be able to stand in our way. Not even him.”
Aerith’s speech invokes determination and hope in creating a better future for the party and life on Gaia. The past experiences that the party faced will forever be part of their lives and it is not something that can be easily buried or forgotten. That makes them who they are, but they do not have to be beholden by them. The party does not have to be bound by the past or fate. They must decide what they want to do from here on out. And it is here that Aerith’s message invokes their will to save the Planet from Sephiroth and Shinra. Their nature as to who they were was always going to lead to the same pathway to save the Planet even if the result of how they get there will be different. Despite their past traumas, they still make the choice to help others. Aerith, Tifa, Barret, Red XIII, and Yuffie are committed to the cause.
Their motivation to save the world is — in a way — “reborn.”
Cloud, unfortunately, does not fall in this category because at this point of the story he is still bound by his past and is unable to truly move forward. It is evident given his sociopathic actions and dissociative behavior towards the party at the Temple. It is why the Cetra do not give Cloud a trial to face his trauma because he doesn’t truly know or understand himself. Therefore, he can’t move forward and make the necessary choices for others or himself.
Sephiroth gives Cloud a “trial” of his own, showing the spikey-headed hero his failings in saving Biggs and Jessie as well as his actions causing the bombing of Mako Reactor 1 and the deaths of many people. Sephiroth tells Cloud that he has no free will of his own. His existence is only to serve Sephiroth. He is a puppet who is bound to Sephiroth and will forever be filled with anger and hate, making him ripe for his mental degradation, and the poisoning of his soul.
Albert Camus once said, “It’s not so easy to become what one is, to rediscover one’s deepest measure.” Because Cloud doesn’t understand himself, he is forever a victim to Sephiroth’s manipulations. Worse is that he is unable to accept the harsh realities about himself, his identity, and what it means for him moving forward. The Final Fantasy VII story always focused on the self-discovery and maturation of Cloud Strife and the Remake Saga is no different. The mind-twisting ending of Rebirth was clearly meant to amplify the role of Cloud as the unreliable narrator of the story. Because he cannot accept Aerith’s death, as well as misinterpreting the nature of the multiverse, he is truly incapable of helping anyone let alone the Planet or himself. This is shown when he hides the Black Materia secretly given to him by Sephiroth in his Buster Sword.
Cloud’s moment of truth and self-discovery is being set up for Part 3 during the much-anticipated Lifestream Sequence with Tifa, the defining moment of the Re-Trilogy as it was in OG FFVII. It will be here that Cloud will finally learn the truth about Aerith’s death, take the message that she tried to tell him back at the Temple of the Ancients to heart, and truly learn to accept his failings and find the courage to move forward. It will be here that Cloud will make the choice to ultimately be the hero that his friends can count on and finally learn to believe in himself.
Sephiroth’s Nature is his Achilles’ Heel
While Aerith is driven by self-sacrifice in order to protect her loved ones and create a brand-new future for life on the Planet, Sephiroth is someone who is forever driven to the path of negative utilitarianism, the belief that people should minimize suffering and maximize happiness. That thought process can be destructive, especially when people like Sephiroth feel that the best way to minimize pain is to eliminate life. Sigmund Freud called this thought process the “death drive” (also known as the “death instinct” or “Thanatos”). It is the desire to achieve self-destruction, free of suffering and pain. It usually manifests in the wish for the death of oneself or the desire for apotheosis, the longing to obtain divinity or to become God.
It has been strongly hinted throughout the Remake Trilogy that this version of Sephiroth has somehow obtained knowledge of the original timeline of Final Fantasy VII. Popular fan theories stated that future Sephiroth, the one defeated by Cloud post Advent Children, has sent his consciousness — or more specifically his memories — to his past self, warning him about the impending fate of the Planet as well as his imminent defeat and the people responsible for it. So Sephiroth seems to be remixing his old plan of simply summoning Meteor with the Black Materia to cause a planetary destruction that will allow him to absorb the Lifestream to become a god. This time around he seems to be utilizing the power of the Whisperers and the Black Materia to split the fabric of space and time within the Lifestream and then reconverge it so that he can become THE GOD by ruling all of Gaia’s past, present, and future, effectively creating a twisted, stagnant reality that would completely disrupt cycle of life on the Planet.
Why would Sephiroth do this? At this point of the story, nobody truly knows. As usual, it is left up to interpretation. However, some of these theories may actually hint at the truth and the direction Square seems to be going for Sephiroth’s role as the antagonist of the Remake Saga.
Phillip Hartshorn, professional actor and filmmaker who also has a popular podcast, recently spoke with well-known Final Fantasy content creators Sleepzi and Schrodingersbabyseal, about his thoughts on Sephiroth’s purpose for acting on his latest plans. He explained that based on what he’s seen from a narrative perspective it’s likely that Sephiroth is attempting a bizarre, twisted version of “saving everyone” by stagnating their existence and eliminating the ability to return to the Planet. They could live on and be with their loved ones forever, but it wouldn’t be a fulfillment since they would end up in a similar position to the Gi Tribe, lingering spirits who are tortured by their undead existence and cannot seek peace due to being unable to pass on in the afterlife.
