Final Fantasy VII Deadstrife

Final Fantasy VII Deadstrife is a Playstation 5 game, sequel to Final Fantasy VII Remake. It's set after the events of FFVII Remake diverged from the original game.
It's directed by Yuji Horii, unlike the first FFVII Remake. 
Unlike FFVII Remake, it features character creation, with the player being a self-insert that follows Cloud's party instead of directly being Cloud. The reason for this was because Cloud's characterization would be impossible if he was made silent, and Yuji Horii thinks a protagonist that has dialogue not chosen by the player alienates them and doesn't allow them to experience the world as themselves.
This game adapts the rest of disc 1, from Kalm to the City of the Ancients. 
It mostly follows FFVII the original, though the ending features Cloud's death instead of Aerith's (because Aerith's death and return to the Lifestream is a necessary condition to use the White Materia and stop Meteor, and Sephiroth knows that so he wants to prevent it). Also, Zack, who is alive but in a delusional state, is an important main antagonist as future Sephiroth's pawn (and only redeems himself in the ending due to Aerith's power). 
Aerith, however, will still die in the sequel, Final Fantasy VII Fairfuture, where she will kill herself specifically to use the White Materia.
Yuffie and Vincent are non-optional and Wutai is an actual chapter of this game. 
== Party members ==
Protagonist: An avatar created by the player. They travel outside Midgar alongside their talking cat Cait Sith, who acts as their "mission control". They are a silent protagonist who only talks through dialogue options and in battle, which is justified as they're a long-distance drone controlled by Reeve from Shinra HQ. They replace Cait Sith as a playable character. They don't have a specific weapon type and their class is player-chosen between Fighter (using swords like Cloud), Thief (using shuriken like Yuffie), Black Mage (using rifles like Vincent), Paladin (using arm-cannons like Barret), White Mage (using staves like Aerith), Monk (using knuckles like Tifa) and Red Mage (using pistols like Biggs). They can switch classes whenever they want, but can only use the two default skills per each class and the one for the weapon they currently have equipped. Their Limit Breaks are Slot and Dice, but they can also use any Limit Break the player has learnt for other characters (aside from the limits which are unlocked through manuals), and their final limit break is Multistrike, which involves them rapidly switching classes to attack with all kinds of physical attack. When specific conditions are met, the protagonist also receives special buffs and special effects from Cait Sith, which have to be set through special "gambit discs" found throughout the overworld. In the final duel against Zack, their class becomes permanently set to Fighter and their weapon is Cloud's Buster Sword, which Zack gave them in order to match him. 
Cloud Strife: The previous game's protagonist and the de-facto main character in this, introducing himself as a former member of SOLDIER who now operates as a mercenary. Cloud is caught up in the actions of eco-terrorist group AVALANCHE, and although initially uncaring toward their mission, he has a change of heart when he begins to discover his shrouded past. He dies at the end of the game, when Aerith was supposed to. He's a fighter.
Barret Wallace: The leader of a splinter faction of Avalanche, who wields a gun on his right arm in place of his injured hand. Despite his brash and loud-mouthed personality, he is a caring person and loves his daughter Marlene. He's a paladin.
Aerith Gainsborough: A flower girl from the Sector 5 Slums who befriends Cloud. Cloud's resemblance to someone she used to know mystifies Aerith, and she joins him and AVALANCHE on their quest to discover more about her heritage. She's a white mage.
Tifa Lockhart: Cloud's childhood friend and member of AVALANCHE, runs the bar 7th Heaven in the Sector 7 slums, which serves as the group's hideout. Her sympathetic exterior hides fearsome fighting skills. She's a monk. 
Biggs (later "Cid II"): Another member of Avalanche. He has survived in the Leaf House and has set off to look for Cloud's group after Rocket Town has been raided by Shinra, killing Cid Highwind (who had taken Biggs from the Leaf House and whom Biggs had worked with before the raid). Biggs saves the group aboard the Tiny Bronco, an airship once belonging to Cid (which Biggs has taken after Cid had died). He replaces Cid as a party member, and, near the end of the game, takes Cid Highwind's name as he swears to complete what Cid had left incomplete. He's a red mage, but once he declares himself to be the successor of Cid, his "stance" can be switched from the normal red mage to a spear-using unique class (not available for the protagonist) called Dragoon, which cannot equip weapons (Cid's spear is his only weapon of this type but has multiple skills associated to it, such as the Dragoon's unique ability Jump. 
