The explosive opening for Square Enix’s second FF7 remake, which takes Cloud and Sephiroth back to Nibelheim, will work for fans and newcomers alike.
It sounds strange to suggest that Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth — the second game in Square Enix’s bizarre, expansive remake project, which adapts the middle third of the 1997 original — would be a great place to start your relationship with this sprawling storyline. But honestly, I think it’s true. And it’s true because the Square Enix development team, led by original director Yoshinori Kitase as producer, has made an absolutely inspired choice for the game’s opening chapter.
Rebirth begins with a flashback that serves both as a tutorial and as an origin story for Final Fantasy 7’s hero, Cloud Strife, and its main antagonist, Sephiroth. It gets at the essence of both characters, as well as shading in some backstory for Cloud’s childhood friend Tifa Lockhart, and cuts straight to the dramatic and thematic heart of the story. It leaves some lingering questions that are key to understanding the playful, metafictional line that Kitase’s team is taking with this remake project. Plus, it’s just the right amount of wildly overwrought — a perfect introduction to Square Enix’s inimitable brand of straight-faced, mythological camp.
If you’re familiar with the original, you’ve probably figured out what I’m talking about. Yes, 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 home to a mako reactor run by Shinra, the despotic power company, which also operates a research station out of a mansion in Nibelheim. In the events of the Incident, which takes place years before the main Final Fantasy 7 storyline, the mako reactor is malfunctioning, and Shinra’s elite footsoldier Sephiroth is sent to investigate, along with Cloud, a teenaged new recruit at the time.
