After years of requests, teasers, and tech demos, the Final Fantasy 7 Remake is finally set to arrive this year, just barely making it within this console generation. The upcoming remake will come with some significant changes, aside from just updated graphics, including a brand new battle system, a controversial episodic release, and an updated story.
The story of Final Fantasy 7 has changed and grown over the last 23 years since the original released, and the upcoming remake will reflect the aging process with updated characters, bosses, and areas. Some of these changes so far seem to be minor, filling plot holes and changing the perspective on how the player might view certain scenarios, with other updates going as far as creating brand new characters.
Potential Final Fantasy 7 Remake Spoilers Follow
There isn't much information on the anything happening in the Final Fantasy 7 Remake beyond the first episode, except that Episode 2 is currently being developed. Similarly, when it comes to the new story of Episode 1, Square Enix has been slow to reveal what may be changing in the upcoming release, leaving plenty of room for speculation. However, with the first episode taking place wholly in Midgar, while also supposedly being the size of a full length game, some changes clearly need to be made to the story.
President Shinra Hologram
This is easily one of the most minor changes that can be seen in the early promotional footage and trailers, but it does show a change in how the early game antagonist, President Shinra, will act throughout Episode 1. While in the original, President Shinra acted as a passive antagonist, making plans behind the scenes and only really having two interactions with the main party, he does show up in person early on to pester the party.
A number of trailers for the Final Fantasy 7 Remake have shown that instead of appearing in person in those early scenes, it'll be a hologram set up by an array of drones that will be taunting AVALANCHE before sicking robots on the team and blowing up reactors. This actually leads into the next change, that at the moment isn't necessarily confirmed as it wasn't publicly announced, but the source of the leak is from a datamine of the (also leaked) demo.
Shinra Destroys Reactor
The following story beat is a leak pulled from a datamine of the leaked demo that has yet to officially release, so take it with a grain of salt, whether it sounds appealing or not. In this case, the change comes from how AVALANCHE chooses to attack the Shinra Corporation through the bombs they place on the Mako reactor in the opening mission of the game.
In the original, Barret enlists the help of Cloud to set off a bomb in a Mako reactor, destroying the structure and sacrificing innocent lives for AVALANCHE's cause. Updating the tactic in the remake, Barret appears to be attempting to play it a little safer with how he goes about destroying reactors and the bomb is instead intended to simply disable the power plant instead of blowing it sky high. However, thanks to a plan by the aforementioned antagonist, President Shinra, the Shinra Corporation detonates the explosions that kill innocent civilians in order to blame it on AVALANCHE.
Some have speculated that this is an attempt in the remake to take the innocent blood off of Cloud and co.'s hands, instead keeping Shinra as the heartless villain willing to kill innocents in order to achieve his goals. While it does paint AVALANCHE, and by proxy the player, in a better light than the original, the initial story mission did also go out of its way to mention that the only people still in or around the reactor when it goes off are Shinra troops. For now though, Final Fantasy 7 looks to be doubling down on President Shinra and his company being ruthlessly evil, while trying to spare Cloud and his companions from the consequences of their actions.
New Bosses
While this isn't necessarily a specific change in the story, the addition of new bosses does mean that there may be some new beats that lead up to more encounters. Again, Square Enix has been careful to keep a tight lid on what in the story is changing, looking to dangle the tantalizing details of the new game as one of the draws for veteran players. However, in a post on the Square Enix Blog, the development team did in at least confirm that the changes to the story and lengthening of the game will lead to new bosses appearing in Episode 1.
What these new bosses will look like and how they will change the story is yet to be seen. In the blog post, Director Tetsuya Nomura mentions one boss, M.O.T.O.R., by name who may be getting replaced as the final boss of Midgar, and therefore the final boss of Episode 1, which leads us to our last confirmed change coming to the Final Fantasy 7 Remake.
Roche
Announced along with a number of iconic FF7 screenshots that show off some fan favorite moments with the remake's new HD graphics, Square Enix revealed a brand new antagonist named Roche. According to his description, Roche is a SOLDIER Third Class, the lowest tier of Shinra's elite forces, who is obsessed with his motorcycle. Described as a bit of a blowhard, the new character is said to annoy his teammates and fellow SOLDIERs by screeching his back tire until smoke billows out behind him, leaving everyone in thick cloud of burned rubber.
At the moment, what Roche's role in the Final Fantasy 7 Remake will be is still up in the air with plenty of room for speculation. However, considering what Nomura mentioned in the Square Enix Blog post about re-imagining M.O.T.O.R. and a possible replacement for the final boss of Midgar, that might be a niche that Roche could fill. The new character's affinity for his motorcycle could be a clue in for how players might end up fending Roche off in order to escape Midgar at the end of Episode 1.
Final Fantasy 7 Remake is set to release on March 3rd, 2020, exclusively for PS4.