final fantasy 7 ever crisis I never did finish Final Fantasy 7, got bogged down by random encounters, and eventually gave up. If I’d been 13 years old with all the time in the world maybe I would have, but even then it seems like disc one’s Midgar is the part most players reminisce about. This is why the remake turning that cyberpunk city opening into its own 35-hour modern prestige videogame sits fine with me.
In Final Fantasy 7, Remake Cloud still acts all stoic and alienated, but the contrast between that and the goofy world he’s in feels more deliberate. This is a place where poor people get around by riding giant chicken birds, where the manifestation of pure evil is a walking house that shoots missiles, and if you get in trouble you can summon a tiny cactus badass to help out. It’s hard to be Captain Serious Business when a lizardman turns you into a toad, or you have to call on Fat Chocobo in a boss fight.
Final Fantasy 7 Ever Crisis
The remake rubs Cloud up against the setting’s goofiness in a self-aware way, especially in sidequests involving the children of the slums. He wants to be a mercenary, but half his jobs involve rounding up or working directly for the local kids. He competes in their whack-a-box game, tracks down their missing cats. One kid cosplaying as a fuzzy Moogle makes him collect “Moogle medals” to exchange for treasures. Cloud’s tough-guy act is constantly deflated by his circumstances, and not just in that one bit where he puts on a dress.
Eventually, Cloud starts offering the kids a “special discount on toad kings” and giving advice on how to follow your passion. Contrasting a hardened hero with innocent kids is a classic storytelling move, from Lone Wolf and Cub to The Mandalorian, and in Cloud’s case, it forces him to act like an adult instead of the moody teenager he has the mental age of—to be a human instead of a stereotype.
This all happens in the first couple of sidequest hubs, areas where a lot of the remake’s new additions take place. First Tifa and then Aerith drag Cloud around their neighborhoods, introducing him to everyone. Tifa’s landlady is particularly unimpressed, telling her not to bother with a guy who has no personality just because he’s got a “big sword”, nudge, nudge.
These sequences add a lot to Midgar, which can sometimes feel like a nonsensical mash-up, with old-fashioned pickup trucks alongside cyberpunk motorbikes, cowboys, and wizards. The remake doesn’t make Midgar realistic, but it does show enough of the ordinary life of its inhabitants that you care whether they get blown up. You want to save these gangs of misfit urchins and feisty matrons by fighting for them.