Final Fantasy 7 Remake: Biggest WTF questions after finishing the game

After 15 years as a video game puzzle, Final Fantasy 7 Remake became reality on April 10th. We don’t have any official sales yet, but GameStat does An estimated 2.3 million people have bought the game. And critics love it; it stands at 88 on Metacritic, worn by a rare 10/10 score from GameSpot, our sister site. (Read our review here.) But as you know, if you’ve played or read a lot of 7 remakes, this is just the beginning.

Final Fantasy 7 Remake is part 1 of Final Fantasy 7 and takes the story to where Cloud Strife and Company leave Midgar. Just when Hollywood turned the Hobbit book into three films, Square Enix takes Final Fantasy 7 and turns it into … we don’t know how many, but lots Parts.

Now that we have played Final Fantasy 7 Remake, know how it works and how it ends, we have some questions about the sequel. Attention: main spoiler below.

Can’t suck multiple timelines?

Seriously.

At the end of Final Fantasy 7 Remake, it becomes known that there are at least two timelines. An earlier timeline in which the original Final Fantasy 7 took place, and the timeline that we’re going through in 7 remakes.

A super short summary: The Dementor-like creatures that whirl around during the game are called Whispers. They are “Arbitrators of Fate” – beings who evolve the story in line with the previous timeline, also known as Final Fantasy 7. (They save Barret if he is impaled by Sephiroth because Barret doesn’t die in the original among many other examples.) They eliminate these creatures in the penultimate boss fight, which means that from now on, everything is no longer tied to the story in the original game.

After defeating Sephiroth in the last boss fight, you will be shown a small montage. Biggs recovers, Rufus becomes president of Shinra, sector 7 slums are rebuilt. You’ll also see Zack Fair, Cloud’s mentor, who defeats a hoard of Shinra infantry. In the story of the original, Zack dies here (more on that later).

As Zack collects, a chip package blows past. It is decorated with Shinra’s stamp mascot. But instead of the beagle with helmet we saw in 7 remakes, it’s a border terrier wearing a green hat. Basically a dog Fidel Castro. This means that Zack survives in a timeline different from where 7 remake took place where Stamp is a beagle.

So all of this raises a few questions. Are there only two timelines? Are these timelines interacting and intersecting now that the whisper has been launched? And especially for you, the player: does that mean that the story will shit in 7 remakes sequel?

Like time travel, multi-dimensional stories are very difficult to realize and often lead to ruin. Kingdom Hearts fans know this only too well.

The Kingdom Hearts franchise, like the original Final Fantasy 7, had a complicated story. But it was one that made perfect sense if you made a moderate effort to understand it. Then Dream Drop Distance was launched in 2012 and introduced time travel and various dimensions and similar risky businesses. Since then, the history of the franchise has been more or less incomprehensible.

Both 7 remakes and Kingdom Hearts are directed by Tetsuya Nomura. After I loved Kingdom Hearts to Dream Drop Distance intensely and absolutely hated Kingdom Hearts III because of its nonsensical story, like many others I am dissatisfied with the new direction.

Hopefully 7 Remakes sequel plays very carefully with multidimensionality.

Will Aerith Die?

As previously mentioned, 7 remake continues until the gang leaves Midgar. So we haven’t heard of Sephiroth’s plan to work Meteor or Aerith’s attempt to counter Holy. Perhaps most importantly, Sephiroth has not yet skewered Aerith with his Masamune.

But now that 7 remake story is not tied to the original, will we ever do it?

Cloud and Company defeat Whisper Harbinger (imagine the king of all whispers as the rest will be destroyed after being destroyed) on Destiny’s Crossroads. How the gang gets here is unclear. Sephiroth cuts open what looks like an interdimensional hole in the war, but then Aerith seems to reinforce it with her own magic before entering. She tells Cloud, Tifa, Barret and Red XIII that when they enter Destiny’s Crossroads they will change more than fate itself. They will also change.

It’s all very JRPG. But it looks like both Sephiroth and Aerith are aware of the whole “multiple timeline” thing. For Sephiroth, this would mean that he knows that if events are fated, he will ultimately be defeated as he was in Final Fantasy 7.