The latest Final Fantasy VII: Ever Crisis chapters give indication that this is possibly the direction that Square is going for in regards to Sephiroth’s character. If so, then this would explain a lot, but it would also highlight a big problem with Sephiroth and why he is destined to lose again.
You see, like many tragic Greek figures such as Icarus or Tantalus, there is never a happy ending when you are cutting corners to obtain divinity. And Sephiroth of all people doesn’t seem to grasp that each time he’s tried to become a god, he has failed spectacularly. When he claimed the Planet as his birthright during the Nibelheim Incident five years prior the main story, he met his end at the hands of a 16-year-old Cloud Strife who got the jump on him by stabbing him and hurling him into the mako pit of the Nibelheim Reactor, effectively killing him. In Final Fantasy VII, Sephiroth nearly accomplishes his goal of becoming a god with Meteor’s summoning, but Cloud and his friends defeated him, with Cloud purging him from his spirit and killing him again. He tries to return in Advent Children by affecting Cloud with an alien disease called Geostigma, mentally torturing him from beyond the grave with his failure to save Zack and Aerith, and even after he found a way to return to the real world, he once again met his end at the hands of Cloud once he learned to forgive himself and found the cure for the disease thanks to Aerith’s help from the Lifestream.
Time after time Sephiroth’s hubris is his narcissism and arrogance. He never seems to come to realize that constantly underestimating his foes always ends up backfiring against him. Even now in the Remake Trilogy, he’s seemingly doubling down on that nature. It is especially evident towards the end of the game when he sees a version of Aerith that survived his murder, indicating that she possesses the same omnipresent abilities as him and he even admits he underestimated her.
He seems to have conjured up a new plan since his chance of achieving godhood was denied by Cloud and his friends and he’ll likely come close as usual. But it is unlikely he will succeed. Despite having the Whisperers in his possession, and knowledge of the future, it ultimately won’t matter because he is unable to truly change and grow from the mistakes he’s made in the past. He chooses to pursue a failed attempt at divinity. He chooses to distort the life cycle of the Planet. He chooses to escalate a war between Shinra and Wutai that will lead to the deaths of millions of people. He chooses to abuse and torture Cloud until his usefulness is no longer needed.
He does these things because he ironically is a slave to his past and is incapable of letting go the trauma that has plagued him (much like Cloud at this point of the story) and moving forward by accepting his end in the Lifestream. His anger and hatred is what spurs him to find a way to linger on as a vengeful spirit. When Aerith asks him how he could continue to choose a path of loneliness and bitterness during the final battle, he scoffs at her questioning him. At this juncture, it is impossible for him to forsake that identity. It is in his makeup as a person. He is who he is. Sephiroth chooses to harbor that animosity towards life itself. It’s in his nature and he won’t change. It’s not fate that will dictate his defeat at the end of the Remake Trilogy. It’s his choices.
Conclusion
The Final Fantasy VII Remake Trilogy poses the question of whether or not the characters of a remake can change the “destined outcome” of the original ending. If they are unable to do so, the party will end up in the same scenario leading up to Final Fantasy VII Advent Children, where it was perceived as a failed ending since it would only end up repeating the events without a final resolution. If the choices the party makes can lead to a different outcome, it could potentially lead to a happier, more positive outcome.
There is no telling as to what direction Square intends on taking the Remake Saga’s conclusion. The main story scenario has been confirmed to be completed by Nomura and Nojima. They are already prepping for the full development stage for Part 3. While it is very likely that we will follow the same story beats for Part 3, how it will all pan out is something of a mystery. Some fans are itching with anticipation and excitement while others dread the conclusion, believing it to be an inevitable failure. No matter what your stance is, there is no question that this is the most ambitious project ever done in video games. You do not see many games take their own work and analyze in a way that questions its very existence and how it defines itself and its world. Those that dismiss the Remake Trilogy may not get it now, but I suspect in due time many people will realize that this is an ingenious series that stands well on its own.
That doesn’t mean that everything will be perfect. Square could still potentially screw this up and the ending may satisfy no one. We may never get proper resolutions for the new plot elements, and it could blow up in everyone’s faces. There’s no telling how things will shake out in the end.
But fans should remember that there is no such thing as postmodern work that is not without risk and sometimes it does not always guarantee a reward where you walk away with enlightenment. That doesn’t mean that no knowledge can be gained from it. We are meant to have the choice of coming to an understanding of the art we study and deciding how we should carry what we have learned moving forward.
The Final Fantasy VII Remake Trilogy may not be the true, perfected remakes of the classic Final Fantasy VII game that everybody wanted but there is no denying that it is a trilogy that needed to be created and should be respected for what it is trying to say about remakes in art, choices in life, and human nature.
- additional YouTube videos by Faz Faz, Gaming Extras, Sector 6, Sleepezi, Schrodingersbabyseal, Dan Allen Gaming and Philip Hartshorn
