If you are a fan of my writing, you might have seen me discuss Final Fantasy (FF) before. FF is a series of Japanese video games that have been a juggernaut of the gaming industry. The first game was released all the way back in the 80s, and the series has been nothing but incredibly popular since. The seventh game, released in 1997, is definitely the most popular. So popular that two recently released games — FF7 Remake and FF7 Rebirth — have reimagined the original’s story in a new light. Rebirth just came out a month ago and, while it is phenomenal, it fumbles a bit its final moments, particularly with the most iconic scene in the original game.
First off, this article is going to be chock-full of spoilers — for the original FF7, Remake and Rebirth. With that out of the way, let’s get to it. FF7 is a game with a colorful cast of unique and diverse characters who start at odds with one another, but grow to care about each other and team up to beat the game’s antagonist, Sephiroth. This game is in the steampunk-fantasy genre. There is a ton of advanced technology in this world as well as fantastical magic. It’s one of the most unique and compelling fictional worlds I’ve ever come across. Remake and Rebirth build on this world very well.
Rebirth particularly does a lot of heavy lifting here in the story department. Remake adapts a small, yet dense chunk of the original FF7, whereas Rebirth addresses a much greater portion of the overall world. Both games compliment each other. Parts of the games adapt the original, while some parts stray from the source material. It keeps the audience on their toes.
What kept audiences on their toes since 2020 was how they would handle FF7’s most famous scene, particularly, the death of Aerith, one of the main characters of the story. In the original, Aerith dies halfway through the game at the hands of Sephiroth. It is a very realistic, yet unexpected, death. There are no final words, just the cold and quick embrace of death. This scene brutalized players back in the 90s and has lived in infamy since. Not many times does a main character unexpectedly get killed, especially in games released back then. Many people were theorizing whether or not Aerith would die in Rebirth, since the events of the original weren’t adapted one-to-one in the remakes.
So, here’s what happened. In the last couple hours of Rebirth, which can take at least 50 hours to complete, Aerith is in trouble. Cloud, the main character, tries to save her from being stabbed by Sephiroth. Seems like it’s the exact scene. Until, Cloud stops Sephiroth’s blade from killing Aerith. She’s saved! How insane? Wait, why is she bleeding? Cloud’s vision blurs and Aerith falls, bloodied, into his arms. Cloud is a main character with some amnesia and memory issues, which caused him to hallucinate saving Aerith.
Admittedly, this scene is well done — it’s sad, it’s heartbreaking and it’s really intimate. Cloud never cries, but you see him shed tears. But on the other hand, it’s confusing as hell. The whole hallucination situation is perplexing because it takes the gravitas away from the scene. If the scene was similar to the original and if she just straight up got stabbed and we saw it, it would have been 10 times more tragic. It would have been so much sadder and brutal to just have that untouched scene.
I get what the subversion does. In a split second, it gives the audience hope, and then that hope is taken away. It’s very bold. But, it doesn’t quite work. The original scene is slow and tragic. Once Aerith gets stabbed, she doesn’t say a word — she just crumples over and dies. The new scene is trying to do 20 things at once. It’s trying to trick the audience, give them hope, then finally inject them with despair. Aerith falls into Cloud’s arms and she says goodbye to him — this takes away from the tragedy of the original scene. That tragedy is what made it so great. This scene wasn’t completely ruined, but it did take away some of the impact from the original. While Rebirth is a great inclusion to the FF7 universe, the original will always have a leg up on how they handled this generation-defining character death.
Nicolas Scagnelli is a senior majoring in English.
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