Final Fantasy 7 - End Game Review. Part 2

 Plot so far

As a person who played the Original game at least three times in the past, I was quite familiar with the story and the plot. Therefore, as I was playing the Remake, I was paying extra attention toward the plot and the story-line of the Remake. I believe that SQUAREnix was not planning to completely remake the Original game. And I was correct. There were some major chances to the plot when compared to the Original. I will state a few here and try not to add any spoilers.

The story in Midgar (at least in the Original game) served as a "introductory episode" for all its characters (except for Sid highwind, Vincent Valentine and Yuffie). Even Cait Sith (the robot fat cat controlled by Reeve) was somewhat showcased here in form of Reeve, trying hard to persuade his company to be more "humane" in dealing with the people. 

I was expecting the story to start off slowly, to ease everyone to the three main characters they could be using (Cloud Strife, Tifa Lockheart and Barret Wallace) but to my surprised, they started to introduce Sephiroth and his interaction with Cloud earlier in the game, just before they introduce Aeris for the first time (PS : I calls her Aeris based on Japanese Original game I played, while the English translation is Aerith). 

Furthermore, they showcased a new "entity" into the game which was not present in the Original - the Whispers, a strange, cloaked entities which seems to be invisible to everyone (except Aeris) at first and only through physical contact with Aeris (and those she had touched), they could see it later. Aeris passed it to Cloud, who passed it to Tifa (who probably passed it to Barret, Briggs, Jessy and Wedge later). 

Interestingly enough, I noticed that they did the same with Sephiroth/Jenova. First, only Cloud could see Sephiroth and we the gamers who viewed his first encounter at the streets of Midgar came to believe that he was hallucinating. Too much Mako, perhaps. They did just blew up a Mako reactor. 

But later, as Cloud touched others (starting with Tifa, and then Barret, then Aeris), they too have the ability to see Sephiroth. This is a major chance between Remake and the Original where the story held on to the illusion that only Cloud was able to see Sephiroth most of the time, all the way to the Temple of the Ancients where Sephiroth/Jenova made itself appearance before all party members. 

I always believe that the reason for this is because Jenova feared the Ancients (who managed to kill and imprison it in geological stratum for over 2,000 years - at least they did in the Original game). Does the Whispers have some connection to Sephiroth/Jenova? Or are they merely there to protect the "timeline" as Red had suggested? Now that Sephiroth/Jenova made itself known to the Last Ancient (Aeris), will there be some difference in how Aeris deals with the threat that appeared? Will Sephiroth/Jenova take new measures to handle Aeris before she become a threat to it? 

Furthermore, in the Original game, they did inform that Aeris maybe the last of her kind but in this game (Remake), they were shy away from putting that as fact, and even went as far as to showcase the Ancient Civilization before the Calamity. Is the game developers hinting that Aeris may not be the last of her kind? 

We have to wait for Part 2 to find out more.

In the Origin, they held on to the illusion that Cloud was chasing Sephiroth (another human) almost to the end. Many of the fans of the Origin were hell-bent for years arguing that Sephiroth had somehow took control of that ancient alien and "inserted" his own will. Remake had ended that debate once and for all, showcasing that it was Jenova, and not Sephiroth who the team was chasing after. This is good. It means that now that they could focus on other parts of the story.  

Another plot twist which I was surprised to heard was that in their first meeting, Cloud and Sephiroth both spoke and confirmed to each other that Sephiroth was dead (killed by Cloud with his own hands). This is another major difference between the Original and the Remake. In the Original game, Cloud was in doubt that he killed Sephiroth, which allowed Hojo to manipulate him into believing that Cloud was nothing more than a clone (of Sephiroth) and that the Nibelheim incident did not happened as Cloud had remembered it (because he was not there according to Hojo). 

All of the proof of Cloud's participation in the Nibelheim Incident was "erased" to show that Cloud was not there (physically) but had his memory implanted with false information to show that he was there and had participated in the incident. This is an indication that SQUAREnix is pushing the story of the Remake toward another (probably unknown) direction when compared to the Original.  

I suspect that SQUAREnix is working toward of tying up "loose ends". Since the end of the Original game back in 1997, the game company had created at least four other games related to Final Fantasy 7. The most direct sequel is Dirge of Cerebus (Playstation 2) while Before Crisis and Crisis Core (both for PSP) served as its prequel, thus introducing newer characters like Angelus and Genesis. 

The movie, Advent Children was another direct sequel to the Original game  as well. I do not think they could add Kingdom Hearts game into this mix since it is a partnership between SQUAREnix and Disney Studios.We cannot say for certain how far SQUAREnix attend to change the plot from the Original game but so far, from the first part itself, we can see that the change going to be quite significant. Therefore, it could only be fair to treat this game as a new Final Fantasy game (based on the Original).

I have not played the Remake Intergrade yet.