Final Fantasy VII Remake

Final Fantasy VII Remake is a 2020 action role-playing game developed and published by Square Enix for PlayStation 4. It reimagines the opening Midgar section of 1997’s Final Fantasy VII rather than retelling the entire original story in one release. Square Enix announced the project at E3 2015, and it launched on April 10, 2020, after a delay from its originally scheduled March date. Naoki Hamaguchi and Tetsuya Nomura served as co-directors, while Yoshinori Kitase, director of the 1997 game, returned as producer. The release uses real-time combat with tactical pauses, combining direct character control, the Active Time Battle-inspired command menu, materia, spells, abilities, and party switching. The story follows Cloud Strife, a former Shinra SOLDIER who works as a mercenary in the industrial city of Midgar. He is hired by Avalanche, an eco-terrorist resistance cell, to help destroy Mako Reactor 1. Avalanche believes Shinra Electric Power Company’s extraction of Mako—the planet’s spiritual energy—is draining the world. Cloud joins Barret Wallace, Tifa Lockhart, and later Aerith Gainsborough, a flower seller pursued by Shinra because she is the last known Cetra. Major locations include the Sector 7 slums, Wall Market, Shinra Headquarters, and the Sector 5 church. Remake substantially expands material that occupied only the opening portion of the original game. It gives Avalanche members Jessie Rasberry, Biggs, and Wedge larger roles, adds missions such as the quest to reach the second reactor, and turns the journey through the Shinra building into a longer sequence. The game also introduces the Whispers, mysterious hooded entities that intervene when events diverge from a fate resembling the original narrative. Their presence culminates in a confrontation on the Midgar Expressway and beyond it, where Cloud’s group faces the Whisper Harbinger. Sephiroth, the former SOLDIER whose influence is central to Final Fantasy VII, appears far earlier and more frequently than in the 1997 version. The game received the 2020 Game Award for Best RPG and was widely praised for its characters, combat, music, and recreation of Midgar. Its soundtrack includes new arrangements of Nobuo Uematsu’s original compositions; Uematsu also composed “Hollow,” the game’s theme song, with lyrics by scenario writer Kazushige Nojima and vocals by Yosh from Survive Said the Prophet. In 2021, Square Enix released Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade for PlayStation 5, adding improved textures and lighting, plus Episode INTERmission, a Yuffie Kisaragi-focused downloadable episode directed by Motomu Toriyama. It later came to PC platforms too.