Reimagining a seminal JRPG for the genre is one thing, but remaking the entire game under completely different development conditions over 20 years later is much more than that. Ever since the PS3 tech demo shown at E3 2005, fans had asked for a modernized reimagining of Final Fantasy 7, excited at the prospect of what a modern interpretation of the game would look like. A decade later, at E3 2015, Square Enix revealed to fans what they had been asking for since that PS3 tech demo. Obviously, with a huge game announcement like that comes huge expectations, for the actors just as much as the developers.
Aerith's voice actor Briana White understood this very well. In an interview with Game Rant, Briana White sat down to discuss one year post-Final Fantasy 7 Remake. White talked about her experience dealing with the pandemic, the explosion in popularity of her content creation brand Strange Rebel Gaming, the release of Final Fantasy 7 Remake, as well as discussing her role as one of gaming's most iconic female leads.
GR: It’s been a year since Final Fantasy 7 Remake has come out, we’ve gone through an entire pandemic. Whether it’s related to the game or not, how have you been feeling with one full year of working-from-home?
BW: Well, in a very general sense, I could not be more grateful that Final Fantasy 7 Remake came out when it did, because I am a content creator and a streamer as well. Being able to occupy my brain and my heart with something so rewarding and fulfilling as streaming a game that I play a voice in was just the perfect distraction. That was the case for me, it was exactly what I needed in order to keep my mind from going crazy in those early days of the pandemic.
I know from what I’ve heard from a lot of the people who watched that playthrough with me on Twitch, that it was exactly the case for them as well. I’m so grateful that not only I had what I needed, but that I could hopefully provide a little bit of respite for everybody else who needed it too.
GR: I remember there was the announcement on Twitter and your YouTube video, where you talked about being in FF7 Remake. But then, going into it post-release, I remember that time where you were on Twitch, and it was that first big reaction that you were having. You had a sub goal of maybe like 200/250, and it was as if the number had skyrocketed above that. Do you remember what your thoughts were in that moment? Where all these fans were coming together and expressing love and support for this game just a year ago?
BW: I have to be honest. It was a little... "A little" [laughs]. It was very overwhelming, and I would have to turn the stream off, and I would have to just close my eyes and breath, and just remind myself that it’s okay that all these people feel so much love for the game, for the character, and for my work and want to support me.
There’s a little element of, when you have a good thing, when you have success come your way, I don’t actually think it’s a normal reaction to think "Ah yes, I deserve this." I think it’s much more human to say "There’s no way that this is my life. There’s no way I deserve this, I better self-sabotage this immediately." That’s absolutely the direction that my brain wanted to go, and I had to actively counteract that because it was extremely overwhelming.
I feel really, really fortunate that enough people came for Final Fantasy 7 Remake, but stayed for the rest of my content. I feel very, very fortunate for that.
GR: I’m sure things would’ve started moving very fast after that, right? Because you had been doing content creation for a long time before that, and then, to have this overflow of support, did that change the direction of any of your content creation after that? Did you move into a completely new branch of content that you weren’t expecting?
BW: That’s a really interesting question. I would probably say that my content is mostly the same as when I was making content back in 2015. The really, really big dramatic difference is that with a larger audience, I believe, comes a larger responsibility. I became aware that younger people were watching my streams as well. And Square Enix being one of my employers, I obviously wanted to make sure that all the content that I made for them revolving around the game was family-friendly, and was as enthusiastic, as positive, and wholesome as possible.
So mostly I made a choice to polish things up a little bit, you know, a lot less cursing than in my previous content. But that’s really it. We still had as many laughs and goofs and cries as we’ve had in any of my previous playthroughs.
But as far as how busy I’ve been, the busyness-level of my content creation has skyrocketed as well. Which is really, really fortunate too because acting is my career, and pretty much all on-camera work took a really long pause when the pandemic started. I actually hadn’t had an in-person audition for an entire year until just last week. Yeah, so acting really paused for quite a long time, so I’m really glad that streaming kicked off and was able to pick up the slack. I like to stay busy, I like to work hard, so it was good to have something to focus on.
GR: Do you remember what your content creation plans were like pre-Final Fantasy 7 Remake? Did you have any aspirations that you were always striving towards? Did you have any major plans that were side-tracked or changed because of Remake?
