Read our Final Fantasy VII Revelation hands-on impressions here.
To say the Final Fantasy VII Remake trilogy has revitalized not only the Final Fantasy brand but also upheld a years-long promise is an understatement. It’s also made an internationally renowned RPG into a household name once again. Even with gameplay updates, the Final Fantasy VII Remake trilogy has been hinting at something more than just a remake.
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But what if it also potentially confirms a long-theorized (and anecdotally confirmed) idea that another Final Fantasy game is connected to the world of Spira? To rephrase this, what if the remakes will reassert that Final Fantasy X is truly a prequel to Final Fantasy VII?
This idea didn’t originate with the first release of Final Fantasy X. It actually came from its less-popular sequel, Final Fantasy X-2. In the sequel, Yuna, Rikku, and their pal Payne (AKA YRP) travel around Spira to find rare spheres, defeat fiends, and see if some mysterious figure that eerily looks like Tidus is actually Tidus.
The Gullwings, the name of their crew, had one interesting member: an Al-Bhed named Shinra. He’s a young, hyper-intelligent teammate behind all the Gullwings’ equipment used to hunt spheres around Spira. Shinra’s name is eerily similar to the post-capitalist company that really kicks off the events in Final Fantasy VII, the Shin-Ra Company.
The Final Fantasy VII Remake trilogy confirms the connection to the world of Spira.
Now, a similar name isn’t exactly a key indicator of connection. Final Fantasy is full of similar/same-named individuals like: Moogles, creatures with the same naming convention, Biggs and Wedge, Bahamut; the list goes on.
Shinra’s connection to Shin-Ra comes from Square’s all-inclusive guide to its numerous games, the Ultimania. Many Square Enix games get an Ultimania release in Japan, and sometimes elsewhere in the world if they’re popular enough. Each Ultimania focuses on one game and covers just about everything about it, from development to merchandising. They also include developer and producer interviews to give even more insight into that game.
Final Fantasy X-2’s Ultimania, published in 2003, suggested heavily that Shinra went on after the events of Final Fantasy X-2, got an investment from a rich benefactor (Rin), and began researching much more into Machina. In fact, it confirms that he wanted to research the life force that flows through the planet. Quite similar to the Mako energy that pushes Avalanche to commit eco-terrorism against the Shin-Ra Company.
In Final Fantasy VII‘s Ultimania, released in 2005, it draws these connections even further, anecdotally linking these two otherwise separate universes together. Final Fantasy VII event planner and story writer (and Final Fantasy VII Remake Story and Scenario Writer) Kazushige Nojima, in a statement in Ultimania, confirms the long-believed theory in a quick paragraph that Shinra in fact began studying and siphoning Mako Energy from Spira’s afterlife, the Farplane.
His descendants later, once space travel becomes possible, establish the Shin-Ra Company on another planet, about 1000 years after the events of Final Fantasy X-2. In 2018, Nojima-san clarified that this statement was only meant to be a quick anecdote.
That leads us to the Final Fantasy VII Remake trilogy. Shinra has actually already made a quick appearance in it. An easily missed photograph shows the company’s founder. That founder wears an eerily similar mask to Shinra’s. The Final Fantasy VII Remake Ultimania confirms that the masked founder is indeed a reference to Shinra. So, we already have the beginnings of re-establishing Final Fantasy VII as a distant sequel to X.
The Ultimania pulls the Shinra connection through.
So what if the purpose of the Remake trilogy isn’t just to give us a modern retelling and new take on the beloved RPG series? But it’s also to reaffirm that, through modern technology, those connections to X are truly all there. Putting puzzle pieces into place in ways that could not be done either with a different Final Fantasy game or retroactively via remasters or additions to VII’s universe.
Looking ahead, the final clues may be tied directly to the major threats that will appear in Final Fantasy VII Revelation: the Weapons. The Weapons are massive bio-weapons whose sole purpose is to defend the Planet from world-ending threats. Cloud’s team, as seen in the trailers, will be heavily concerned about the Weapons and their destruction of human civilizations, along with stopping Sephiroth’s plans once and for all.
A key potential new reveal may be that the Weapons are in fact distant relatives of X‘s Aeons. Those were summoned through Fayth, or a crystallized collection of souls who are stuck in a constant state of dreaming, whose power allows Summoners to call on massive fantastical beasts with their energy to aid them in their pilgrimage.
The power of the life force, or Mako, could be one giant Fayth that gives the planet its “sentience”. Yet instead of just human life, it’s ALL life on the planet that adds to it. Then through that Fayth, the Weapons were summoned and are formed through the more technological focus of the Planet’s inhabitants to look like massive war machines.
The new looks of the Weapons, as revealed in Revelation‘s trailers, have a similar look to X‘s Bahamut and Sin. So the updated designs are potentially another way of establishing this connection. A final key reveal could be that whatever is happening to Zach and Aerith in the trailers is happening in VII’s Farplane or Fayth.
In other words, after they lost their lives, they are now unknowingly living in an afterlife or in a dream world where events have changed. This would be quite similar to Tidus’s Zanarkand, which is just a dream version of the city of the same name created by the Fayth within Sin.
Now these are all ideas, and nothing is confirmed until the Final Fantasy VII Revelation release. But the changes in the Remake trilogy seem to point to the fact that their purpose isn’t just to remake VII, but to cement those speculated and anecdotally added updates to the lore. However, as the Remake trilogy plays out, it’s exciting nonetheless and is overall a massive accomplishment by Square Enix to pull off something that is rarely done in gaming.
Final Fantasy VII Revelation releases April 8th, 2027 on Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC.
