In 1997, Final Fantasy VII opened with a bombing in the megacity of Midgar — and changed video game history forever. More than two decades later, Square Enix rebuilt that legend from scratch, with one bold decision: the first part of the remake project would retell only the Midgar section — just the first few hours of the original — and expand it into a complete 30–40-hour game. Every street and every side character is explored in depth. And most importantly, this is not a faithful copy. A new force appears inside the story itself — hooded spectres called the Whispers — whose sole purpose is to force every event to unfold exactly as it did in the original 1997 game.

Final Fantasy VII Remake was released on April 10, 2020 for PlayStation 4, directed by Tetsuya Nomura alongside Naoya Hamaguchi and Motomu Toriyama, produced by Yoshinori Kitase — the director of the original — with story and scenario by Kazushige Nojima. It is the first mainline entry in the series to fully embrace real-time action combat, arriving after Final Fantasy XV and paving the way for the even more action-driven Final Fantasy XVI. The upgraded Intergrade version launched on PlayStation 5 in 2021. But what kept Remake talked about for years is not its graphics: it is the final ten minutes, when the characters realise they are living inside a story that has already been written — and decide to tear it apart.

The setting is still Midgar, the circular megacity ruled by the Shinra Electric Power Company. Shinra drains Mako — the life energy of the planet — to generate electricity, and the city is split in two: the wealthy live atop a gigantic steel "plate" suspended in the sky, while the poor crowd into dark slums underneath, never seeing the real sky. Only one small group dares to resist Shinra: AVALANCHE. And the story begins when they hire a cold-blooded mercenary who claims to be a former First Class SOLDIER: Cloud Strife.

📌 Quick summary: Cloud Strife, a mercenary in Midgar, joins the resistance group AVALANCHE to bomb Shinra's Mako reactors. When Shinra drops the Sector 7 plate to crush AVALANCHE and seizes Aerith — the last descendant of the Cetra — the party storms Shinra headquarters to rescue her, witnesses President Shinra murdered by Sephiroth, and watches Rufus seize power. In the end they defeat the Whisper Harbinger, break the fate that forced their story to follow the original, and leave Midgar for an unknown future.

Chapter 1: Mako Reactor 1 — an explosion far bigger than planned

On the opening night, Cloud joins AVALANCHE leader Barret Wallace and three young members — Jessie, Biggs and Wedge — to infiltrate Mako Reactor 1. Cloud introduces himself as a former First Class SOLDIER, a member of Shinra's elite super-soldier force turned mercenary, and makes one thing clear from the start: he is only in it for the money, not for the planet or any cause. After defeating the Guard Scorpion protecting the reactor core, Jessie plants a bomb of her own making — by her calculations, just enough to destroy the core.

But the actual explosion is many times larger — a detail Remake develops far beyond the original: through surveillance monitors, Shinra's executives watched the entire mission and deliberately let the reactor destroy itself at maximum scale. President Shinra wanted Midgar to witness a genuine catastrophe, so he could frame AVALANCHE as terrorists working for the enemy nation of Wutai and cast Shinra as the city's saviour. Fleeing through the burning streets of Sector 8, Cloud catches a first glimpse of a flower seller amid the chaos — and around her, floating hooded shadows that seemingly only he can see. She presses a flower into his hand, then vanishes.

Chapter 2: Seventh Heaven and the ghosts no one else can see

AVALANCHE's base is the Seventh Heaven bar in the Sector 7 slums, run by Tifa Lockhart — Cloud's childhood friend from the village of Nibelheim. Tifa is the one who brought Cloud the job, and the one who persuades him to stay: the rest of his fee, a promise the two children made beneath the water tower years ago, and the fact that AVALANCHE is desperately short-handed. Cloud reluctantly accepts a second mission: bombing Mako Reactor 5. Between missions come quiet, ordinary moments — Cloud running errands around the slums, watching Barret dote on his adopted daughter Marlene — the peaceful everyday life that Shinra is about to crush.

Then the ghosts appear in the open. They swarm the Sector 7 slums and attack the party — faceless entities drifting like spectres, barely visible to ordinary people. In the chaos, a Whisper injures Jessie's leg, ruling her out of the Reactor 5 mission; Cloud is forced to take her exact place. Around this time, Cloud also begins to hallucinate about Sephiroth — Shinra's legendary hero, believed dead for years — appearing amid flames and whispering to him. No one else can see Sephiroth. Only Cloud — and he has no idea why.

