FFVII: The First Soldier announced: a battle royale game for mobile platforms

You know what's missing from FFVII? What about a firefight in the garden of Aerith's scenic house in the Sector 5 slums?

One of a pair of new mobile games to do with Final Fantasy VII, The First Avenger SOLDIER will be a new action game for iOS and Android where players will scramble to take each other down with a variety of firearms, magic spells and even summons such as Ifrit.

This battle royale will take place in Midgar thirty years before the actual events of Final Fantasy VII. What better way to show you have the mettle to be a member of SOLDIER than to brutally slaughter your fellow jobseekers in the middle of the slums?

The battle will start sometime this year.

 

Ummm. Looks interesting, but I trust it isn’t canon.

I would say no, considering that Midgar looks exactly the same as it does in the Remake (Wall Market in Sector 6, etc) as opposed to how it should probably have looked 30 years ago.

They’ve even used the ‘new’ model of the Guard Scorpion (or Scorpion Sentinel), instead of the older prototype machine which the party in the Remake clearly state was the prototype model and thus could have been more appropriate here.

With a Battle Royale taking place in Elmyra’s house though (it isn’t Aerith’s house as she hasn’t been born yet), this does play into my jokey head-canon theory that Elmyra used to be a criminal mastermind. Maybe she took pleasure in seeing these new Soldier recruits blast each other’s brains out, and took delight in mopping up the spillage with her trusty broom. It would explain why 30 years later they have so many brooms, pots and pans in their cupboards, and why her first instinct when Cloud stayed the night was to get them all out ready...

 

Well, not really interested personally, but it's nice they're reaching out to an audience that enjoys this kind of gaming. Concept is a little meh but I guess it kinda makes sense. I can't make it out clearly but I swear one of the posters looked like Cait Sith riding a camel and that'd be really silly if his original design (in game lore that probably isn't canon) was supposed to ride one.

With a Battle Royale taking place in Elmyra’s house though (it isn’t Aerith’s house as she hasn’t been born yet), this does play into my jokey head-canon theory that Elmyra used to be a criminal mastermind. Maybe she took pleasure in seeing these new Soldier recruits blast each other’s brains out, and took delight in mopping up the spillage with her trusty broom. It would explain why 30 years later they have so many brooms, pots and pans in their cupboards, and why her first instinct when Cloud stayed the night was to get them all out ready...

Had a good chuckle remembering this. It just further explains that horrible resting face she has going on. Poor Elmyra!

 

I can't make it out clearly but I swear one of the posters looked like Cait Sith riding a camel and that'd be really silly if his original design (in game lore that probably isn't canon) was supposed to ride one.

This is a poster of Stamp. It appears to be an animated adventure film called Stamp and the Hidden Treasure.

It's actually still visible in Wall Market during the time of the Remake, which is one of the reasons why I've been thinking they just haven't put much effort into redesigning these areas to make them look 30 years younger. Unless this Stamp film itself is a 30 year old movie and they never bothered to take the poster down in Wall Market by the time Cloud gets there. Or, like the real world, nostalgia makes money and the movie has been re-released or remade in Cloud's time.

(I'd hoped the thousands of screenshots I took of this game would come in handy one day...)



Looks like they are essentially recycling the maps as they appear in the Remake for the most part. If there are minor differences, I haven't noticed them yet as I've only watched the trailer a few times.

 

This is a poster of Stamp. It appears to be an animated adventure film called Stamp and the Hidden Treasure.

It's actually still visible in Wall Market during the time of the Remake, which is one of the reasons why I've been thinking they just haven't put much effort into redesigning these areas to make them look 30 years younger. Unless this Stamp film itself is a 30 year old movie and they never bothered to take the poster down in Wall Market by the time Cloud gets there. Or, like the real world, nostalgia makes money and the movie has been re-released or remade in Cloud's time.

View attachment 10642

(I'd hoped the thousands of screenshots I took of this game would come in handy one day...)



Looks like they are essentially recycling the maps as they appear in the Remake for the most part. If there are minor differences, I haven't noticed them yet as I've only watched the trailer a few times.

Oh! You sure are right! Can't believe you remembered it to be honest. You'd think it wouldn't take too much to at least change a few different aesthetic things such as the posters in this case. I guess time will tell, but that does seem very lazy on their part, but at the same time it's also asking what do you expect out of a mobile game. :/

 

I don't think we're allowed this in Europe, but if anyone in North America wishes to sign up for the closed beta for this game, you can do so here:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1395801746736246791

You have until May 27th!

 

In addition to the Origins trailer, TGS 2021 also granted us a new trailer for First Soldier.

People are wildly speculating on the characters depicted. Whether some figures are young versions of Sephiroth, Tifa's mom and Cloud's dad, and so on.

It is interesting but I still doubt how canon this will be. It'll be borderline canon, I reckon. But we may not be intended to imagine these events actually happening within the Remake universe. Hence the weird VR prediction plotline to explain why things look mostly the same 18-30 years ago as they do during the Remake...

 

The game's opening video has been released today.

And somebody made an interesting observation about the behemoth seen here.

Spoiler: Mild spoiler maybe?

https://twitter.com/x/status/1456575910430363650

 

So we're supposed to believe that Shinra released a bunch of people into the slums with weapons and summons to fight each other to the death? What about the people living there? How many innocent lives were snuffed out by this nonsense? And thirty years later, no one is still talking about this and there hasn't been a mass revolt against Shinra?

Also, looks like they're trying to reel in the COD crowd with the gameplay.

 

So we're supposed to believe that Shinra released a bunch of people into the slums with weapons and summons to fight each other to the death? What about the people living there? How many innocent lives were snuffed out by this nonsense? And thirty years later, no one is still talking about this and there hasn't been a mass revolt against Shinra?

Also, looks like they're trying to reel in the COD crowd with the gameplay.

Yeah, the recycled maps really, really put me off when I first saw footage of this game. It came across to me to be a game which has been slapped together, recycling Remake's assets to make a bit of extra money, and to bring a new multiplayer experience to the FFVII universe. And to an extent, that is exactly what it is.

But there is also quite a bit of interesting lore that is/might be revealed in this game.

There are some subtle differences in the maps, but not as great an amount as you would expect. That said, supposedly this isn't really happening and they are fighting in a VR simulation which uses some sort of prediction software to calculate what the Midgar of the future would look like.... Which is in itself a bit silly, because that could mean that some select people are privy to information about the plate falling (both times), the bombings, the fact that Zack and Cloud would fall through Aerith's roof... The lot.

But, I guess, that prediction aspect, if it turns out that way, could be interesting in itself. The VR element is certainly preferable to them actually doing all of this in Midgar's actual history. That would be crazy.

For the most part I do believe this will just be bang, bang, and more bang. Square Enix admitted themselves that this one will not be story heavy.

But it is infinitely better than the FFXV mobile game.
I mean, lol:

Since Square Enix themselves are actually publishing it, and the creative team are actually supervising it, First Soldier will be giving FFVII a bit more respect than that, and has more to do with the FFVII mythos. Hopefully it'll give us a few nuggets.

 

Not into mobile games but this is pretty cool:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1457724842971594753

 

i dont like it much. i am an rpg gamer and not an action shooter like dirge of cerberus. i hope ever crisis is more enjoyable for me. but it was said it would be a gacha game like another eden