Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth Is Out On PC and Fans Are Already Discovering New Secrets
Hidden details.
Less than one year after its initial release Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth has finally come to PC, and fans are already celebrating. With new lighting and enhanced graphics, the world of Final Fantasy 7 has never looked better — but the additions go deeper than just being prettier. That graphical update has helped fans start to uncover extra little wrinkles and details, accentuating things that we might not have noticed before. We’ve compiled a few of the most interesting tidbits, and there’s sure to be more discovered as fans really dig even further into the PC release.
Warning: There will be some minor spoilers discussed in this article.
Some of the initial details found are seemingly innocuous. They’re not really affecting anything about the world or story, but are providing interesting little details. For example, with the updated textures fans have realized that Tifa’s earrings are actually made out of crystal, instead of metal like previously thought. It’s a neat little embellishment for her character that ties neatly into the themes of crystals found in every Final Fantasy game.
However, the updates have also started to reveal some potential lore and story implications. Streamer Schrodingersbabyseal ran a live stream for Rebirth’s PC launch, where they dug into the enhanced game and even used the free cam to navigate around environments and look at extra details that people might have missed. During that stream one enterprising fan took a snapshot of Jenova’s face, and compared it to the models of other female characters in the game and series, including Aerith and Lucrecia. Interestingly, the version of Jenova featured in Rebirth seems to be remarkably close to Ifalna, Aerith’s mother, as you can see below.
Now this could be nothing. It’s not unusual for games to sport similar character models, or for characters to have similar assets. But, there is a chance this could have some kind of meaning — especially knowing the lore of Final Fantasy 7. Ifalna, and Aerith, are descendants of the Ancients, a race of people that lived on Gaia in the distant past. When the calamity Jenova crash-landed on the planet, the Ancients were the ones who fought the intergalactic being and ultimately sealed her away — until Shinra and Hojo would use Jenova in experiments. Knowing all that, there could be some kind of link between Jenova and Ifalna, apart from the obvious that we already know. But that’s only something we can speculate on for now.
The final and most interesting piece fans have discovered revolves around the Lifestream sequence part-way through the game with Tifa. In this section, Tifa falls into the Lifestream and comes face-to-face with both Sephiroth and a weapon, and sees parts of her past sprinkled throughout.
Of course, anyone who’s played the original game knows we still have a major sequence in the Lifestream coming up in the third game. In the original, there’s a moment where both Cloud and Tifa fall into the Lifestream, and have a touching sequence where Tifa has to go through Cloud’s memories and essentially help him figure out who his real self is, and not the personality his psyche took from Zack Fair.
On a thread on X, a user named QueenLolipopo has chronicled all of the locations they could find in Tifa’s Lifestream sequence in Rebirth, which could give us some vital hints on how things in the third game could play out.
In the thread, Queenlolipopo points out locations like the Stargazer Heights apartments from Sector 7, the Seventh Heaven bar, the bridge outside of Nibelheim, Tifa’s house, and somewhere that could potentially be the town of Mideel (which we haven’t seen in the remake trilogy yet). It’s a fascinating thread that’s worth looking through and done entirely without the use of free cam.
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is a game abundantly rich in little details, from character quirks, to locations, to bits of lore. The PC version is undoubtedly the best way to play the game, and as fans sink more time into it, we’ll likely find even more bits and pieces to speculate over during the agonizing wait for the third and final game.
