Final Fantasy 7’s big bad Sephiroth just got a big chunk of new backstory thanks to mobile game spin-off Ever Crisis.
As reported by Eurogamer, the story of young Sephiroth is at the centre of Ever Crisis’s latest update and players are now wondering if or how this lore dump will connect to the highly anticipated Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth, the sequel to 2020’s Remake.
The crux of the story, which is as dramatic and bizarre and tragic as much of Final Fantasy, revolves around Sephiroth’s heritage. The villain’s parents are Shinra scientists (part of the evil mega-corporation ruling Final Fantasy 7’s world of Gaia) called Hojo and Lucrecia. Fans of the game will also be familiar with Jenova, a big evil alien whose cells were injected into Lucrecia (Sephiroth’s mum) while she was pregnant, which led to Sephiroth being super powerful.
Some people have pointed this out, but the #FF7EC trailer has a line Rosen asks Sephiroth:
“Who exactly is the life you are trying to save?” that almost looks like it connects to Rebirth’s trailer line:
“Will you exist in the world I’m trying to save?”
Very interesting…? pic.twitter.com/zf0A4ImfiF
— ☆オードリーAudrey☆ (@aitaikimochi) September 27, 2023
Ever Crisis revealed a new layer to his tragedy as Sephiroth, who grew up not knowing his mother, was actually lied to about her identity by his father. This was revealed as the Sephiroth keeps a photo of a woman he believes is called Jenova, but it’s actually his mother Lucrecia. Sephiroth therefore knew of Lucrecia the entire time, he just didn’t know she was his mother.
Whether or not this feeds into Remake’s sequel remains to be seen, but its very title as Rebirth, which producer Yoshinori Kitase told IGN was chosen for a specific reason, perhaps suggests some changes in character origins.
Some fans are already questioning whether or not Ever Crisis and Rebirth will be linked based on the new content, with Aitaikimochi on Twitter (above) noting similarities between lines in their trailers: “Who exactly is the life you are trying to save?” and “Will you exist in the world I’m trying to save?”
Rebirth will definitely feature story changes from the original Final Fantasy 7, just like Remake before it, but fans will just need to wait and see how these play out when it launches February 29.
A lengthy trailer from Summer Game Fest gave fans their first proper look at the game in a year and came at the end of a week’s worth of sometimes insightful but more often bizarre Q&A posts from Square Enix.
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.
