FFVII Remake: new trailer and theme song "Hollow"

Screen Shot 2020-01-31 at 12.40.31.png

It's time for another trailer! This one is eventful, offering us a glimpse of the voice acting for a plethora of characters from Red XIII to the Shinra upper management. Prepare to buckle down and let Scarlet use you as a chair and a foot rest, because series veteran composer Nobuo Uematsu is back to work his wonders with a brand new theme song for the FFVII Remake named "Hollow".

A quick warning: it wouldn't be a Square Enix trailer for an upcoming major Final Fantasy release without a tsunami of potentially spoiler-filled footage largely ripped out of context, so if you wish to play the game as blind as possible, you may want to avert thine gaze.

In addition, here is a video showing the making of the new theme song. As stated, Nobuo Uematsu is back for the role of composer and you can see the singer Yosh on the vocals. Other veteran composers lending their talents to the remake include Masashi Hamauzu, best known for his work on Final Fantasy X, the Final Fantasy XIII trilogy and in World of Final Fantasy; and Mitsuto Suzuki, who also worked on the FFXIII trilogy as well as the soon-to-be-defunct Mobius Final Fantasy.

Nova Crystallis 1 | 2
 
Linnaete

Linnaete

I really wish I hadn't watched this trailer...
A quick warning: it wouldn't be a Square Enix trailer for an upcoming major Final Fantasy release without a tsunami of potentially spoiler-filled footage largely ripped out of context, so if you wish to play the game as blind as possible, you may want to avert thine gaze.
Or at the very least read this before hand; I'm really disappointed.

How much is too much content for a trailer? I was hoping to see the Honey Bee Inn events, including Cloud & Tifa's dresses during game play, not in a trailer. That and Red XIII. Hojo, Reeve & Scarlet was a nice highlight, as well as the flashback with Cloud & Tifa (his voice is way too deep for this flashback IMO) but we're so close to the release, was it really necessary to include any more 'spoilers'? I know they're not 'actually' spoilers, but c'mon - I know a lot of us are really looking forward to how they did the Don Corneo events, and while it looks really really interesting I would have much rather of experienced this in the game. :(

Maybe I'm being a baby about it, I dunno, but I'm really kinda sad that I watched this. It just popped up on my social media as I was waking up this morning. If you don't want to be 'spoiled' by any more stuff I don't recommend watching this if you haven't already. I think I'll try and avoid any more upcoming teasers, or at the very least wait till I've seen people talking about it before I commit.

The trailer itself was awesome though, there's no doubt. Looks like the remake is going to be very beautiful. The Materia stuff was really interesting and Red XIII looked really awesome. Plus the new song. I'm too sad to talk about what I saw for the Honey Bee Inn :cry:
 
Being totally honest, the VA work I hear in the trailer doesn't exactly seem very good to me...

The game looks insanely good though! It's miles ahead of what I used to imagine it looking like.

The whole "Honey Bee Inn" section seems MORE emphasised than it was in the original game - I assume it's due to the game only covering the Midgar period. For a section I assumed would be either massively toned down or even TOTALLY REMOVED, colour me surprised! It's a good surprise too.

Over all it's looking like a good AAA release for SE - it's almost silly that I can say that now since the XIII->XV period of Final Fantasy was 90% a letdown but hey - for all its faults, KH3 gave me those SE feels.

The trailers for this game have made me feel the same way; hopefully it continues!
 
Interesting! This is all looking superb.

I am in two minds about how I feel about watching this trailer though. I feel what DaggerTribal says. Previous trailers have played it safe with what they have shown us, and I almost feel like we’ve seen too much now in this one. There might not be many surprises left when we play the game itself. I do wonder if that pesky leak might have forced Square Enix's hands a bit so that they had to show us some characters and scenes as they want us to see them in order to render obsolete all of the poor quality leaked content.

Despite being unsure if I really wanted to see all of this new footage yet, I am extraordinarily impressed by everything I have seen.

Scarlet resting her legs on some poor Shinra grunt is a touch of genius and definitely suits her character as we see it in the original game. People are dispensable to her. Even her own.

Likewise, Palmer is suitably crackers! I hope he appears more frequently in this game.

Nanaki/Red XIII is on point. I love the way he shows his fangs in this image:
red xiii.jpg

It looks like we might see a lot of subtle animal movements/behaviours in Red and that it exactly what we need!


I’m personally loving the voice acting for all of these characters so far.


And if anyone had any doubts about the Honeybee Inn section….
Honeybee.jpg


... :argor:


It’s definitely going ahead and looks to be expanded upon with what appears to be a new stylist character.

