Set two years after the climactic events of the original Final Fantasy VII, for gamers of a certain vintage, the 2006 CG film Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children was really all we had in the way of closure, if you can call it that. Visually stunning, if narratively nonsensical, it contained insane action sequences that are still incredible today. That Final Fantasy VII Remake largely succeeded in being a playable Advent Children is a testament to how good we've got things these days.
It should come as no surprise, then, to know that Advent Children has been on legendary Square Enix designer Tetsuya Nomura's mind. Nomura worked on the original FF7 l game as a monster designer and would go on to direct Advent Children (as well as Kingdom Hearts), so there's a pleasing symmetry here. Now, as director of Final Fantasy VII Remake, Rebirth, and presumably the as-yet-untitled third entry, Nomura has confirmed something that long-time fans have been dreaming of for years.
In an expansive interview with The Guardian, Nomura said, "If you play right through to the end [of the trilogy], it will link up [to Advent Children], so you don’t need to worry about that."
What are your memories of Advent Children? Does it still hold up in your reckoning? What do you think this "link" will be, and are you expecting more than just a wink and a nod? Find a cure for the Geostigma in the comments section below.
[source theguardian.com, via finalweapon.net]
Comments 24
I love Advent Children. I don't give two damns if it has the most Tetsuya Nomura stylistic and narrative tendencies that have ever been Tetsuya Nomura'd. LOVE it.
Eww no. Can Nomura please be put in charge of designing zippers instead of writing stories?
@thetraditional Lol must be because he's had to focus on his director roles. I do miss The Bouncer though!
Hahaha I liked it when I was a kid but it’s sh*t on almost every single metric. Painfully emo, entirely nonsensical, it’s basically everything that people assume FF7 is without playing it. I point to this and Crisis Core as the beginning of the ‘I am a massive fan of this franchise despite never actually playing the damn game’ movement. See also Persona 5.
Yes, Dirge as well please.
Well that does mean certain events need to happen if it's going to link up.
Remake already links in to Advent Children. The climax of the game is you fighting the three antagonists - their description says they're from a future that might not happen if you change things, something like that. And that they're fighting you to stop you basically "unmaking" that future, and thus them. One fights with a sword, one with guns, one with fists - same as the trio from AC. They then "summon" Bahamut. Then you have to fight Sephiroth in an incredibly AC sequence.
It's pretty confusing why exactly Cloud and the others going on their journey, exactly as they did in the original, would somehow change the original timeline events. Same as this fan idea that the Whispers are trying to keep the original timeline intact - yet they repeatedly try to kill Cloud and the others, which would certainly have the exact opposite effect. A lot of explaining to do in Rebirth!
@EchoRange They've already started setting that up in the Remake DLC. I guess you haven't played it so I don't want to be too specific but Deepground are present in the story.
Oh no....please....Im begging you. Poor FF7 has been through enough. Just leave him alone!
If this is the endgame for the trilogy then… that sucks. Surely there is a bigger plan than this.
I thought Advent was cool. I was not a big fan of Digre though.
@K1LLEGAL Rebirth ends at the location where Sephiroth kills a certain character. So we’ll have another game after Rebirth
If the trilogy is linking up to advent children at the end they will need to have certain characters killed. Not sure how they’ll do it though since we seem to have two timelines this time around
It's so funny how he says, "you don't need to worry about that." I am worried about that. I thought we'd all agreed to pretend that Advent Children didn't exist. And now we're here letting it infect the remake trilogy. It's like they're determined to do everything they can to ruin these games. Lightning will probably turn up in part 3.
I'm all for it this story is gonna be insanely epic
I'm itching to rewatch Advent Children for a long time now. Maybe the time has come.
“Don’t worry about that, we have every intention of letting this thing suffer under the crushing weight of fan expectations in the end.”
We already knew this when the first one came out.
I adore Advent Children. Cloud is one of my all time favorite protagonists and loved seeing him finally coming to terms with what happened and learning to forgive himself. The action scenes were revolutionary and the at times photo-realistic CG are mouth watering.
The extended edition of this film is actually pretty good, in that it actually tells a cohesive story.
I never seen the movie and never knew it existed. I only saw 1 final fantasy movie when I was young tho.
@Matroska I know aha. I want more characters from it.
Yeah, it's one of those films that I remember being pretty blown away by when I first watched it, but the novelty of it wears off really quickly and only serves to reinforce the argument that FFVII really works best when contained within the narrative of the main game.
I enjoyed Advent Children, especially the director's cut version (flaws and all). That said, this is a bit worrying considering certain characters' fate will remain the same when the remake trilogy ends lol
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