BW: Yes, I mean, when I became involved in Final Fantasy 7 Remake, everything became about Final Fantasy 7 Remake. As a content creator, I love narrative games, I love story games, but I had never played a JRPG before. So that was a little bit different. We had played a lot of Life is Strange, we played Heavy Rain, The Last of Us. Kind of the big games that I was most excited about were The Last of Us Part 2 and Life is Strange 2.
You know, with Final Fantasy 7 Remake, I wanna say it took over, but it’s not like it wasn’t exactly the right thing to do. It’s not like it wasn’t the best possible situation for me, because it really perfectly blended my loves, my passions. Me being able to voice a video game, to act in a video game, is the two things that I was doing for the past five years. I had been acting on one hand, content creating on the other hand, in video games. So to be acting in a video game was the perfect blend of what I was already doing.
It almost felt like a culmination, like it was the inevitable outcome of the two things that I was doing, in sort of... a perfectly faded kind of way. So yeah, the other content definitely took a slower turn, we’re still playing through The Last of Us Part 2, we’re still posting Life is Strange 2 on my YouTube channel. So everything’s kind of the same, it’s just, I had to make room for a big, new, exciting part of my life.
GR: You said you had never played a JRPG before, do you remember how much experience you had with the original Final Fantasy 7 prior to jumping into the role? Had you played the game before? Or was it you got the role and then you did your research?
BW: I never played Final Fantasy 7 when it came out. I was a Nintendo girl back in the day, and so I played a lot of the Zelda franchise, I had played Ocarina of Time, Majora’s Mask. I was playing Mario Party and Smash, instead of anything on any other consoles.
Fast-forward, my first Final Fantasy game was Final Fantasy 14, which is obviously really different because it’s an MMO, but I obviously fell in love with it. I started playing right after Heavensward came out, and that game just struck me right in the heart, pulled me in, and sucked the life out of me. I have something like 1200 hours in that game. That’s one of my top favorite games of all time, for sure. When Final Fantasy 15 came out, I did do a YouTube Let’s Play of Final Fantasy 15, and so that’s all up on the channel. So that was pretty much my experience with Final Fantasy when I got the audition.
They kept everything really, really secretive when we got the audition. I don’t think they told us the name of the game, and I don’t think they told us the name of the character, but I knew, just from the audition materials. With what little they gave us, I knew exactly who I was auditioning for. So immediately, the research began.
I watched a good portion of Advent Children, I watched a number of Let’s Plays on YouTube, and a bunch of synopsis summaries, I did a lot of reading on the character. Yeah, so a lot of research went in even before the audition, even before I had booked it, because I knew what a big deal it was when I got the audition materials. I knew immediately, this is one of the biggest, coolest auditions of my entire life. And I was not wrong! [laughs]
GR: For sure! Do you remember what kind of context clues they gave you? Was there a moment where it clicked? Or was it, like, over time you kind of started to realize it? I don’t know if they put like “Give’s man with big sword flower,” and then you were like “Oh okay, that’s it!”
BW: Um, I knew as soon as I got the audition materials, but I don’t exactly remember what they included. I know everything was super secretive, I know they didn’t give us the title… They definitely gave us some sides to read, that’s pretty standard, I might’ve known from the sides. Yeah, it was such a long time ago, I can’t remember exactly.
All I can say is, it’s a good thing that I knew video games, because I’m glad I was able to know what I was auditioning for. Even the audition was under NDA, so I knew, as soon as I got that NDA and I read it over and I signed it, I knew that if I didn’t book this, I would never be able to tell anyone that I even auditioned for it. And I don’t know if that was part of my motivation for working so hard for that audition. I was like ‘This is the coolest thing I’ve ever done, and I’m not going to be able to tell anyone? What?’ Luckily, I booked it, and now I don’t have that issue.
GR: Was that hard? Not being able to even, like, hint at it to some of your friends or family members?
BW: No, and the reason why, is because I wanted the role more than I wanted to tell people I got the role. [laughs] It was a very clear line, I said, "If I don’t wanna get fired, I’m going to keep my mouth shut."
GR: I remember going to PAX, and there was a meet up there for Final Fantasy 7 Remake right?
BW: It was the last week of February, and most of the country [had] shut down the second or third week of March. So, in the last weekend of February, we were already aware that there was a chance that Coronavirus had spread to the U.S. And so, I do remember PAX East, we didn’t know what we know now. We are very fortunate that, at least, none of the cast that was there got sick. It was awesome, because it was the only convention that we really got to do in 2020 for the game.
