To coincide with Final Fantasy VII’s 23rd anniversary in Japan, Square Enix released an action-packed trailer for the Final Fantasy VII Remake. The trailer showered fans with details and teases, from the reveal of Red XIII to another look at the brand new SOLDIER character.
There are a few particularly interesting details to pick out of the new trailer, and we’ll go over each one in detail.
Sephiroth in Person
The scenes with Sephiroth in this trailer may seem innocuous, but there’s an important detail to point out; Sephiroth is there in person as he’s acknowledged by the whole party and not just Cloud.
In the original game, the party never actually saw Sephiroth while they were in Midgar. You saw the results of his Shinra Building slaughter, but you wouldn’t meet him in person until later.
Up until now, we weren’t sure if Sephiroth was just a figment of Cloud’s imagination in the Remake, but this confirms that the villain is present during the events in Midgar.
It remains to be seen how this expanded role will be handled in the Remake, but a later shot in the trailer shows Sephiroth seemingly assaulting the Shinra Building, after he turns into a whirlwind of the ghost-like creatures.
Expanded Honey Bee Inn
There are few Final Fantasy VII moments as memorable as Cloud in a dress, and it seems clear that this whole section will be expanded upon in the Remake. The Honey Bee Inn was an entirely optional area that you could visit in the original game, during the search for dress materials for Cloud.
The fact that it appears in the trailer like this means for one it probably isn’t just optional anymore, and it likely has a much bigger role.
In the original game the Honey Bee Inn was a brothel, but now it looks much more like a Cabaret Club.
Hojo Watching Cloud
One of the major causes of the events in Final Fantasy VII is Professor Hojo, the mad scientist who’s the mastermind behind SOLDIER and the Jenova Project.
One of the most interesting scenes of this trailer has Hojo watching the fight between Cloud and Sephiroth on a monitor, and once Cloud falls below saying “Thus is the hypothesis proven correct.”
Hojo is another aspect of the original game that doesn’t become truly important until quite a bit after Midgar, when you learn his true role in everything.
This scene suggests we may see more of his machinations early on, and he may have more of a link with Cloud this time based on the way he seems to be monitoring him.
Cloud With a….Gun?
There’s a split-second shot in the second half of the trailer that shows Cloud holding, well, a gun. It’s completely unclear what this gun is or does, but it looks like it could be some kind of grappling gun.
The scene that we see it in has the party running from a massive robot, and it almost looks like they’re trying to escape before being forced to fight. If it is indeed a grappling gun we might be seeing some kind of new gameplay feature, maybe like the grappling mechanic in Final Fantasy XV: Episode Ignis.
Jenova in a Cave
The end of the trailer shows us a climactic battle with Jenova, the intergalactic traveler whose cells created SOLDIER and Sephiroth. This is, yet again, something that didn’t happen in the Midgar section of the original game.
While you did encounter Jenova in Hojo’s Lab, the first battle with Jenova wasn’t actually until you were onboard the ship traveling to Costa Del Sol.
Even more interesting, however, is that this battle seems to be happening in some kind of expansive cave. Where exactly would this be? It could be some kind of complex under Hojo’s Lab, or perhaps it could even be the Northern Cave, a location very important to the story of Final Fantasy VII.
The Northern Cave was created along with the Northern Crater when the meteor containing Jenova landed on Earth thousands of years ago. We know this first part happens entirely in Midgar, but perhaps near the very end we start seeing the scope expand.
For more on the Final Fantasy VII Remake, make sure to check out our hands-on experience from E3 2019.
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