Did you know that Final Fantasy VII Aerith Gainsborough and Sephiroth (Jones?) were originally written to be brother and sister? It’s true! Legendary game designer Tetsuya Nomura said so. In this nifty bit of translation from Andriasang, Nomura spilled the beans on the evolution of Aerith. Check it out:
The original character setting had Aerith and Sephiroth as brother and sister. The effect of this setting can still be seen in the designs of their front hair. Later, they changed the setting so that Sephiroth was Aerith’s first love. That eventually resulted in Zack.
Wow. Sephiroth would have been even more of a dick for killing his sister. Killing his ex-girlfiend would have been nasty too. As it ended up, killing an unrelated mystic/flower merchant was pretty evil, but I wonder how much more impactful it would have been with the other scenarios.
Check out the entire translation for lots of great info on Final Fantasy VII from Nomura, Yoshinori Kitase, and Kazushige Nojima. Also, let me know if Aerith’s death would have been different for you had she been Sephiroth’s sister or lover.
The extent at which her death affected me:
Aeris = my healbot.
After Aeris
Barrett = my healbot
I read earlier on ign about SE proclaiming that remaking this overrated title isn't a priority. I won't argue with their strategy since they are now making money but eventually they'll have to take all the fanboys to the bank. I bet they'd pay $80-$100 per copy.
I would be shocked if it wasn't remade eventually. There's just too much money on the table. It's a matter of technology allowing the dev team to make such a big world with modern visuals for relatively cheap. The company line has been that the remake would be too expensive to make. That's true today, but won't be an issue in the future.
I'd rather they remade 8. For all it's gaping plot holes, strange narrative twists and bad translation, it's still my favorite game in the series – much, much more so than 7 (which had just as many gaping plot holes, strange story twists and an even worse translation).
Did you know that Yuffie was originally a wanted criminal whose face appeared on wanted posters all over town? These posters all had different images, and whichever one you looked at right before you met her was what she looked like. Strange, eh?
Oh yeah, and PS: they have said repeatedly that they won't be re-making it. I say they will in time, but not any day soon.
OMG!! That makes so much sense! That would have made the game's story A LOT better and covered up some of those gaping plot holes. Man, I literally played through that game at lest eight times (five at least just to try to make sense of that story) and as much as I wanted to like (or understand) the narrative, it was just so convoluted at times.
By having Sephiroth be a descendant of the Ancients would have made what he did and said a lot easier to digest. It's like getting the last piece of the puzzle.
… Shame on Square for not altering the game enough when they decided to cut out that little fact. It would have saved me hours of my life.
-M