Red XIII: A red dog-like mutant, created in Hojo's lab. He cannot equip new weapons, but his fangs (which count as his "weapon") have multiple skills learned by leveling up. His class, spirit beast, isn't available to the protagonist due to it being tied to his nature as a nonhuman. It acts similarly to the Green and Time Magic from XII, and combines quick physical strikes, magic attacks (often earth-elemental), inflicting status ailments, casting reflect, absorbing health and doing fractional damage.
Yuffie Kisaragi: A ninja from Wutai. She's no longer an optional party member. She's a thief.
Vincent Valentine: A weird man, apparently a vampire, sleeping in a coffin, who seems to be connected to Hojo and Lucrecia. He's no longer an optional party member. He's a black mage, but has a unique stance system (not available to a black mage protagonist) which involves him transforming into various monsters.
== Plot ==
=== Prologue: ===
The game starts with the player creating an avatar. 
The avatar sets off from Midgar, their talking cat Cait Sith on their shoulder. The cat tells them to go to Kalm and meet Cloud Strife in Kalm's inn. They enter, make acquaintances with the rest of the group (except for Biggs, Yuffie and Vincent who aren't there), then Cloud starts telling the party his story of the incident at Nibelheim. 
For the prologue, which is mostly close to the equivalent section in the original FFVII, the player controls 16-year-old Cloud (level 1) and is helped by Sephiroth (who can now be controlled by the player). It's an automatic game over if Cloud dies in this section. 
Cloud tells that after leaving his hometown of Nibelheim he joined SOLDIER and became 1st Class, and befriended Sephiroth despite him rarely talking about himself, and that they came to trust one another. They helped Shinra put down any resistance after the Wutai War and afterward were dispatched to Nibelheim with two guards to investigate a mako reactor on Mt. Nibel, where monsters had been reported appearing.
During the ride Cloud was excited (to the annoyance of Sephiroth) at the prospect of seeing some action, as he had joined SOLDIER too late for the Wutai War, and wanted to prove himself. The truck ran into a dragon (implied to be one of the monsters created by the Nibel Reactor), and Cloud and Sephiroth stepped out to face it, with Cloud stating he did nothing as he was mesmerized by the way Sephiroth fought. Cloud explains to his listeners Sephiroth's power surpassed any other person he has met, and is beyond any story they may have heard about him.
The group arrived in Nibelheim and Sephiroth asked Cloud how it felt returning to his hometown, curious as he had no hometown of his own. Sephiroth revealed his mother's name was Jenova, but said nothing about his father. Sephiroth, Cloud and the two infantrymen who accompanied them stayed the night at the inn even if Sephiroth asked whether Cloud wanted to stay with his family. Cloud visited his mother, but could only remember bits and pieces of their conversation. He also visited Tifa's house, but found it empty. Tifa's father was unreceptive of Cloud due to him joining SOLDIER, and he learned from instructor Zangan that Tifa had become a talented martial artist under his tutelage.
Next day, Sephiroth hired Tifa to guide them up the mountain and they set off after a fan took a photo of him, Tifa and Cloud together. During the expedition a rope bridge snapped, and one of the guards was lost in the fall. After passing through several mysteriously colored caves they came into a Mako Fountain and Sephiroth revealed what he knew about Materia and magic.
At the reactor Sephiroth and Cloud entered alone. Sephiroth deduced that the refinery had malfunctioned due to a broken purification tank, and asked Cloud to seal the valve. He wondered why the tank had broken in the first place, and discovered all such tanks contained makonoids—vaguely humanoid monsters that were once people—submerged in mako. At the top of the chamber was a sealed door with the plaque "Jenova". When Cloud asked if the makonoids were being made in a manner similar to the process of empowering SOLDIER members, Sephiroth questioned if the disconnect he had always felt from others meant he was created this way as well.
After they returned to town Sephiroth retreated to the abandoned Shinra Mansion where Shinra Electric Power Company scientists once worked. When Cloud had come looking for him, he found Sephiroth in a secret basement full of books and journals on Jenova, whom the Shinra scientists Professor Gast and Professor Hojo had discovered in the North Crater and believed to be a Cetra, a member of an extinct species of humans thought to have supernatural powers. Their research had led to the Jenova Project, and Sephiroth spent three sleepless days perusing the research notes, wondering why he was never told the truth. When Cloud asked if he was alright, he told Cloud to leave. The next time Cloud checked on Sephiroth, he had gone insane.
Sephiroth had come to believe Jenova is a Cetra from the time their civilization was abandoned to die by normal humans during an ancient catastrophe. Sephiroth believed he was Jenova's son, artificially produced from her cells, and therefore the last Cetra. He set off to meet his "mother" with Cloud in pursuit but Cloud was too late to stop Sephiroth from setting the village ablaze and slaughter many citizens. As Cloud and Zangan searched for survivors, Sephiroth headed off to Mt. Nibel.
