Final Fantasy VII Message Board

The PC is not entirely bereft of Big Hair And Superfluous Zippers: The Neverending (Candy) Saga, which is sometimes colloquially referred to as “Final Fantasy.” The series’ MMO entries, FFXI and FFXIV, got their starts here, and PlayStation One classics FFVII and FFVIII recently received refurbished Steam ports. That majority of numbered Final Fantasy games, however, have stuck to the realm of buttons, thumbsticks, and cameras that have yet to change gaming in any meaningful way. But that might be changing sooner rather than later. Very late to the party but nonetheless welcome, Square Enix has finally realized that maybe people kinda like playing games on their PCs after all.

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Not that Aeris's death stopped master sword-smith Tony Swatton from smashing stuff with his newly-forged seven-foot-something long Masamune, which you can watch him make in this video by AWE me. What else would you do with a blade, after all? Read more...

A cappella master Smooth McGroove has made a name for himself by re-creating vocal versions of classic game music. His stuff is usually very good, but this week he's outdone himself, tackling my favorite video-game victory music and utterly owning it.Read more...

Last night I spent about four hours watching the Food Network, because once you start watching an episode of Chopped it's impossible to not watch three more. Read more...

Digital artist Jul-Forza Pedro has a massive gallery of awesome pixelated video game artwork. I've picked three of my favorites, unforgettable moments from Resident Evil, The Last of Us and Final Fantasy VII.Read more...

Forget the HD remake: what Final Fantasy VII really needs is a 2D remake.Read more...

You may remember the mock-up trailer that circulated last fall, promising an unofficial Final Fantasy VII fan film. At the time, director Gionata Medeot told me he wasn't worried about Square Enix's lawyers stepping in and trying to take it down.Read more...

Final Fantasy VII is out on Steam, so I thought this might be a good opportunity to point readers to "The Final Fantasy VII Letters," a series Leigh Alexander and I wrote back in 2011. She was a FFVII veteran and I'd never played, and together we went on a journey that changed us forever. Or, well, we had fun, anyway.

That My Bloody Valentine: Loveless billboard stands out quite a bit in digital artist RubiaDmc's great Final Fantasy VII mashup. That sign was all over Midgar! Final Fantasy VII [deviantART]

As I browsed through the list of new releases on Steam this morning, a blaring midi tune began to belch its way into my brain. The screen flashed – a random encounter! Final Fantasy VII had unexpectedly appeared, a comically large sword thrusting from the screen and carrying with it promises of a seemingly endless slog through a bloated story with precisely one memorable scene. Yes, you know the one, when Aerith reveals that she’s actually a robot the gang of heroes clamber up what seems like a hundred identical stairwells, quipping in blocks of blue text that do not appreciate the value of comic timing.

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The RPG classic Final Fantasy VII is Now Available on Steam!

In Midgar, a city controlled by the mega-conglomerate Shinra Inc., the No. 1 Mako Reactor has been blown up by a rebel group, AVALANCHE. AVALANCHE was secretly formed to wage a rebellion against Shinra Inc., an organisation which is absorbing Mako energy, destroying the natural resources of the planet. Cloud, a former member of Shinra's elite combat force, SOLDIER, was involved with the bombing of the Mako Reactor.

Can Cloud and AVALANCHE protect the planet from the huge, formidable enemy, Shinra Inc.?

3D printing is perfect for models with low polygon counts. Joabaldwin proves this with these precise recreations of the main cast from Final Fantasy VII. Gorgeous work, though the lack of Heidegger and the Turks is a grievous oversight. Shots from different angles are below. Careful with that sword, Sephiroth. FF7 [imgur via Reddit] To contact the author of this post, write to gergovas@kotaku.com

We are overjoyed to announce that pre-ordering LIGHTNING RETURNS: FINAL FANTASY XIII will unlock the most epic Final Fantasy weapon and outfit of all time – Cloud Strife’s SOLDIER 1st Class Uniform and Buster Sword! Before you guys go crazy in the comments, here’s what your pre-order will get you:

When you preorder LIGHTNING RETURNS: FINAL FANTASY XIII, you will receive the exclusive Cloud Strife SOLDIER 1st Class DLC — straight from Final Fantasy VII — for free! So you’ll get the SOLDIER 1st Class Uniform, Buster Sword, and Soldier Band… but not Cloud’s blocky hands.

We’ve put together a short gameplay trailer that shows off the DLC set and how it helps Lightning get to level 99 quicker. Watch it at the top of this post.

Go ahead, we’ll wait.

Did you catch the last bit? The victory fanfare comes with the Cloud Strife SOLDIER 1st Class DLC pack when you pre-order, as well!

