Aerith's fate in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth and the trouble with remakes

This piece contains major spoilers for the original Final Fantasy 7 and Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. Please do not read unless you’ve finished Rebirth.

It’s hard to overstate how iconic Aerith’s death was in the original Final Fantasy 7. She may not have been the first main character to die in the series, but due to the immense popularity of the game on its release, her death certainly had the biggest impact. Its ripples continue in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, the recently released second part of the remake trilogy.

But why was her death so memorable? It’s a shocking moment, simply told. Shocking because a key character players have grown to love is stripped away; simple because it’s shown with stark clarity, the music halts like an in-take of breath until she slumps and sombre piano plays. It’s quietly dramatic and the image of Sephiroth’s almost comically long sword piercing her chest is unmissable. Then, moments later, we’re snowboarding down a mountain, as is the FF7 way.

A remake of this moment poses a conundrum. How do you recreate it to the same level of shock value? It’s impossible, and Square Enix knows it. Lightning doesn’t strike twice. If we know it’s coming, Aerith’s death is already devoid of impact.

So, in the spirit of maintaining the shock of the original, the developers’ big twist is to create a multiverse to keep us guessing. It serves multiple purposes: it provides a structure to step back and incorporate elements from across various spin-offs; it gives a narrative get-out for Aerith’s fate to keep us guessing; and it allows for comment on the very nature of what a remake can be, twisting the familiar into something fresh.

Rebirth is, on one level then, a game games – a self-referential experience about its own existence. Yet in doing so, Square Enix has risked alienating new and old fans alike.

This meta-narrative commentary running throughout Rebirth only fully works with prior knowledge of the original. So it’s laughable, really, for Square Enix to repeatedly insist the remake trilogy is welcome for newcomers. It’s not! FF7 is already a tangled web of storylines across multiple spin-offs that competes with Kingdom Hearts in the wtf stakes. Rather than simply retell the original, Rebirth folds in elements of Crisis Core, Ever Crisis, The First Soldier, and Dirge of Cerberus, with possible threads to film sequel Advent Children. Rather than the remake trilogy offering a definitive experience encompassing those storylines into a singular package, it assumes prior knowledge and takes things a step further into a multiverse. Maybe a step too far.