Maddie Fisher is a writer, journalist and game developer. She was born and raised on the east coast, having started working in games journalism over fifteen years ago. She tends to enjoy musical theater, hockey and tennis.
There may not be a more influential, yet highly scrutinized video game, than Final Fantasy 7. Square’s landmark JRPG release changed the entire industry, and the hype cycle is still one that has not been seen since. It may never be seen again.
Through its two-year development cycle, Final Fantasy 7 went through quite a few changes and alterations along the way. The original script was completed by series creator Hironobu Sakaguchi in the mid-1990s, but its progression from words on a page to a finished project was ripe with discarded concepts and scrapped ideas.
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Now, almost thirty years later and a remake trilogy nearing its fateful ending, it’s still an absolutely fascinating game to look back on. Its rich development history and ever-evolving story left a lot of things on the cutting room floor, and in this list, I’ll guide you through some of Final Fantasy 7’s most intriguing abandoned concepts.
Much of the information covered in this list comes from developer interviews, as well as the Final Fantasy Ultimania books.
8 An Entirely Rejected Concept Became Xenogears
The Death of One Idea Spawned an Entirely New Game
During the early stages of Final Fantasy 7’s development, the husband and wife team of Tetsuya Takahashi and Soraya Saga pitched a version of the game. It was a dark, complex science fiction proposal with religious themes and examinations of tyrran that Square quite liked, but thought it didn’t feel right for Final Fantasy.
This rejected concept went the way of many other abandoned Square ideas, however. It went straight into the re-use pile, where Square tasked Takahashi and Saga with fleshing the concept out into its own game.
The end result was Xenogears, which launched roughly a year after Final Fantasy 7 in 1998. Though its development was greatly impacted by budget constraints and time limits that truncated the second disc into a non-playable movie, it remains intrinsically linked to Final Fantasy 7 in some truly fascinating ways.
7 Sibling Rivalry
The Roles and Relationships Changed Rapidly
Many of Final Fantasy 7’s most endearing characters went through numerous changes, and a few of them ended up seeing significant alterations. One of the most interesting abandoned concepts for a character related to Tifa, who was poised to be Sephiroth’s sister during early stages of development.
Her name was seemingly derived from Tiferet, a rough translation from the Hebrew Tree of Life rooted in ancient Kabbalistic texts. A page from the Final Fantasy Ultimania Archive also shows that she was intended to be a sibling of Sephiroth, seemingly playing the role that Aerith ended up filling as an entity connected to ancient gods.
Tifa’s role in the final game ended up being far more compelling than the sister angle would have been. Her part as Cloud’s childhood best friend added so much more depth and charm to her, so it ultimately worked out for the best.
6 Vincent Valentine Has A Complicated History
I Wanna be a Detective! No, Wait! A Chemist! No, a Horror Writer!
Vincent Valentine is one of Final Fantasy 7’s most popular hidden party members, but his original iteration went through more changes and revisions than perhaps any character in the game.
He started off as a horror writer, then became a research scientist, a detective and a chemist. These concepts slowly eroded until Square ended up ditching all of them, finalizing Vincent as a former member of the Turks.
In an odd twist of fate, the final version of Vincent featured some elements that were repurposed from a scrapped version of Sephiroth. It just goes to show you how efficient Square was, and still is, never letting a concept go to waste for too long.
5 The True Purpose Of The Ancient Forest
What Secrets Did the Ancient Forest Hold?
In the shipped version of Final Fantasy 7, the Ancient Forest is a completely optional area. It has bizarre, frustrating puzzles and no real sense of purpose beyond getting some rare weapons, like the Apocalypse for Cloud and the Slash-All Materia.
In original iterations of Final Fantasy 7, however, the Ancient Forest played a more central role in the party’s journey to the Forgotten Capital. The game’s code lists its field data right between the Sleeping Forest and Corel Valley, which is where the City of the Ancients is located.
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It has long been speculated that the Ancient Forest was a full-fledged dungeon, intended to serve as a direct path to the Forgotten Capital. Mysterious vines that are unusable appear in one of the backgrounds, which has fueled numerous fan theories about the Ancient Forest and its connection to the wider FF7 story.
4 Hot-Blooded Detective Joe
We Were Robbed of a Timeline Where Hot-Blooded Joe Exists
As hard as it is to believe, Cloud Strife was almost never brought to life. In Hironobu Sakaguchi’s original vision of Final Fantasy 7, the lead character was a man known as Hot-Blooded Detective Joe.
He was in pursuit of AVALANCHE after their assault on the city of Midgar, with implications that the original version of the group was poised to be more antagonistic than the final game. The original version of FF7 is fascinating in a number of ways, and Detective Joe represents a major part of that.
As Sakaguchi’s story started to evolve, writer Tetsuya Nomura envisioned a chase story with a moving target, an element that would be one of the lone holdouts from the earliest days of development. While Cloud Strife may be one of the industry’s most beloved characters, it would have been pretty interesting to see what would have happened with Hot-Blooded Detective Joe.
3 A New York State Of Mind
New York, New York
In Sakaguchi’s original draft of the script for Final Fantasy 7, he used New York as the setting. Alongside a detective named Joe, the Big Apple served as the main setting for the game.
This would eventually evolve into the city of Midgar, which Joe would have chased AVALANCHE through. Feeling like the setting was too dark and complex for Final Fantasy, Square eventually replaced it with Gaia.
The sorceress Edea, who Joe would have somehow been connected with, was also designed for this. The New York setting with a detective was eventually re-used for Parasite Eve, while Sorceress Edea was repackaged as the main antagonist of Final Fantasy 8.
2 Lovers To Enemies
A Tale as Old as Time
The characters of Sephiroth and Aerith went through some radical changes throughout Final Fantasy 7’s development. Each of them barely resemble the characters they were intended to be.
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Aerith and Tifa swapped places in the story a few times, with each filling the role the other was intended for at some point. In the case of Aerith, a version of her was intended to be a lover of Sephiroth.
Aerith and Sephiroth have been permanently linked to each other in multiple ways over the years. Their complex relationship in Final Fantasy 7 could have been a lot messier had the original version of the story seen the light of day.
1 Final Fantasy 7 Almost Had A Red Wedding Moment
Everybody Dies
Life and death are just a couple of the major themes explored in Final Fantasy 7. Sakaguchi was deeply influenced by the death of his mother in the writing of FF7, which shines through in the game’s desire to explore death and grief.
That potentially could have manifested in some decidedly dark ways, as writer Tetsuya Nomura and director Yoshinori Kitase had some devious plans to wipe out the entire party. It was a bold, risky proposition that could have changed video games forever if they’d gone through with it.
Thankfully, both Kitase and Nomura went in a different direction. Aerith’s death became a key piece of what made Final Fantasy 7 so impactful, and this amount of gratuitous destruction would have robbed that moment of everything it had going for it.
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8.2/10
Final Fantasy 7
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RPG
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OpenCritic Reviews Top Critic Avg: 81/100 Critics Rec: 84%
Released January 31, 1997
ESRB T for Teen: Blood, Fantasy Violence, Language, Mild Suggestive Themes
Developer(s) Square Enix
Publisher(s) Square Enix
Engine Unreal Engine 4
Cross-Platform Play ps, pc
Cross Save Players who have already started their adventure on iOS or Android can take advantage of cross-save capabilities
Where to play
Close
WHERE TO PLAY
DIGITAL
Franchise Final Fantasy
Steam Deck Compatibility yes
Genre(s) RPG
Platform(s) PlayStation (Original), PC, iOS, Android, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, PS4
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