A Great Game Made Greater

by Bart Putz

Final Fantasy VII: arguably the most famous console RPG ever, and certainly one of the most influential. Not to mention, it is one of my favorites, which is why I was excited when I first heard that Square was considering doing a remake of it for the Playstation 2. I'm sure many of you have given thought to what you'd like to see in such a remake. These are my thoughts on the matter, so naturally this is all my opinion, and not fact. I'll go through the various aspects of the game one by one.

Graphics
Frst off, the biggest thing that could be improved by remaking the game, its graphics. When the game was first released, everyone was amazed at how beautiful it was. Go play it again - oh, how times have changed. What was groundbreaking in 1997 now leaves you wishing for visuals on par with Chrono Cross, or even Final Fantasy VIII.

While the backgrounds are still wonderful, the character models leave much to be desired. Their super-deformed look would be out of place in the level of detail possible with the PS2. Also, there are no textures on the models, they are only shaded. With all that Square has learned since making FF7, I think all the character models should be redone to have a more realistic form, and greater visual detail. Taking the models from the final duel bewteen Cloud and Sephiroth (or perhaps from Ehrgeiz) would be a start in the right direction.

Once the character models, and that includes enemies and NPCs, are redone, we can move on to the rest of the graphics. As I said before, the backgrounds are still good, but they could be rerendered at a higher resolution. Doing so would allow more details to come out in the pictures, and would make the objects seem more real. And finally, we have the FMV, a source of much delight and debate among gamers. Once again, rerendering them to bring out more details would be nice, but the main reason I would like to see them redone is so that the characters would have a consistent look throughout the game. In the original, between field graphics, battle graphics, and FMV, there are at least three versions of each character in the game. Also, with modern compression methods, the visual quality of the FMV would be improved.

Music
There isn't much to say about the music, except that I would love to have the instrument samples replaced with ones that sound much more real, and not like older MIDI samples. If you have heard the orchestrated tracks on the Final Fantasy VII: Reunion Tracks CD, you know the level of quality I'm hoping for. Perhaps even working some or all of those three tracks - "FF VII Main Theme" (the overworld music), "Aeris's Theme", and "One-Winged Angel" - into the game could be accomplished, though they'd have to be redone a bit to loop, instead of just ending.

Story and Localization
And now, the part I feel most strongly about changing, or not changing in some cases. I would like to see some effort put into clarifying parts of the story, mostly in the back story of the game. For instance, Yuffie is 16, and the war in Wutai took place 15 years in the past, yet she remembers how the town was before that war, and is working to restore its former glory. Inconsistencies like this need to be addressed. Perhaps the war merely started 15 years ago, and ended at some unknown time after that, but the game never says, at least not that I noticed. Other things that I'd like clarified include when Cid aborted the rocket launch, when Jenova was discovered, and when Sephiroth was born. Basically, a coherent timeline of events that took place before the bombing of Mako Reactor 1 would be nice, perhaps as an unlockable bonus for beating the game.

As for other parts of the story that contain ambiguity *cough*the ending*cough*, I would leave it exactly as it is now (except for it being rerendered as above). I see no need to change such a powerful scene, and in fact, altering it to explicitly show whether humanity survived or not would only serve to alienate those who held the opposite view after playing the original.

Of course, you knew this had to be in here somewhere. The single most controversial part of the game: The Honey Bee Inn, er, Aeris's death. Simply put, it stays. Not only is it absolutely vital to the story that she die (she cannot unlock the Lifestream in the ending if she's alive), but bringing her back would destroy Cloud's determination to destroy Sephiroth, as well as his finally budding relationship with Tifa. It was Zack who loved Aeris; Cloud loved Tifa since childhood, but was too shy to tell her so. Resurrecting Aeris, or even saving her from death, would be a travesty to the game greater than converting it into an Atari game.

Lastly, there is the translation/localization of the game. While overall the original was decent, there are some parts that definitely need fixing (i.e., when Barret explains running to Cloud, and Cloud and Aeris's conversation outside the Honey Bee), as well as a general spelling and grammar check on the whole. Adding some lines to clarify the timeline would be nice, as well. There is also the matter of Barret's dialect. While I did not personally find it offensive, I know many people did, and so perhaps it should be toned down somewhat. Barret is inherently a positive character, however, and his inner goodness shines past his way of talking.

Okay, so there is some miscellaneous stuff as well. For instance in the ending I would like to have Yuffie and Vincent shown. If they were inserted as real-time models over the FMV (it'd be a good trick to make them fit in the scene, though), they could "fix" the consistency problem with those two characters. Lastly, and I mean it this time, there is always the possibility that the game could be remade for a system other than the PS2. Personally, I can see no more fitting way for Square to resume development for Nintendo's systems than by giving them a (possibly exclusive) remake of the game for which they left Nintendo in the first place.

Well, that was a fun romp through my wish list for a remade Final Fantasy VII. I'm sure I've left out things that I'd thought of before, as well as things many of you would like to see in the game, so feel free to email me or even write a rebuttal to my ideas and present your own. I'll see you around.

For legal purposes, if Square uses any of these ideas in an FF7 remake, they can consider the ideas as their own.