Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is a weirdly great place to start the story

It sounds unusual to counsel that Remaining Fantasy 7 Rebirth — the second recreation in Sq. Enix’s weird, expansive remake challenge, which adapts the center third of the 1997 unique — could be a fantastic place to start out your relationship with this sprawling storyline. However actually, I feel it’s true. And it’s true as a result of the Sq. Enix growth workforce, led by unique director Yoshinori Kitase as producer, has made a completely impressed alternative for the sport’s opening chapter.

Rebirth begins with a flashback that serves each as a tutorial and as an origin story for Remaining Fantasy 7’s hero, Cloud Strife, and its primary antagonist, Sephiroth. It will get on the essence of each characters, in addition to shading in some backstory for Cloud’s childhood buddy Tifa Lockhart, and cuts straight to the dramatic and thematic coronary heart of the story. It leaves some lingering questions which might be key to understanding the playful, metafictional line that Kitase’s workforce is taking with this remake challenge. Plus, it’s simply the correct amount of wildly overwrought — an ideal introduction to Sq. Enix’s inimitable model of straight-faced, mythological camp.

In the event you’re acquainted with the unique, you’ve most likely discovered what I’m speaking about. Sure, Rebirth begins with the Nibelheim Incident.

Nibelheim is Cloud and Tifa’s hometown, a humble village clinging to the slopes of Mount Nibel. The mountain is house to a mako reactor run by Shinra, the despotic energy firm, which additionally operates a analysis station out of a mansion in Nibelheim. Within the occasions of the Incident, which takes place years earlier than the primary Remaining Fantasy 7 storyline, the mako reactor is malfunctioning, and Shinra’s elite footsoldier Sephiroth is shipped to analyze, together with Cloud, a teenaged new recruit on the time. What they uncover there places Sephiroth on a darkish path and units the engine of the storyline in movement.

Picture: Sq. Enix

There are such a lot of causes the Nibelheim Incident works brilliantly as a place to begin for Rebirth. As a flashback, it really works as a blank-slate introduction for a number of of the primary characters, with out the need to fill in all the things that occurred within the first recreation. And since Cloud is a beginner on this sequence, the sport niftily sidesteps what may need been the jarring necessity of inserting a tutorial into the center of an ongoing story.

The Nibelheim Incident additionally simply makes for a compelling, self-contained mission. The ascent of the mountain, climaxing in a boss combat and a dramatic reveal on the reactor, adopted by a hellish descent into souped-up melodrama — this can be a clearly articulated and satisfying throughline in each narrative and gameplay phrases. It’s a fantastic place to start a recreation as huge as Rebirth seems to be with out overwhelming the participant, and works simply in addition to a reset button should you’re rolling into it straight after a Remake playthrough.

I gained’t spoil what Sephiroth and Cloud uncover on the reactor. However, talking as somebody who has solely hazy recollections of a half-finished playthrough of the unique recreation, plus an ambient familiarity with its most iconic characters and story beats, I’ll say that this opening chapter of Rebirth snapped Sephiroth into clearer focus for me than ever earlier than: his motivation, his megalomania, his absurdly overstated cool. Seen all through from Cloud’s awestruck perspective, Sephiroth is portrayed as a stoic, ultra-competent struggle hero, which solely underlines how disastrous it’s when he cracks. I actually felt like I bought it. What’s extra, Sephiroth is absolutely playable as a member of the occasion for this mission, and it’s an indulgent pleasure to modify between Cloud and his superpowered idol in battle. The Sephiroth-Cloud dynamic — from hero and acolyte to homoerotically intense enemies — is nicely fleshed out, too.

Picture: Sq. Enix

The chapter is just not fully clear-cut, nevertheless, and dangles an attractive thriller that looms over the remainder of the sport — simply as Cloud’s recounting of the Nibelheim Incident did within the unique. In Rebirth’s retelling, this chapter is framed by a voice-over dialog between Cloud and Tifa, with every of them reminiscing concerning the occasions that transpired; Barret, Aerith, and Purple XIII are the listening viewers (together with the participant). What we play by is Cloud’s model, however after it’s over and we return to the current day, with Cloud and associates chilling within the nice metropolis of Kalm, Tifa says it’s not how she remembers issues taking place in any respect. Certainly, some parts of the story appear surprisingly inconsistent with Cloud’s current actuality. This performs into one of many unique storyline’s most intriguing mysteries, and in addition the metafictional and multiversal parts launched in Remake, whereby its diversions from the unique plot are recommended to be the product of somebody meddling with the timeline.

Rebirth’s opening chapter is an emphatic exclamation level adopted by a lingering ellipsis. For this recreation, it’s a fantastic scene-setter. For followers, as a lavish staging of one of many unique recreation’s most well-known what-the-fuck moments, it’s merely nice want success. For gamers who’ve a looser relationship with the story — and even no relationship in any respect — it’s one thing even higher: a wonderfully shaped couple of hours that teaches you all the things it is advisable to find out about what makes Remaining Fantasy 7 nice.

Remaining Fantasy 7 Rebirth shall be launched for PlayStation 5 on Feb. 29.