Final Fantasy VII remake Chapter 2 – Audio

Welcome back everyone. Last time we discussed urban development, Titan's table manners, Aerith's bodily fluids and tying up Yuffie. If you had as much fun reading it as I had writing it, it was time well spent for both of us. This time we will tackle another topic that needs no explanation. So naturally this chapter will be even longer. Or maybe not. It all depends on how much explanation my points will need or how many weird pop culture references will come to my mind as I talk about sound. I will try to do my best.

You might be wondering what there is to discuss? Of course there will be voice acting and of course everyone will use the Advent Children voices. Duh. Well I have to correct you riiiight there. You see the choice is not that simple for everyone. I have to pick on poor Yuffie again who has one english voice actress for Kingdom Hearts and AC and another for Kingdom Hearts II and Dirge of Cerberus, while the late Aerith has no less than three voice actresses to her name. Mandy Moore for Kingdom Hearts, Andrea Bowen for Crisis Core and Dissidia 012, and the super cute Mena Suvari for Kingdom Hearts II and Advent Children. Which one will it be? Sephiroth also has two english voice actors, but George Newbern voiced him for all but one of his appearance so he is easy. Thankfully this means that Rude will be voiced by Crispin Freeman. I can't wait till he bumps into Vinccent. Last time he met a Valentine was pretty fun. Come to think of it, with the right materia Vincent can do everything Alucard asked of Luke. „Summon up your demons, transform your body, heal your severed legs and stand.” All check out.

But what of those who have no voice. And I'm not even talking about random shopkeepers. I'm talking about people like President Shinra, Don Corneo or Godo Kisaragi (please, Ken Watanabe). Or Kyahaha and Gyahaha AKA Scarlet and Heidegger. They are kinda important. In fact a remarkable number of important people have no voice actors. Including the parents of the protagonists. Cloud's mother, Tifa's father and Aerith's biological and adoptive mother (Ifalna and Elmyra Gainsborough respectively). Oh yeah she also has a father, Professor Gast Faremis. And well, this is only english. Even the first witcher had 8 different languages to chose from both for vice and for subtitle. And that was seven years ago. At this age besides english and japanese the minimum is French, Italian, Spanish and German. Maybe Russian or Chinese. That's a lot of voice actors. I wonder if we will have an option to mix and match the languages. Hopefully yes.

So all the text in the game will be translated into several languages and voiced. Minus the weird stuff like „This guy are sick” and the choice to eat Korean BBQ in Midgar. But is that all?

What about party banther? In XIII your party members talked regularly with each other while you walked around and did your thing. Even those not in the active party. It is also a good place to give up additional background info that appear in the compilation elsewhere. You can't really expect people to play Before Crisis, a japanese only cellphone game.

The more perceptive of you might have noticed that the chapter title is Audio and not Voice acting. And there are lots of audio related stuff in the game. So it is time to bug the summons again. Now I don't want to suggest awkward things, but quite a few summons sound like a goat that is handled ahemm.....illegally. Let's leave it at that.

Now that we are warmed up time to jump into the question of music. This is one of the best things to discuss about Final Fantasy since, much like Star Wars, there is no installment without at least one eargasmic song. A new release of course requires a remastered soundtrack. However it might not be Uematsu who does it. *gasp* We are doomed! No, not really. Okay, listen up. Nobuo Uematsu is God. Obviously. At the very least the god of music. Nobodyully replace him. And I would absolutely love if he remxied the soundtrack for the remake. Along with creating new songs need be. However he already did enough and he wants to relax and let the new generation take his place he has every right to do that. There are two people I can think of who might replace him.

Number one is Masayoshi Soken. A relatively new rising star ammong Final Fantasy composers. In some ways he is like a young Uematsu. He is very talented, very vestaile and has his own metal band. He already reworked several iconic Uematsu pieces for the Relm Reborn soundtrack. Most notable for us in this case is his rework of Gold Saucer. He has everyhing necessary for the job. Only problem is, he has his hands full with XIV. Even Yoshie-P made a joke once about how little time Soken has. And if your boss, your japanese boss, makes jokes about how overworked you are, it is a sign that you probably can't take up more projects.