Chapter 3: Mako Reactor 5 and the fall into a bed of flowers

The second mission is no secret infiltration. Shinra knew everything in advance — the leak came from the first bombing itself — and turns Reactor 5 into a stage: cameras broadcast the "AVALANCHE attack" live across the city, and President Shinra personally addresses the party through a screen, declaring they will be sacrificed to his anti-Wutai propaganda play. At the end of the road, Shinra deploys the Airbuster — a colossal war machine assembled right before the party's eyes, though they managed to sabotage some of its components beforehand.

The battle on the narrow bridge ends when the Airbuster explodes and Cloud is hurled off the edge, plummeting toward Sector 5 far below. But instead of shattering on concrete, he crashes into a bed of flowers in an abandoned church — and wakes up under the gaze of the flower seller from the night of Reactor 1: Aerith Gainsborough. The original's fateful meeting now truly begins — just as a man in a black suit walks into the church: a Turk, come to take Aerith "home".

Chapter 4: The flower seller and the men in black suits

The Turks are Shinra's intelligence and dirty-work unit — the people in black suits who carry out every mission that cannot be made public. The man who comes to the church that day is Reno, a brash red-haired Turk tasked with capturing Aerith and bringing her back to Shinra headquarters. The reason Shinra has hunted the flower seller for years lies in who she is: Aerith is the last descendant of the Cetra — the ancient people who could commune with the planet and lead the way to the "Promised Land", which Shinra believes to be a place of endless Mako. She escaped Shinra with her birth mother Ifalna at the age of seven, grew up in Sector 5 under her adoptive mother Elmyra, and has been watched from afar ever since, because Shinra needs her cooperation willingly given.

During the fight in the church, just as Cloud is about to strike Reno down, a Whisper suddenly intervenes, shields the Turk and sweeps both Cloud and Aerith out of the church. For the first time, the Whispers' strange nature is laid bare: they do not save the good or kill the wicked — they intervene whenever events are about to stray from some invisible script. Reno is not allowed to die here, so he does not die. Escaping the Turks, Aerith hires Cloud as her bodyguard for the price of one date, takes him to her flower-filled house in the slums, and asks him to escort her through Sector 6 back to Tifa in Sector 7. The seemingly fragile flower seller has lived her whole life under Shinra's eye — and still chooses to smile and sell flowers for whatever people can pay, because to her, flowers are a symbol of rebirth.

Chapter 5: Wall Market and the plot beneath Don Corneo's mansion

The road back to Sector 7 passes through Wall Market — the chaotic entertainment district of Sector 6, where the only law is money and the ruler is Don Corneo, the obese crime lord with the sick habit of choosing a new "bride" from young women every night. There, Cloud and Aerith spot Tifa riding a chocobo carriage straight into Corneo's mansion — alone. Tifa explains: she volunteered as a bride candidate to get close to Corneo and extract information, because rumours say Shinra is preparing a devastating reprisal against Sector 7. To get inside the mansion, Aerith registers as a candidate too, and Cloud — after a farcical journey through the hands of Honeybee Inn owner Andrea Rhodea — must appear in a dress as a third "bride". The original's most famous comic sequence is elevated by Remake into a full musical performance.

But the reward after the laughter is chilling news. In his private chamber, Corneo — thinking he is choosing a wife — lets slip Shinra's plan: the company will detach the entire Sector 7 plate from its support pillar and drop it onto the slums below, wiping out AVALANCHE and the entire population in one "accident", then blaming Wutai. There is no time to panic: Corneo springs his trap and drops all three into the sewers beneath the mansion. Shinra does not intend to negotiate or arrest anyone — it intends to bury tens of thousands of people alive just to eliminate a resistance group of a few dozen.

Chapter 6: Sewers, the Train Graveyard, and a race against death

The shortest route back to Sector 7 runs through the sewers and the Train Graveyard — a scrapyard piled with abandoned train carriages from the days when Midgar was still under construction. The place is rumoured to be haunted, and the rumour is right: the party keeps glimpsing children playing among the carriages, before the monster Eligor — a headless horseman on a chariot of death — blocks their path. Aerith is strangely familiar with this place: as a child, after escaping Shinra, she used to play here, and had friends who, in hindsight, may not all have been alive. That small detail makes the Train Graveyard one of Remake's quietest and saddest chapters.

Emerging from the graveyard, the three see a Turks helicopter circling the Sector 7 pillar — the plan has already begun. Meanwhile, back in the slums, Aerith does one decisive thing: she finds Marlene, Barret's adopted daughter, and takes her to Elmyra's house in Sector 5 for safety. In exchange, Turks leader Tseng offers a deal: if Aerith returns to Shinra headquarters voluntarily, Marlene will be safe. Aerith accepts. When Cloud and Tifa race back to Sector 7, the battle for the pillar has already erupted — and Aerith is gone.