That means he will do things differently. Maybe he spares Aerith – or takes Tifa or Barret instead.

In 7 Remake’s end section, Sephiroth suggests that he ultimately loses if events follow the previous timeline (Final Fantasy 7). That probably means that he will do things differently. Maybe that means he spares Aerith – maybe that means he takes Tifa or Barrett instead?

Zack won’t die?

Zack Fair rocks. He was the main character in Crisis Core: Final Fantasy 7, an excellent prequel that was released on the PSP. As Clouds Mentor, he is in the spotlight for a few moments in the original. He saw how he saved Cloud from Hojo’s research laboratory (Hojo experimented with Cloud Mako and Sephiroth cells) and ran to Midgar with a comatose cloud. But he is also seen shot down by Shinra infantrymen.

If you played Crisis Core, this scene is burned into your head. This game ends with Zack fighting waves of infantry to finally be defeated, and Cloud slowly recovering as he crawls to Zack’s body.

Parts of this scene are contained almost 7 frame by frame in 7 remakes. Except as mentioned above, Zack is totally alive. Hero status confirmed. Only that he seems to be in a different dimension than the rest of the gang, as the different stamp mascot shows.

There is a brief moment, however, when Zack approaches Midgar while wearing Cloud. At the same time, Aerith leaves Midgar in the same place, but on a different timeline. She senses his presence.

So Zack will surely be part of the sequel. But to what extent? He is a main character in the tradition of Final Fantasy 7, even if he is not a main character of the original Final Fantasy 7. So it would be nice to see him again, but some fans will surely see it as stealing Zack’s original death scene Emotion.

When does this game come out?

In 7 remake, there were two important questions about the sequels. First, how many would there be? Second, when would they come out?

We have no answer. A naive part of me hoped that 7 remake would have some kind of secret ending that would end up with a release window for the sequel. That would never happen, but it’s hard to have no idea when part two starts. For franchises like Star Wars and Lord of the Rings, the release dates of the sequel are known in advance.

Given how beautiful 7 Remake was – that is, how many man-hours probably went into making it – it’s hard to see that a sequel will come out soon. This is especially true since it is likely to launch on PlayStation 5 (and possibly Xbox Series X).

We can only keep our fingers crossed. Square Enix can develop faster than George RR Martin can write.

7 seconds to what?

The most cryptic part of 7 remakes end came when Sephiroth Cloud transported itself to Edge of Creation, an area that strikingly resembles the location of Cloud and Sephiroth’s showdown.

Here, where the whisper is gone, Sephiroth asks Cloud to join him. Original Sephiroth’s plan is to hit the planet with a meteor and make the planet heal itself by opening the stream of life. From there, Sephiroth will jump in, immerse himself in the energy of the planet and make himself a god. Maybe he thinks cloud and he can be God Bros himself?

But Cloud says no, brother, and they duel. Sephiroth wins the upper hand and throws Cloud’s sword into the distance. Then he winds up behind Cloud. “Seven seconds to the end. Maybe enough time for you. But what are you going to do with it? Let’s see.” He disappears.

There is no real way to know what this refers to. But if I was paid to guess, and that’s me, I would say it has something to do with the end of the original Final Fantasy 7.

In this game, Sephiroth has many forms. You fight him as Bizarro-Sephiroth and then Safe Sephiroth. The actual final battle in the game is just the normal old Sephiroth – shirtless for some reason. It’s cloud versus Sephiroth in a non-unlockable battle: the game prompts you to hit him with the Omnislash limit break.

Between Safer Sephiroth (which is much harder to beat) and Shirtless Sephiroth, Cloud can be seen traveling through a tube of light. It is implied and speculated that after defeating Sephiroth’s physical form (Safer Sephiroth), Cloud traveled into the life stream itself to properly kill Sephiroth.

He had to do this because Sephiroth was mortally wounded by Cloud In front Final Fantasy 7 (which is why he is considered dead in the first part of the game) survived by immersing himself in the life stream.

Some theorize that Sephiorth’s “Seven Seconds to the End” is an indication that the entirety of 7 remakes and subsequent games takes place in Cloud’s head as we watch the original cloud descend into the life stream.

It is more likely gibberish that only makes sense in seven years.