Option number two is Takeharu Ishimoto. You could hear his work in the recently released Type-0 HD where he mixed orchestral pieces with heavy rock songs. His style is very much final fantasy but has a unique flavour to is. He also did the soundtrack to every Dissidia installment and, most importantly, half the VII compilation. Crisis Core, Before Crisis and Last Order to be exact. If this doesn't qualify someone to do the remake's soundtrack, nothing will.

Of course Square Enix might surpise us and do something totally unexpected like dragging away Kumi Tanioka from Crystal Chronicles and give her the job.

Okay let's concentrate on one particular song for now. One Winged Angel. Oppinions are divided wether it is better than Dancing Mad or not, but it is definitely one of the most beloved and influential songs Uematsu created. It has to be played at every Final Fantasy concert and some songs are written with the exact purpose of surpassing it. Caius's theme for example. However its fame is sort of the problem. As any TV Tropes reader can tell you Seinfeld is Unfunny. What this means is that no matter how revolutionary a tv show, or video game is when it comes out it will look like a cliché storm years later. One of the biggest selling points of One Winged Angel is the latin chanting. Except in the PC port of course which excludes that part. Grrrrrrr. Unfortunately, said chanting has been copied over and over and over and over again. Even inside the series. Hell latin chanting is so cliché now that Soken even has a software that randomly generates latin lyrics for him. Really. Now OWA had plently of reworks so far but this time the composer should go beyond what Uematsu did for Advent Children and change the language of the lyrics. Yes, yes I know what I am suggesting is blasphemy, madness and sparta. Still it is the only way to make it as effective as it was when the original came out. But what language? A good choice in this case is to use a made up language like in Skyrim or for Ramuh's theme in A Realm Reborn. Naturally VII has no such luck. Sanskrit also works for epic boss fights and Gavin Dunne the absolute genius behind Miracle of Sound can even make french sound badass if the need arises. Apologies for french readers. As sexy as your language is, it isn't badass at all. The only problem is that a song about a freakin angel can't be in just any language that can sound badass. It needs to be in a language that makes sense thematically. So what if not latin?

Well I am happy to tell you that there is one that fits even better than latin. And that my friends is Hebrew. You might have heared of it in basically any class or course that deals with western religion. Not only is our idea of angels based on a set of Hebrew texts, but the world Sephiroth (well Sephirot) itself is Hebrew. I am most definitely not an expert on Kabbalah but the gist of it is something like this. There are ten Sephirah (plural form: Sephirot) and they are they ways in which God can interact with the world before physically manifesting in it. This is a pretty accurate description of what Sephiroth did in VII with his clones and in Advent Children with his remnants.

So yes I think the best way to keep One Winged Angel fresh and ensure it has the same effect the original had is to give it completely new lyrics in Hebrew.

That leaves us with the question of where in the orchestral – metal axis the new OWA will be placed. The one in Crisis Core leaned more towards orchestral while the Advent Children version was pure heavy metal. In fact the entire Advent Children soundtrack was a huge leap towards heavy metal. Okay not the entire one, but it is still very metal. It will be interesting to see wether the new soundtrack will follow the same direction. If the tone is not right it can and will divide the fandom. Metal works well for boss fights but not for places like the Temple of the Ancients or Wutai.

Yes I'm bringing up Wutai a lot. I freakin love the place. In fact I started playing Final Fantasy VII, my first FF game, because I wanted a game that is either set in or features a place influenced by medieval japan. And well Wutai was and still is the most famous example..

Although I will talk about this a bit more in a later chapter I can't stop without mentioning that I wouldn't mind if the new soundtrack included Battle on the Big Bridge, as Final Fantasy VII is sticking out as a sore thumb from the other installments for not featuring a certain fan favorite swordsman.

And on that note I will call end to this part of the discussion. In the next part we will finally talk about gameplay. Combat and progression to be specific. Well they may get their own chapters but you get the idea. Anyway combat will definitely appear next time. And we will try to figure out what 'dramatic change' actually means.