Chapter 7: The fall of the Sector 7 plate

The pillar holding up the Sector 7 plate is a colossal steel tower, and AVALANCHE had dug in there before Cloud's group arrived: Jessie, Biggs, Wedge and the others held off Shinra's forces and the two Turks Reno and Rude — the men ordered to trigger the plate separation manually. The battle climbs toward the top of the tower amid alarms and smoke. Wedge is hurled from a height into the rubble below. Biggs collapses on a steel stairway, telling Cloud not to look back. And near the summit, Jessie — the maker of both of AVALANCHE's bombs — breathes her last in Cloud's arms, saying she is glad that at least this time, she gets to die as someone who protected the slums, not as a nameless terrorist.

Cloud and Tifa reach the top a few minutes too late. Reno has already triggered the separation mechanism; Barret tries to stop Rude, but a Whisper binds his arms at the decisive moment — once again, the invisible force acts to make sure the tragedy must happen according to script. The gigantic plate tears away, ablaze, and crashes down onto the Sector 7 slums as the whole city screams. Thousands die in a single night. Seventh Heaven, Tifa's home, the whole neighbourhood the party had dinner in the day before — all of it becomes a sea of fire and ash. Standing on the ruins, Tifa sobs a question no one can answer: they fight for the planet, so why is it always the poorest who pay the price?

Chapter 8: Shinra headquarters and the battle that broke fate

With nothing left to lose, the party decides to do the craziest thing possible: climb the ruins of Sector 7 and break straight into Shinra headquarters — the 70-storey tower at the heart of Midgar — to rescue Aerith. In the laboratory floors, they find her locked in a glass chamber belonging to Professor Hojo — Shinra's head of science, who regards Aerith as "the last Cetra specimen" and plans to confine and study her for life. The party also frees Red XIII, a talking beast Hojo kept as a specimen for years, and comes across files on Jenova — the mysterious ancient organism Shinra dug up and mistook for a Cetra, the origin of the entire SOLDIER programme and of Sephiroth himself.

On the upper floors, tragedy follows tragedy: President Shinra is stabbed to death before the party's eyes by a hooded figure — a vessel carrying Sephiroth's cells — and Sephiroth himself appears, running Barret through with the Masamune. But as Barret lies dying, the Whispers swarm in and bring him back to life on the spot — because in the original script, Barret does not die here. Rufus Shinra, the president's son, lands on the roof by helicopter, duels Cloud, and calmly takes over the company while his father's body is barely cold. The party escapes onto the Midgar Expressway, defeats the Motor Ball machine at the end of the road — and there, Sephiroth waits, opening a portal into "Destiny's Crossroads".

Beyond the portal, the truth about the Whispers is finally spoken by Red XIII: they are the Arbiters of Fate — entities born of the planet to keep the timeline from straying from its set course, that is, from the exact events of the original story. Aerith admits she has sensed this for a long time — but still chooses to step forward, because "a future already written is also a prison". Together, the party defeats the Whisper Harbinger — the colossal embodiment of fate formed from the three Whispers Rubrum, Viridi and Croceo — amid flashes of future memories, images from the original story itself. Fate shatters. Afterwards, Sephiroth personally duels Cloud, and before vanishing, leaves behind a cryptic line about "seven seconds before the end".

The ending opens in morning sunlight beyond Midgar: Cloud, Tifa, Barret, Aerith and Red XIII stand on a plateau looking out at the wide world beyond the city — for the first time in their lives, no one, not even the player, knows for certain what happens next. And somewhere else — or somewhen else — the game reveals the unbelievable: Zack Fair, Cloud's old friend and benefactor, who was supposed to die in a final battle against Shinra troops outside Midgar, is standing up, carrying a delirious young Cloud on his back, and walking toward the city. Fate has broken, and the past is no longer intact either.

The fate of the characters

Cloud Strife ends Remake at the threshold of the real journey: still carrying the hole-riddled identity of a "former First Class SOLDIER", still haunted by Sephiroth, but for the first time he has true friends and a goal he chose himself — to pursue Sephiroth and stop him from destroying the planet. Barret Wallace loses his home and his bar and nearly his life, but is revived by the Whispers and remains the party's spiritual leader. Tifa Lockhart loses everything she built in Sector 7, and is the first in the group to openly ask whether AVALANCHE's way of fighting is right.