I’m getting Ruby Rhod from Fifth Element vibes from this. A lot of talking / dancing / playing and getting uncomfortably close to Cloud (who is hating the whole experience) followed by awkward silences, etc.

The whole "Honey Bee Inn" section seems MORE emphasised than it was in the original game - I assume it's due to the game only covering the Midgar period. For a section I assumed would be either massively toned down or even TOTALLY REMOVED, colour me surprised! It's a good surprise too.

People always wondered whether this section would age well, but it seems like they’re going down the route of examining notions of gender and challenging assumptions. It could be interesting where they take that if it isn’t just done and dusted within a few minutes.

Seeing the footage of Sephiroth taunting Cloud and also Jenova fights both fascinates me and concerns me. Again, I feel I have seen too much, but it also looks awesome. It is great to see Lovecraftian-style weirdness with the Jenova sequence so I think they’re doing the right thing in experimenting there. If I was to guess, I would suspect that they are fighting a part of Jenova left behind by what we are all thinking is a physical Sephiroth. I suspect that what we are actually seeing is close to what happens on the ferry in the original game. Faux-Sephiroth (Jenova’s corpse) says something, dashes off, and drops a hunk of alien flesh on the ground which immediately grows into an aspect of Jenova. Maybe that is what is happening here, and they’ve just brought all of that forward. Not too wild, I guess.

The theme song has a nice organic feel to it. The harmonica gives it Old Western vibes initially (perhaps a deliberate reference to Tifa’s saloon serving as the AVALANCHE headquarters), then it develops into a rock song. I did wonder whether we’d get a theme song for this game and I think I could get behind this one! I’m happy to see Nobuo healthy and working on this!
 
I don't have the PS4 so I'll probably won't able to play the game day 1 so I'm very happy to see new content about it =3

The game has all elements of a super production and look grandiose. I'm happy to see they are making it faithful to the original and that they have kept the full spirit of it. I was afraid that Barret's bad talking or HoneyBee gets partially censored due to our society actual behavior.

They haven't censored and it looks like they have improved these parts some big thumbs up
It's giving hope for a badass Cid in the future :)

No matter how many parts there will be and how many time it will take to be released, when something is really awesome++, everything is allowed to make it a masterpiece and people will follow :)
 
Both the late Final Fantasy XV and Kingdom Hearts 3/Re:Mind trailers showed footage from practically all of their included story beats and they're just the next most recent examples. Whoever is in charge of putting trailers together in SE isn't fussed at all about the marketing showing off virtually all there is to show, with the only difference in this scenario being fans already have a general, rough idea of this game's narrative shape coupled with being told this is confined to Midgar. At the very least no one should be surprised like they were with Final Fantasy XV that the late trailers essentially "spoil" nearly everything.

For instance, I'm still semi-convinced that the scene with the new eldritch abomination incarnation of Jenova is the final boss of the game, if only because...firstly it's Jenova. It's not exactly an enemy encounter you casually come across. Secondly, unless they've utterly padded out the latter section of Midgar, the fact Red XIII is hanging around with the protagonists is heavy indication that it's toward the end of the game. 🤷‍♀️

Otherwise it's fine. It looks fine. I'm sure it'll be fun. I don't have a PS4 on me though and I wouldn't get this on Day 1 even if I were to suddenly pick one up before April. I still wish we were getting an original new mainline Final Fantasy installment instead, because we're way overdue for something conceptually new from mainline FF and I don't have that same nostalgia rush for FFVII as many others.
 
They didn't need to have Jenova as the final boss of the first part. The boss after the motorbike chase was fine. Same with Sephiroth showing his face. The game looks incredible, don't get me wrong here, but I have a concern that some of the pacing and tension of the original is going out the window so Seph stans can cream their pants earlier than later.
 
Be still my Cloti heart. 😍

Baby Cloud and Tifa, can you guys get any cuter? I'm super excited for this. PS4 might be coming in after all, depending on how expensive the PS5 will be. If I don't, my mom probably will, so I'll just steal her console every once in a while... :wacky:

For instance, I'm still semi-convinced that the scene with the new eldritch abomination incarnation of Jenova is the final boss of the game, if only because...firstly it's Jenova. It's not exactly an enemy encounter you casually come across. Secondly, unless they've utterly padded out the latter section of Midgar, the fact Red XIII is hanging around with the protagonists is heavy indication that it's toward the end of the game. 🤷‍♀️

In the original you fight multiple forms of Jenova as well, though. I genuinely don't think this is end game if only for the fact that Aerith is in the party. :LOL: I'd be well upset if it was, considering the circumstances. Ahem!
 
