Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth Dev Teases Permanent Character Death

Highlights

• Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth’s creative director confirmed that any character death that occurs in the game will be permanent, just like in the original.
• The game may end with the tragic death of Aerith, but other main characters could also meet a grim end.
• The game’s enhanced storyline and new locations will continue the altered timeline started in Final Fantasy 7 Remake.

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth will raise the stakes for its heroes in a big way, as Tetsuya Nomura has stated that anyone who dies in this second chapter will be gone for good. Final Fantasy 7 Remake expanded and altered the storyline of the beloved 1997 original, and from pre-release promotional materials it looks like its upcoming follow-up will continue this. Picking up where the last game left off, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth sees Cloud Strife and the rest of Team Avalanche depart from the city of Midgar after battling Sephiroth and defeating the timeline-controlling Whispers of Fate.

This article contains spoilers for Final Fantasy 7

Defying the Whispers will have serious ramifications for the next chapter in the Final Fantasy 7 Remake trilogy, such as altering the fates of characters who previously perished in the original timeline. Zack Fair, who was famously gunned down by Shinra troops in Crisis Core: Final Fantasy 7, was revealed to be alive at the end of FF 7 Remake, while Avalanche member Biggs survived the destruction of the Sector 7 plate and is looking to avenge his fallen comrades in Rebirth. Other supporting characters like Jesse Rasberry are shown to have escaped their original deaths, but anyone else hoping to evade the Grim Reaper might be out of luck.

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth creative director Tetsuya Nomura recently sat down for an interview with Game Informer, where he discussed various aspects of the game like Rebirth’s new explorable locations. During this interview, Nomura suggested that Rebirth will have a permanent character death just like the original game. “I believe that loss is something that happens unexpectedly and it’s not something that’s dramatic or drawn out, but is something in which a person you have just conversed with is suddenly gone and never to come back,” he stated. “I believe that the person who dies should not return in this title, and that is what we did with the original.”

While Nomura didn’t specify who could die at the end of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, many fans are naturally assuming that the game will end with the tragic death of Aerith Gainsborough. In a past interview, Nomura confirmed that Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth will end in the Forgotten Capital, the place where Aerith died in the original Final Fantasy 7’s second disk. Additionally, the ESRB rating for Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth mentions characters being stabbed, which matches Aerith’s shocking murder at the hands of Sephiroth.

I believe that the person who dies should not return in this title, and that is what we did with the original.

However, it’s also worth noting that Final Fantasy 7 Remake has changed the timeline of the original game a great deal already, and another main FF7 character could die in Aerith’s place. For example, some fans think that Tifa could be the one killed by Sephiroth due to the more recent Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth trailers putting a stronger emphasis on her. Whoever meets a grim end in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth won’t be resurrected, though, and this will likely make things all the more tragic when the game launches on February 29.