Cloud pursued Sephiroth to the reactor and found Tifa outside the inner chambers, standing over her father's body with Sephiroth's Masamune stuck in his corpse. Tifa, full of anger and hatred, grabbed the katana while proclaiming her hatred towards Shinra and Sephiroth. She ran after Sephiroth trying to stab him, but he disarmed her and knocked her down the stairs before entering Jenova's chamber. Cloud carried the severely wounded Tifa aside and followed Sephiroth, witnessing him tear off a mechanical effigy of Jenova from its setting, revealing Jenova herself suspended in animation in a tank. Fueled by grief over the loss of his home, friends and family, the enraged Cloud confronted the remorseless Sephiroth who proclaimed Cloud didn't need to be sad as his mission was to take back the Planet for the Cetra. With Cloud seeing Sephiroth is no longer the man he looked up to, he raised his Buster Sword in preparation for the incoming battle, but cannot remember anything beyond this moment. Cloud doubts the news of Sephiroth being dead because Shinra controls the media, and also because he knows he did not have the skill to kill him, wondering why Sephiroth spared his life.
=== Chapter 1: ===
The group soon realizes that while they were talking, someone stole all their weapons and Materia (that someone is revealed to be Yuffie). 
Cloud tells the party to start chasing for Sephiroth, though Barret advises them to get a Chocobo in order to more easily run from the Midgardsormr, a snake-like beast which infests the swamp. After the party outrun it with the help of a Chocobo, they suddenly see another Midgardsormr impaled on a tree. Cloud soon realizes it was Sephiroth that did that. 
They enter the mithril mine and meet the Turks, now with Elena. She mentions Sephiroth was headed for Junon. 
=== Chapter 2: ===
TBA
== Trivia ==
* Cait Sith is inspired by Fuuka, Rise and Futaba from the Persona series, in that they aren't directly controllable but give special buffs and effects to the player's party, at random or in case specific conditions are met. As a navigator, Cait Sith is already in the party from the start, unlike in the original FFVII.
* The Gold Saucer and Gongaga are made optional in this game, though they weren't in the original. 
* The player-created protagonist of this game serves as a replacement to Cait Sith's giant Moogle-shaped toy. The reason for this is that it would have felt too strange to have the player control a toy, and the game would have the perfect justification for character creation. Also, since the new director Yuji Horii claims a talking protagonist alienates the player, character creation allows the player to insert themselves into the game without turning the preexisting character Cloud into a silent MC. 
* The idea of the game having character creation came from Final Fantasy XV, whose special expansion Comrades had a player-created main character who was also playable in the final chapter of the main game, but most of the main game had been Noctis' story through and through. Likewise, this game's player-created avatar is secondary to the plot and has little to no backstory, and Aerith is the real main protagonist.
*Like the first VII Remake game, this game is de-facto cidless: there is no character named Cid in the entire game, as Cid Highwind is already dead and is only mentioned by Biggs (and in sidequests), often on a last-name basis. The name Cid is later taken by Biggs himself, as he swears to complete what the late Cid had left incomplete. 
*Two one-on-one duels are added, one before the fight against Jenova LIFE (Cloud vs Sephiroth) and one afterwards (protagonist vs Zack). This serves as a way to use Cloud and the protagonist in the final battles, despite Cloud being killed after the duel with Sephiroth, and the protagonist having sacrificed themselves in the Temple of the Ancients only to suddenly awaken: Zack has taken Cloud's Buster Sword from his corpse and given it to the protagonist in order to duel him fairly.
*Aerith and Tifa are both bisexuals and fall in love with each other (they are seen hugging each other at the end of the game, and in Fairfuture they become a couple). This is symbolic of Cloud being not the hero but just a random mook whose entire existence is completely optional, and even his supposed love triangle (like his entire existence) is a failure in this new timeline: not only can't he get any of the two girls he had vied for, but it's each other that they want, not him, nor Zack, nor any other man who had loved them.
*In Fairfuture, Cloud can be resurrected to complete his character arc in Mideel (when Tifa enters Cloud's mind) but doing so is entirely optional and requires her to sacrifice the new Cloud in Zack's timeline: as Zack doesn't want the "fake" Cloud to awaken instead of what he perceives as the "real" Cloud, he wants to die before the Cloud he cares for is killed. Zack's stats and skills are transferred to Cloud, and the ending changes depending on who lives. This is a plot point inspired by Chrono Trigger. 
Category:Final Fantasy (series)
Category:Final Fantasy Games
Category:Square Enix
Category:Final Fantasy VII