Ever because the launch of the unique Remaining Fantasy 7, followers have agonized over the sport’s largest, best-known tragic second: Aerith’s demise. Might she be saved? Was it doable? For years, rumors have abounded about secret methods to save lots of her and hold her within the celebration. And now, speedrunners have discovered a path to preserving her round which will even be an enormous time-saver.
Found by speedrunners AceZephyr and Kuma and publicized by Luzbel, a brand new skip permits gamers to leap from Midgar all the best way to Forgotten Capital with Aerith nonetheless within the celebration. As a result of it skips the a part of the sport the place Aerith leaves the celebration, she sticks round, and finally witnesses her personal demise by the hands of Sephiroth solely to hitch the battle in opposition to Jenova Life moments later.
The most important skip in FF7 has been discovered. pic.twitter.com/HXVfrbOJd4
— Luzbel / ルズベル (@Luzbel789) October 23, 2024
The precise skip is fairly complicated and the kinks are nonetheless being labored out. It includes utilizing a Chocobo on the world map to trick the sport into letting you stroll on the ocean, after which Cloud merely strolls throughout the water over to Forgotten Capital with out doing any of the opposite stuff required to get there. The cutscene there performs as regular, however the celebration composition stays what it was earlier than. Kuma’s acquired a tutorial on YouTube right here for anybody focused on attempting it themselves.
Sadly, there are a variety of asterisks on this skip really working. For one, should you do not use a model of the sport that allows you to disable encounters, the skip is not possible, as a result of entering into an encounter whereas strolling on the water will softlock the sport. And since Aerith is not speculated to be within the celebration at this stage, the sport additionally softlocks at any time when there is a scene with the celebration that she should not be concerned in.
The neighborhood is at the moment working to attempt to discover methods round this, together with one agonizing five-hour effort from AceZephyr utilizing pause buffering to keep away from encounters whereas strolling throughout the water. Hopefully they discover one, as a result of if it ever turns into viable it would supposedly save runners round two hours, permitting them to blast by means of disc one quicker than ever.
If this has sparked your curiosity in Remaining Fantasy 7 once more, you need not speedrun the unique to get pleasure from it. Remaining Fantasy 7 Remake and Rebirth are fairly unbelievable too, and collectively they cowl a sliiiiightly totally different model of all of the story that speedrunners are skipping on ye olde disc one. We gave Remaining Fantasy 7 Remake an 8/10, and Rebirth acquired a 9/10. Our reviewer wrote: “Remaining Fantasy VII Rebirth impressively builds off of what Remake set in movement as each a best-in-class action-RPG stuffed with thrilling problem and depth, and as an awe-inspiring recreation of a world that has meant a lot to so many for therefore lengthy.”
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Yow will discover her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Acquired a narrative tip? Ship it to rvalentine@ign.com.
