The first chapter of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is a great place to start

It sounds strange to suggest that Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth – the second game in Square Enix’s bizarre, sprawling remake project, which adapts the middle third of the 1997 original – would be a great starting point for your relationship with this sprawling plot. But honestly, I think it’s true. And that’s true, because the development team at Square Enix, led by original director Yoshinori Kitase as producer, made an absolutely brilliant choice for the game’s opening chapter.

Rebirth begins with a flashback that serves as both a tutorial and an origin story Final Fantasy 7The hero of Cloud Strife and his main antagonist Sephiroth. It gets to the core of both characters, also adds some backstory to Cloud’s childhood friend Tifa Lockhart, and gets straight to the dramatic and thematic core of the story. Several questions remain that are crucial to understanding the playful, metafictional line that Kitase’s team is pursuing with this remake project. Plus, it’s just the right amount of over-the-top – a perfect introduction to Square Enix’s inimitable brand of straightforward, 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 modest village on the slopes of Mount Nibel. The mountain is home to a Mako reactor belonging to the despotic energy company Shinra, which also operates a research station in a mansion in Nibelheim. The events involve an incident that takes place years before the main event Final Fantasy 7 In the plot, the Mako reactor malfunctions and Shinra’s elite foot soldier Sephiroth is sent to investigate, along with Cloud, a then-teenage new recruit. What they discover there sets Sephiroth on a dark path and sets the engine of the plot in motion.

There are so many reasons why the Nibelheim Incident serves as an excellent starting point Rebirth. As a flashback, it serves as an empty introduction to some of the main characters without the need to fill in everything that happened in the first game. And since Cloud is a newbie to this sequence, the game cleverly sidesteps the potentially jarring need to insert a tutorial in the middle of an ongoing story.

The Nibelheim Incident is also a compelling standalone mission. Climbing the mountain, culminating in a boss fight and a dramatic reveal at the reactor, followed by a hellish descent into hyped-up melodrama – this is a well-articulated and satisfying passage in both narrative and gameplay terms. It’s a great place to start such a big game Rebirth doesn’t seem to overwhelm the player and works just as well as a reset button if you roll right after one New edition

Play through.

I don’t want to reveal what Sephiroth and Cloud discover in the reactor. But as someone who has only hazy memories of a half-finished playthrough of the original game, as well as some familiarity with its most famous characters and storylines, I will say that this opening chapter of Rebirth made Sephiroth clearer to me than ever before: his motivation, his megalomania, his absurdly exaggerated coolness. From Cloud’s awestruck perspective, Sephiroth is portrayed throughout as a stoic, extremely competent war hero, which only underscores how disastrous it is when he breaks down. I really felt like myself receive It. Additionally, Sephiroth is fully playable as a member of the party for this mission, and it’s a joy to alternate between Cloud and his all-powerful idol in combat. The Sephiroth-Cloud dynamic – from hero and acolyte to homoerotically intense enemies – is also well developed.

However, the chapter is not entirely clear-cut and contains a tantalizing mystery that looms over the rest of the game – just like Cloud’s narration of the Nibelheim incident in the original. In Rebirth

In the retelling, this chapter is bookended by a voice-over conversation between Cloud and Tifa, each of them recalling the events that transpired; Barret, Aerith, and Red XIII are the listening audience (along with the player). What we play through is Cloud’s version, but after it’s over and we return to the present, where Cloud and his friends are relaxing in the pleasant town of Kalm, Tifa says she doesn’t remember what happened at all. In fact, some elements of the story seem strangely inconsistent with Cloud’s current reality. This plays a role in one of the most intriguing mysteries of the original plot, and also in the metafictional and multiversal elements introduced therein New editionwhere it is suspected that the deviations from the original plot are due to someone meddling with the timeline.

RebirthThe opening chapter consists of an emphatic exclamation point followed by persistent ellipsis. For this game it is a great scene designer. For fans, it’s simply great wish fulfillment as an elaborate staging of one of the original game’s most famous what-the-fuck moments. For players who have a more casual relationship with the story – or even no relationship at all – it’s something even better: a few perfectly crafted hours in which you’ll learn everything you need to know about the story Final Fantasy 7 Great.

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth will be released on February 29th for PlayStation 5.