In the original you fight multiple forms of Jenova as well, though. I genuinely don't think this is end game if only for the fact that Aerith is in the party. :LOL: I'd be well upset if it was, considering the circumstances. Ahem!

I think it is the final boss of this first episode; but it's not the last boss of the entire game. Since it's getting split up episodicallly we're going to have multiple "final bosses".
 
I don't mind the theme song, but I do find it very out of place in the trailer - I think they would have been better keeping the trailer as an instrumental then the vocal version for the closing credits. The instrumental beginning works really well, but then I find the lyrics are just competing with the cutscenes; it reminds me of the Final Fantasy XIII Leona Lewis trailer - not a bad standalone song, but a really odd combination.

Overall, the trailer spoils pretty much nothing for me personally. Whilst I am familiar with the main characters and the odd plot point, for the most part I'm not remotely familiar with Final Fantasy VII on the whole. It certainly looks impressive, but for all their faults over the years, Square Enix do produce visually stunning games.

I have absolutely no idea how far into Final Fantasy VII the trailer shows, but it will be interesting to see how Square Enix manage production with the title being split over multiple games going into a new generation.
 
I can totally understand your problem, DaggerTribal!
I can't wait the Remake and while I want to know more about it, these trailers make me really uncomfortable. Because I want to see them, but after seeing this one I was also sad. And I feel they put too much spoilers into this video. I mean ofc the previous ones showed some spoiler-ish things, but this one... I really want to experience the story by playing the game, not watching some trailers! I couldn't wait to see the transformation of Cloud and I wanted it to be a nice surprised, but this trailer ruined it!!:(

I remember watching the trailer of the second Jurassic World movie. I really liked the trailer, but after watching the movie, I realised the trailer spoiled the biggest turn of events. Basicly the trailer showed us the full story (without the details), so watching the movie in the cinema wasn't such an overwhelming experience it could have been without seeing the trailer first. And I kind of don't want that to happen again with FF7R I guess? But I think I might be too late thinking about that now. :(
Yet I still loved this trailer, seeing some other characters like Red XIII and Hojo was really awesome!

So in the end I feel uncomfortable because I loved and hated this trailer in the same time. And that I can't really share it with some of my friends because this trailer would spoil them sooooo many things...:/

Edit: And I really love the soundtracks, but this theme song isn't the best in my opinion. Somehow it just feels off.
 
The theme song is really off. it starts off slow and nice, but then it tries to pick up and sound like an instrumental.

I really wish I hadn't watched this trailer...

Or at the very least read this before hand; I'm really disappointed.

How much is too much content for a trailer? I was hoping to see the Honey Bee Inn events, including Cloud & Tifa's dresses during game play, not in a trailer. That and Red XIII. Hojo, Reeve & Scarlet was a nice highlight, as well as the flashback with Cloud & Tifa (his voice is way too deep for this flashback IMO) but we're so close to the release, was it really necessary to include any more 'spoilers'? I know they're not 'actually' spoilers, but c'mon - I know a lot of us are really looking forward to how they did the Don Corneo events, and while it looks really really interesting I would have much rather of experienced this in the game. :(

Maybe I'm being a baby about it, I dunno, but I'm really kinda sad that I watched this. It just popped up on my social media as I was waking up this morning. If you don't want to be 'spoiled' by any more stuff I don't recommend watching this if you haven't already. I think I'll try and avoid any more upcoming teasers, or at the very least wait till I've seen people talking about it before I commit.

The trailer itself was awesome though, there's no doubt. Looks like the remake is going to be very beautiful. The Materia stuff was really interesting and Red XIII looked really awesome. Plus the new song. I'm too sad to talk about what I saw for the Honey Bee Inn :cry:

This is because Square Enix is afraid of losing momentum for the game. A whole month of delay may sound so little, but there were other games that we were expecting. It can cause someone to say "Maybe I don't need this on day-one".

This is the same thing with Kingdom Hearts 3. Final Fantasy XV I felt didn't because nothing in the trailers mattered.
 
Last edited:
Briana White (voice of Aerith) did a reaction video to the trailer. She's proving popular with people on our Discord, so here it is!


About the trailer showing too much, it has been noted that much of what we see in the trailer are the exact things which were leaked earlier on. It really is as if they have decided to show us the designs for these characters (and Cloud in his dress) as they should be seen to prevent the leaks from being relevant.
 
Back
Top