I also got to do KupoCon in Vancouver, in November of 2019. So I did KupoCon Vancouver with my role as Aerith having been announced, but not the game having been released. And then we did PAX East. I had convention appearances on contract for every month, or couple of months for 2020, and they all got cancelled.
Still, it was just one of the coolest things I've ever gotten to do, the signings at PAX East with John Bentley [Barret Wallace], and Britt Baron [Tifa Lockhart], Erica Lindbeck [Jessie Rasberry], and Gideon Emery [Biggs]. To be able to feel all that love from all of the people there, to be able to be in the presence of so much passion, it's truly like a profound experience.
GR: You had a lot of TV and Film experience prior, so jumping into the booth for the first time, what was that like? How often was it the case where you were recording your lines solo? Was it weird doing voiceover purely by yourself?
BW: Well, it’s really fun, honestly. As an actor, you are already doing everything that you can when you’re on camera to remember your lines, be in character, interact with your blocking, if you have to move from place to place. You have all of this going on in the back of your mind, but at the absolute core of it, you have to live realistically when you’re not in the circumstance that you actually are in.
So, being able to do that in voiceover was a fun new challenge for me. The acting part didn’t come as hard to me as some of the other little details. My experience was in acting, my background is in acting, so the acting part of it, I didn’t necessarily need someone else to be in the booth with me to speak realistically and have a conversation with another character. But, the rest of it, voiceover was completely foreign to me.
So even the little things they had to pretty much teach me in the booth, and I have to credit the directors for being so patient with me, because little things like you have to turn your head when you’re raising your volume, or when you are saying certain explosive consonants so that you don’t get wind on the mic.
Little details like that, and how to speak so that you don’t have any vocal knock sounds coming into the mic. All those little tiny things. What kind of temperature water best suits me. Cold water can kind of constrict your vocal chords, and so hot tea might be good. Some people really like honey, but for me, honey makes me kind of clammy. So all those little tiny details I had to learn in an extremely top-level competitive environment for the first time. That was really, really a lot, that was a really big challenge for me.
It felt like, because this was my very first voiceover experience, it was extremely strange to have zero experience, but be thrown into basically the NASCAR of voiceover. That’s how it felt. I was like, I need to learn how to be the driver, and the car, and the pit crew, all at once. It was wild.
GR: One interesting question that got brought up in the KupoCon stream from March, your opinion actually differed pretty greatly from some of the other actors in the cast. Other castmates had mentioned that, when they hop in the booth, they prefer their critical distance to their performance.
For you, on the other hand, you were jumping in and celebrating the game on release and streaming the game all the way through. You had your viral reaction, which was very public-facing and received a ton of love, is there any particular reason why you'd prefer to jump right in and find your performance in the game for the first time?
BW: I think being a content creator has really helped me with that. In order to succeed as a content creator, I think one of the things you have to do is watch your own content. You have to be able to separate what you’re doing right, and what you’re doing wrong, from your own feelings of self-doubt, self-worth, self-value, self-skill, talent. I think a lot of us don’t see ourselves very clearly, and don’t see what other people see in us.
Being able to watch yourself, effectively, is an extremely valuable skill as a content creator. Being able to watch your content back and say "Wow, I was being so boring there," and knowing that that’s just the truth instead of hating on yourself unnecessarily. Some people listen back to their voice and they go "Oh my gosh that’s horrible, I hate that, that’s not what I sound like in my head." But if you do it for five years, you suddenly know what you sound like.
You’re not going to be surprised after five years of doing it, and you’re going to be able to sort through those kind of negative self-feelings that are natural to being human. And then, put those aside, and say "Ok, thanks for that brain, but they’re not helpful right now," and move forward in a truly accurate, critical lens, so that you can perform better. So that’s a skill I’ve developed over many years of practice. I think that’s one of the reasons why I can watch myself and it’s not painful, and I’m not overly critical of myself.
But beyond that, beyond the kind-of practical aspect of it, my content has always been about sharing. The games that I play, I don’t play because I’m good at them. I don’t play because I have some knowledge to give. I play because people want to experience something for the first time, again. So me sharing my genuine, unaltered, first-time opinion of something, my first time experience of something and recording that and putting it up on YouTube is a type of sharing that I do consider to be a generous act for my viewers.