Much like in LIGHTNING RETURNS: FINAL FANTASY XIII, time is limited with this pre-order offer, so march over to a participating retailer to preorder LIGHTNING RETURNS: FINAL FANTASY XIII. We’ve made this decision easier than choosing to go on a date with Aeris or Tifa, so what are you waiting for? Get out there and preorder LIGHTNING RETURNS: FINAL FANTASY XIII now!

LIGHTNING RETURNS: FINAL FANTASY XIII is coming to PS3 on February 11th, 2014 for 5999 gil — er, $59.99. Got any questions? Ask away in the comments below, and we’ll get to them faster than it takes to cast Knights of the Round.

The Sector 7 train graveyard, one of the earliest locations in Final Fantasy VII, was an empty and depressing place, filled only with entry level ghosts, a few potions and train wreckage. Jordangrimmer's fantastic reinterpretation expands the environment and fills it with life. We all remember the original right? Train Graveyard [DeviantART], FFWiki To contact the author of this post, write to gergovas@kotaku.com

Final Fantasy Versus XIII sometimes feels like it's been in development forever. So let's pretend that it has. And that "forever" is really "since 1997". Artist Saku Hatakka has done the above image, which takes the look of the oft-delayed Square game and takes it back in time to the Final Fantasy VII engine. "It was a lot of fun trying to figure out how Squaresoft used to do prerendered backgrounds and adding low poly realtime 3D characters on top of them", he says. "Intentionally downsampling images and using low quality frame buffer effects was surprisingly fun!" FF Versus XIII x FFVII [spatsart, thanks Tamas!].

#showus Surprisingly, blood suckers aren't as common in video games as you might expect. They might appear as a generic type of enemy, and of course there are a few of them in the Castlevania series. We collected some of these vampires, paying attention to leave out those who like to carry people on their backs. More »

#minecraft Earlier this year we showed off someone's great Minecraft re-creation of Final Fantasy VII's iconic city Midgar. More »

#finalfantasyvii There's something about a classically styled silhouette that just screams "high-class." You can picture the shadow-etched profiles on the brooches of moneyed dowagers or hanging on the walls of old-money mansions. In fact, if I had a mansion, I'd have Olly Moss' fantastic silhouettes all over the place. I don't have a mansion. Thankfully, a new book collects the graphic artist's silhouette work all in one place. More »

#finalfantasy I saw this over the weekend and felt like it was a must-share. More »

#finalfantasy Well done, don't you think? This was directed by Italian film-maker Gionata Medeot, who told me he hopes to send this teaser to producers and raise funds to turn it into an actual film. More »

#roast Final Fantasy VII's Wikipedia entry is 6,596 words.The Wikipedia entry for William Shakespeare is 5,999 words. Let's apply One-Hundred-Point Scale Internet Video Game Web Site Score Logic to these two word counts: if we were giving Final Fantasy VII a 10, Shakespeare's collected works would score a 9.7. More »

#cosplay For Final Fantasy bad guys, they don't get any more popular than Sephiroth. Look at that hair! That sword! Sephiroth will never be just a memory. More »

It already happened once, but that didn’t stop Square Enix from doing it again and releasing Final Fantasy VII on the PC. Unlike the majority off re-releases, there’s not even a hint of HD about this return to the most beloved game JRPG of the PlayStation 1 generation. So what gives?(more…)

N.B. – please feel free to interchange the words ‘bad’ and ‘good’ in the next two sentences as you see fit.

Bad news: the deathless 90s JRPG that inspired a hundred million DeviantArt pages, Final Fantasy VII, is to be re-released for PC, in a shinier form with new bits. Good news: its launch over the weekend was pulled due to technical problems.(more…)

An official website for a new PC version of Final Fantasy VII has surfaced, confirming that Square-Enix's classic will be available from the publisher's online store in the near future. And in an interview, FFXIII and XIII-2 director Motomu Toriyama dropped some hints that we may soon be adventuring with Lightning once more.

Good to see that after 15 years, the marketing still doesn't show any actual gameplay.

That’s a delay of fifteen years for the PC version. Could be a record. Anyway, the newsbeasts of VG247 caught the scent of Square’s announcement and we could hear their howls from far across the internet. They soon brought home what appears to be a trailer, too, which you can see below. No release date, though.

Man, it would be really easy to spoiler this one for someone who had never played it, eh readers?(more…)

#finalfantasy Cloud Strife has it tough. Not only does he have to help prevent the end of the world, he's got to do it while juggling the affections of three women, and one incredibly manly man. More »

#randomencounters Let me paint you a picture. More »

#finalfantasy I was 21 years old the first time I heard the word "soapland" and upon finding out exactly what one was, I reacted with confusion and disbelief. The concept just seemed too absurd to be true. But really, it shouldn't have. After all, one of the best-selling and most renowned video games of all time introduced me to soaplands back when I was but a middle schooler—even if I didn't know it at the time. The year was 1997. The game: Final Fantasy VII. More »