Aerith Gainsborough escapes Shinra and officially joins the journey — while also understanding the Whispers and the price of breaking fate better than anyone, though she keeps most of what she knows to herself. Jessie Rasberry dies on the Sector 7 pillar — the clearest confirmed death of the AVALANCHE trio. Biggs falls on the tower and is believed dead by everyone, but the final scene shows him waking in a sickbed, with Jessie's gloves and bandana placed on the nightstand beside him. Wedge survives the plate's fall, sneaks into Shinra headquarters after the party, and is swept away by a swarm of Whispers inside the building — his fate unknown. Sephiroth goes from a ghost in Cloud's head to a real enemy, manipulating both the party and the Whispers for purposes no one yet understands. Rufus Shinra becomes the company's new president, younger, colder and more unpredictable than his father. And Hojo, upon discovering that Jenova's body has vanished from his laboratory, merely bursts into mad laughter.

Common misconceptions

Does Final Fantasy VII Remake tell the whole story of the 1997 original?

No. Remake covers only the Midgar section — the first few hours of the original — but expands it into a complete 30–40-hour game. The story beyond Midgar continues in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, and the project is planned as three parts. Anyone expecting the final battle at the Northern Crater, as in the original, will have to wait for the trilogy's conclusion.

In return, "only Midgar" does not mean cut content: Remake adds entire chapters that were not in the original, such as everyday life in the Sector 7 slums, Jessie's past as an actress, and the Train Graveyard sequence rewritten as an emotional chapter of its own.

Is Remake just the original redrawn with better graphics?

No. Although most of the Midgar section's major events play out similarly, Remake weaves in an entirely new story layer about the Whispers and fate, changes several characters' fates, and ends with the characters breaking the original timeline. It is both a retelling and a continuation — something that only becomes fully clear in the final chapter.

Did Jessie, Biggs and Wedge all die in the Sector 7 tragedy?

Only partly. Jessie dies on the pillar in Cloud's arms — a clear and definitive death. Biggs also falls on the tower, but the final scene reveals he is alive and recovering. Wedge survives the plate's fall itself, reappears at Shinra headquarters, then vanishes when the Whispers sweep him away. Saying all three died is the original 1997 version of events.

Are the Whispers good or evil?

Neither, exactly. The Whispers are a neutral force of the planet with a single job: keeping events on the original timeline. They save Barret because he is not allowed to die yet, but they also bind his arms so the Sector 7 plate must fall on schedule. They are "arbiters" devoted to the point of cruelty — and that is exactly why the party has to defeat them to win back the right to choose.

Theories & mysteries

Is Zack alive in another timeline? — this is the fan theory with the most support, but it has not been officially confirmed within Remake: the ending shows Zack winning the battle in which he died in the original. The most famous clue is the Stamp mascot dog that flits past in Zack's scene, which is a completely different breed from the Stamp of the main timeline — a small detail many players believe marks two parallel timelines. Another reading is that it is the same timeline, rewritten from the past. Remake deliberately refuses to explain.

Is Remake's Sephiroth a Sephiroth who "knows the future"? — this is community speculation, not a fact confirmed by the game: Sephiroth in Remake appears far earlier than in the original and speaks in riddles as if he already knows every event — including the line about "seven seconds before the end", whose meaning no one has definitively decoded to this day (is it the length of a famous scene in Advent Children, or some other metaphor?). One popular theory holds that this is Sephiroth from after the original events, finding a way back into the past to change his defeat — in which case he and the Whispers are two opposing sides in the same war over the timeline.

How much does Aerith know? — the game strongly implies that Aerith can sense the original timeline and knows many events in advance, including the tragic fate the old script holds for her — this is lore planted deliberately, but never openly admitted by the character within Remake. The fact that she is the one who urges the party to break fate, knowing the price, gives Remake's Aerith an entirely new layer of tragedy compared to the original.

The legacy of Final Fantasy VII Remake

Final Fantasy VII Remake is one of the most ambitious remakes in gaming history: it proves that a "remake" does not have to mean preserving the original exactly, but can be a direct conversation between a new work and players' memories of the old one. The decision to split the story into multiple parts was once fiercely controversial, but the quality of the expanded Midgar — from its superb action-tactical hybrid combat system to Jessie, Biggs and Wedge being rewritten from fleeting side characters into people with families and dreams — convinced most fans. Sales of more than five million copies in its first year cemented Midgar's place in popular culture. And Remake poses the question that will haunt players until the final part — a question about the freedom the series has always pursued, from the job system in Final Fantasy V to Midgar's materia: now that fate is broken, will the tragedies that made the 1997 legend still repeat themselves, or this time, can the characters truly write a different ending?