The end of Final Fantasy VII Remake left many fans wondering just how much the new trilogy would change about the original PS1 game’s story. Rebirth proved just how faithful the developers at Square Enix were willing to stay to the original source material, while still throwing a couple of curve balls towards the second game’s end to keep players guessing.
With everything coming to a conclusion in Revelation, there’s no more kicking the can down the road. How much will the remake trilogy ultimately alter a story that fans have loved for decades?
“We haven’t altered the core of the story based on reactions at any given time,” Naoki Hamaguchi recently told Edge magazine (via Gamesradar). “It feels as though we’ve built up each title one-by-one without wavering from the central theme we established at the very start of the Remake series.”
He continued, “It wasn’t easy. I felt it was absolutely essential to avoid turning a masterpiece like FFVII into something that felt like my own personal fan project.”
While the remake trilogy has added a big meta dimension to the narrative with a ghosts called Whispers that try to hold the timeline to its intended destiny, and there have been plenty of additions to the world building overall, there’s no major plot point so far that’s diverged from the original.
“The real challenge wasn’t simply incorporating elements that differed from the original or introducing new interpretations,” Hamaguchi said. “It was constantly asking ourselves whether what we were creating could truly be called FFVIIR.”
The fanfiction response, on the other hand, would be to give fans what they’ve long hoped for: a way to save all of the game’s main characters and achieve an ending that’s much more “happily ever after” than the somewhat bleak and unresolved way things are left in the original. Games these days just don’t end the way FFVII did on the PS1.
How much can Hamaguchi and the team resist that urge? We’ll find out when the game arrives early next year.