My viewers, all I hoped was that it would bring them some sense of joy, some sense of… Knowing that life can be limitless and beautiful, and surprise you in ways you never expected. Because that’s how my life has been, and that’s what that moment was for me. It was an unbelievable moment of "Wow, everything came together in the most perfect way." I could not have planned this. It was just perfect. I thought, I need people to know out there that their life can be like that, they just have to see it. They just have to keep trying. They just have to do what they love. I needed that message to get out there, I still do.
And how perfect is it, that it's Aerith. Her character represents that, straight from Square Enix's mouth: Aerith is hope. The fact that I could live her "hope" through the fact that I wanted to be a voice actor, but no one would let me. Then I just get this audition with zero experience, and I get to live this life that I live? what? It's like cosmic, there's no other way for me to describe it. When I say I couldn't have planned it, there's no way it could've been more perfect. Aerith's character represents this, and I've always known from the very second that I booked the role, that this moment, this message of hope doesn't belong to me. It's not something just for me, it has to be shared.
GR: Anything about Aerith's character development or personality that you think in the Remake should've changed? Was there anything that you regret or would've changed?
BW: I can talk a little bit about how we came to the character. Without spoiling anything, Aerith has a particular legacy. There’s no escaping that legacy, the second that you Google her, right? You know what her story is, because her story is so impactful. Everyone remembers where they were when they experienced it, and I think that’s incredibly beautiful, but it also affects her character very deeply.
What’s interesting is that, in any piece of art, it’s made a certain way, and then it’s perceived a certain way. Once art is perceived, it belongs to the person who perceives it, and it changes. Aerith’s character kind of transformed, I believe, over time. I kind of came into the experience, the very first few recording sessions, with this version of Aerith as her character has transformed through time. Not how she was when it all began, not where her character starts.
We actually had to pause the recording session for a little bit and have a really good conversation, me, the director, and the writer, they had to kind of explain to me that this is where Aerith’s story begins. This is how her character begins, this is where she’s come from, and she doesn’t yet know where she’s going. No character does. And even if they do know where they’re going, you don’t act it out that way. The strongest acting choice is always the character doesn’t know what’s coming up, they’re living in the moment.
So, as far as regrets, or is there any way I wish her character was, I love her character. I love her almost child-like playfulness, juxtaposed with the sort-of deeper sense of faith, and trust, and hope that is very wise, and very ‘ancient.’
There’s that juxtaposition in her where she is incredibly sweet, and she represents life, and flowers, and nature. But she’s also snarky and sassy, and tough, because of the world that she grew up in. She has her own coping mechanisms. She’s an incredibly full, well-rounded character. She’s an actor’s dream, if I’m being real.
Would I change anything about her? No way, no way! What a big ego I’d have to have! Like I said, she doesn’t belong to me. She’s had voices before, she’s had twenty-some years of iterations, versions, appearances, there’s no hand that I have in changing the way she came out. She’s perfect.
GR: What's your hype level for the Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade version on PS5? Are you stoked or curious about Episode Yuffie?
BW: I'm super curious, and I'm really excited. I cannot wait to play it when it comes out, and I can't wait to get to know Yuffie. A lot of my research has been on the characters that we've seen so far; Cloud, Tifa, Aerith, Barret. Not a lot of my research has been focused on Yuffie, but just watching the trailer, she looks so spunky, so fun. Her combat style looks super fascinating, too. I'm really excited to get my hands on her playstyle, because she's sort of hands-on, close and fast like Tifa, but she also has these weapons and abilities that are totally different.
Man, I watched the trailer and just about died. I'm so excited, and it's weird, the same thing is happening with Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade, as was happening back with the original back in last April when it first came out. I'm excited as someone who's involved in the making of it equally as I'm excited outside of that, as just a gamer, who just wants to play a good game. Equally excited in both ways, which is super surreal.
GR: Anything else you wanted to put in there on the way to Intergrade's release?
BW: Well, I was lucky enough to procure a PlayStation 5, so I certainly will be playing Intergrade on my Twitch channel and then uploading those playthroughs to YouTube. So there's plenty of Final Fantasy content coming from me. Yeah, other than that, like you said at the very beginning, this has been a wild ride. I feel very lucky and very grateful to everybody who loves this game, and loves these characters, and just allows me to be a small part of that.
Briana White streams on Twitch as Strange Rebel Gaming, as well as uploads gameplay to YouTube.