Final Fantasy VII is one of the most iconic video games ever made. Released in 1997 on the PlayStation One, FFVII was one of the first video games to feature Full Motion Video (FMV) cutscenes in full 3-D. The game’s engrossing story, along with its cast of memorable characters give it a cult following that is still going strong more than 20 years after its original release. However, since the game was released so long ago, the graphics really haven’t aged well. It was the first of the Final Fantasy titles where the design used polygons. To say it looks rough to the eyes today is an understatement. However, in 2015, the company officially announced a remake. After almost no information for years, a new Final Fantasy VII remake trailer just dropped.

Final Fantasy VII Remake Trailer: A New Hope for Fans

The Legacy of Final Fantasy VII

Fans were clamoring for a Final Fantasy VII remake for years before the announcement. Once the series started implementing voice actors, and graphics went to the next level, it made sense to want a more modern incarnation of the FFVII universe.

Square Enix somewhat appeased the fans when it announced “Compilation of Final Fantasy VII” back in 2003. With this, the company revealed not a remake, but instead additions to the story that would span across multiple mediums and devices. The first title released was Before Crisis: Final Fantasy VII. This was a mobile game following the Turks that never saw release outside of Japan.

Next saw Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII, released for PlayStation 2. Here players followed the enigmatic Vincent Valentine after the events of FVII. Dirge of Cerberus gave fans their first look at upgraded graphics and voice acting for the series. Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII came next in 2007 for PlayStation Portable. This game was a prequel to the series, where players controlled Zack, the SOLDIER first-class who Cloud got his trademark Buster Sword from.

Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children was a movie released as a sequel to the game originally in 2005. It revisited the conflict between the Cloud and Sephiroth. Last Order: Final Fantasy VII is a short anime-style feature that fills in some of the blanks in the destruction of Midgar and Zack’s death. It isn’t technically canon, but most accept it as such.

What Fans Really Want

No doubt, all of the additions to the Final Fantasy universe are more than welcome by fans. The original Final Fantasy VII was full of extra content that fleshed out the story, so Crisis Core was the perfect addition to really spotlight the events that led up to the main game. Advent Children may not have been the best-written movie, but it gave fans what they wanted to see: more action with their favorite characters, including some of the supporting cast like Tifa and Barret. Dirge of Cerberus was highly experimental, but many enjoyed being able to control Vincent.

But what people really want is Final Fantasy VII. Not a sequel, or prequel, or spin-off. With such high demand for so long, people probably could have set in stone that a remake would come eventually. It was just a matter of when.

Proceed With Caution

But a feat that is as hyped as this one needs to be done with extreme care. A masterpiece like FFVII demands a remake that is also a masterpiece. And it must accomplish a paradox of being the same as the original, yet different from the original.

The company knows that most playing it will not be going through the world for their first time. The developers will need to find ways to make the experience new and fresh, while at the same time keeping the title true to its roots.

And times have changed. There are many situations and pieces of dialogue that people question will make it to the remake. The Don Corneo mansion scene is one questionable sequence. Cloud cross-dresses and goes into what is basically a brothel to confront the owner, who seemingly attempts to have sex with Cloud (who he thinks is a woman).

Barret, the only black character in the game’s dialogue is extremely stereotypical – he speaks in expletives and almost broken grammatically incorrect phrases. Tifa even says the “R” word once, something that is definitely unacceptable today.

However, these things shouldn’t be an issue. This is where the developers can build on and improve the game. Dialogue is easy to change, and although the scene with Don Corneo is controversial, it is far from the most obscene thing in games today.

Fans should trust the developers Tetsuya Nomura and Yoshinori Kitase to take their time balancing and modernizing the necessary aspects while preserving what made the game so great in the first place. (Just don’t expect a “This guy are sick” piece of dialogue).

Radio Silence

Pretty much all aspects of the game have been kept heavily under wraps for the entirety of its development so far. A teaser trailer dropped with the 2015 announcement but really didn’t show much. From there it was about three years before anything else was heard about the game. Fans started to doubt if it was really going to happen.

Until the latest trailer, this was the only glimpse people saw of what the game might look like:

The trailer looks great, but that is all fans have gotten since the original announcement about four years ago. It is not nearly enough to satisfy fans’ insatiable appetite for any news on the Final Fantasy VII remake. Even today, there is still no official release date.

Things got even worse by the end of 2018 when there were rumors that the entire project was scrapped and started over again. This is scary, but also shows that the company wants it done right or not at all.

A Light at the End of the Tunnel

Just when fans were starting to give up hope, Square Enix brought it back and showed there is progress with the game. Check it out below:

The trailer is promising, with smooth graphics, cutscenes with voiceovers, but also even some gameplay footage. Not only that, but the trailer teases more, noting that more details will be announced in June, likely during the annual E3 conference. Will fans finally get a release date? Stay tuned to find out!