A bird flies over the desert, leading to the tableau of an industrial city. A wilted flower in a corner of the road. A child's eye catches the green, glowing exhaust fumes of a Mako reactor.
It is night time, and a girl with a basket of flowers stares at leaking Mako energy. Her green eyes open, and she wanders down an alleyway.
We know her as Aerith, but to the person experiencing Final Fantasy VII for the first time, she's just a flower girl wandering around the metropolis, being ignored by people too busy to notice her or her flowers.
I'm playing the PlayStation 5 version of Final Fantasy VII remake to celebrate the fact that there's a firm(ish) release date for the second part of the remake, Rebirth, which should be coming out early next year.
The iconic opening cut scene of Final Fantasy VII is reproduced in incredible detail, and the musical score booms triumphantly through my home theatre system and fills my body with shivers of nostalgia and Goosebumps. The soundtrack is really that good.
The game finally gives me control, and I'm ready to start my journey to save the planet. A large man with a gun for a hand tells me what to do. I comply. Thus unfolds the first mission of Final Fantasy 7.
Bombing a Mako reactor as part of the "branded" terrorist organisation, AVALANCHE, who just want to ensure that the greedy grubs at Shinra Electric Power Company don't kill the planet.
There's a few analogues between this fictional story and the real world.
Long story short, the first chapter of the game is over with explosions and fanfare, and your evasion of security. We are then met with some new content, some flashbacks; and an incredible amount of exposition that was not in the original Final Fantasy.
The Remake seamlessly blends these moments of story telling and gameplay. The cut scenes are probably pre-rendered; but they are just as good as the in-game visuals. It's all like a CG film, and it is brought to life by the Unreal Engine.
Character models are clean, gorgeous; and the sound design is exquisite.
There's one annoyance that I remember all too keenly. In events that are scripted and linear, your party will often walk at what is below a snail's pace, and this is frustrating, as it tends to extend out sections of the game that could otherwise be over quicker.
Whether this is a clever way to mask loading screens for new areas is not entirely known to me, but I hope that in Rebirth there is less of this. Otherwise, why bother making it interactive at all? Just do it in the background of a FMV, particularly if there is limited interaction of any consequence.
The weekend that follows (in my reality, not the game's) slipped away hour by hour as I was completely engrossed in the narrative, exploring the world with my favourite characters who are incredibly charming, charismatic, and well voice acted.
In some places, they're a bit over the top, but that's something that people should expect from Japanese development teams.
I am now wondering, thirty five hours of input later, if my choices and decisions in the Remake will make any impact to the 2nd part; and if my character's progression will transfer across.
Now that I've finished the mainline game, there's more to do - there's a sort of new game plus mode, called "HARD", where you can obtain additional abilities and more powerful... stuff. Probably to make the toughest bits of the game easier in hard mode.
I'll wait a little bit closer to the release of the Remake part 2 (ie, when I've got an actual, solid release date) - and I will square away that weekend to ensure that I can play it in its entirety in as close to one sitting as possible. I can't wait to spend more time in this universe I so dearly loved since I first experienced it in the late 90s.
Want more content from me?
Witness my futile efforts to play my Steam Game collection in alphabetical order.
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