Game news You didn’t know this incredible detail from the Final Fantasy 7 saga, the links between these characters should have been radically different
When designing a video game, ideas flow but not all are good ones to keep. Sometimes, other ideas even replace the first ones. Something that we can see with the first Final Fantasy 7, released in 1997.
Final Fantasy VII: Tifa should not exist
Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth is the most anticipated game of 2024, according to the latest edition of the Game Awards. The title serves as a sequel to Fantasy VII: Remake, released in 2020, and continues the adventures (outside Midgard this time) of Cloud, Tifa, Barett, Aerith and Red XIII. A journey probably different from the original since Remake and the various trailers for Rebirth have reshuffled the cards compared to the 1997 game. Obviously, players of the first game wonder about the presence of this scene in Rebirth. The sequence might not see the light of day. Something that recalls all the changes caused along the way for the initial part. In 2012, on the occasion of the fifteenth anniversary of Final Fantasy VII, it was Testuya Nomura (behind the original story with Sakaguchi) who cites several anecdotes. Among them, we learn that Tifa should not exist:
Were there two heroines from the start?
This information-rich interview also teaches that Cloud, blond in Final Fantasy VII, was first illustrated with black hair. Still about the hero’s hairstyle, Nomura adds that he wanted to use as few polygons as possible (question of space on the discs) and had thought of a cut with the hair pulled back. But the latter did not please him and opted for a different hair style.
See Final Fantasy VII Rebirth on Amazon
After brothers and sisters, lovers?
With Nomura, it seems it’s all about the hair! With the release of Final Fantasy VII in 1997 and all the related products since, many players have noticed a similarity between Aerith and Sephiroth: They have the same haircut! Something logical since basically, the two characters had to be brothers and sisters:
At first, Sephiroth and Aerith were going to be brother and sister, so I gave them similarities in their bangs. This aspect was abandoned during the first stages, but the bangs remained (laughs). I believe the original idea of them becoming siblings later became that Sephiroth was Aerith’s first love. Finally, Nojima (Kazushige, one of the other feathers behind FF7) thought of Zack, and everything was resolved.
With statements like that, one can’t help but think what the game would have been like without Tifa and with Aerith as Sephiroth’s (probably) half-sister. A thought process that players can continue to have with Rebirth, which also promises to change things. Definitive answer with the release of the title on February 29, exclusively on PlayStation 5.
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