Final Fantasy VII Remake Revisited Chapter 18: Destiny’s Crossroads

We’re taking a deep dive into the 18th chapter of Final Fantasy VII Remake with the wonderful development team who brought the game to life.
By Sunil Godhania

This year is Final Fantasy VII’s 25th Anniversary - and the celebrations have begun!

As part of the ongoing festivities, the development team behind Final Fantasy VII Remake have graciously agreed to dive deeper into the game than ever before.

We've been revisiting their thoughts, memories, and anecdotes from the creation of the game. Check out the first and most recent chapters here:

If you've yet to play Final Fantasy VII Remake, go and play it now, and if you read on...

...please beware of spoilers.

With that warning out of the way, let’s mosey…


“The Midgar Expressway" is an incredible track, featuring motifs from across the FFVII/FFVII Remake soundtrack. How much work went into creating this piece of music, was it one of the harder pieces to work on?

I remember that putting together the first arrangement demo for the crazy motorcycle bit at the beginning of "The Midgar Expressway" probably didn't even take a week to do.

I thought that keeping the bpm of 190 but changing the motifs in the subsequent parts would be really tricky, but when I actually got down to working on it, the power and momentum from the visuals guided me and I managed to create these sections without too much of a headache.

The feeling of being "in the zone" when I was working on this track was a valuable experience and really sticks in my memory.

Featuring guitars in all the different sections of "The Midgar Expressway" was one thing that I was quite particular about, so I decided to use the Advent Children versions for the sections from "Those who Fight" and "Let the Battles Begin".

Yoshinori Nakamura (TV ASAHI MUSIC CO., LTD.)

Cloud on a motorcycle fighting against Shinra's bikers

Why was the Motor Ball boss battle added into the motorbike mini-game as opposed to being a separate boss fight in the original FFVII? Was there ever a time when it was a separate boss fight?

That is a great question. The original script written up by Mr. Nojima actually had the last section of the game go from the Motor Ball battle to the Whisper Harbinger and finally the ending.

Mid-way through development we changed direction to make Sephiroth the final boss of this title and felt that having three boss fights in a row would spoil the tempo. Accordingly, we decided to use Motor Ball as the boss of the G-Bike section just before the final boss fights instead.

Naoki Hamaguchi (Co-Director(Game Design / Programming))

The Motorball boss from FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE

Whisper Rebrum, Viridi and Croceo seem to represent Kadaj, Loz and Yazoo from FFVII Advent Children, fighting to save their own future (referencing the entries that appear after using the Assess materia on each). Is this true?

The Whispers are capable of forming monsters from all the memories in the flow of time, and I think that includes the characters who exist or will exist in the timeline as well.

Motomu Toriyama (Co-Director(Scenario Design))

Whisper Rebrum, Viridi and Croceo from Final Fantasy VII Remake

Next, the party are shown memories of the future as told in the original FFVII, was there ever a concern that this wouldn't be obvious to fans playing Remake with no prior knowledge of the original FFVII?

Cloud and the team do not really understand what they are seeing in the scene where they are granted memories of the future either, so it is fine if the full meaning behind the visions is not communicated to the player.

Motomu Toriyama (Co-Director(Scenario Design))

Cloud, Tifa, Aerith, Barret and Red XIII standing as memories from the planet rush towards them

The Midgar Highway stage was created specifically for motorbike riding action. I remember it was a large map and it must have been made in quite a different way to the regular stages in the game. Were there any difficulties or challenges in creating the highway?

It was hard work placing the clusters of buildings across such a wide area to match with the layout of Midgar, and a challenge unique to working within this setting. We constantly needed to check the compass directions to prevent the landscape deviating from the map of the city, asking ourselves what direction the Shinra Building should be visible from and where the position of the plate that forms the player's final destination should be.

Takako Miyake (Environment Director)

The Midgar Highway in FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE

The battle with Sephiroth features various phases, differing party members depending on conditions set throughout the story and crazy camera angles throughout. How difficult was it to pull this all together?

There were numerous mechanics and systems specifically made for this battle, and it was one of the ones that we took a lot of care on, as well as one of the trickiest to pull off.

There were also a lot of bugs that needed fixing and it took a long time to make overall.

Teruki Endo (Battle Director)

Sephiroth from FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE

One-Winged Angel - Rebirth is another wonderful arrangement of one of the most famous music tracks in videogame history. What was it like being entrusted to rearrange this track for FFVII Remake and how pleased are you with how it came out?

“One Winged Angel” is one of the most important music tracks in my whole life, so when I was asked to arrange it, I felt a great responsibility to make a good version, even if I had to use the rest of my life to do it.

It goes without saying that I like everything that the original composer, Mr. Nobuo Uematsu, has done, and I also loved Mr. Shiro Hamaguchi’s orchestration of "One Winged Angel", so the music of these two creators has had a massive influence on me.

When I set out to do my new version of the track, I first searched for what kind of arrangement would make a version of "One Winged Angel" that would satisfy me personally, something that did not damage any of the numerous appealing factors of the original and most importantly something that would not disappoint me or corrupt my childhood memories of hearing it

As the track name “One-Winged Angel - Rebirth” implies, the key word to explain this new arrangement is “rebirth”.

I mentioned this in the Ultimania Guide (Final Fantasy VII Remake Material Ultimania) too, but I remember seeing a comment from Mr. Uematsu somewhere in which he talked about how he approached the original composition by first creating a number of different motifs and then trying to piece them all together in the manner of a puzzle. I started my arrangement in the spirit of “re-constructing” that original puzzle, breaking it back down into its constituent phrases and then putting it back together in a new order.

On top of that, the battle is spilt into four separate phases, so I also had to make the arrangement for each phase fit with its own distinct character, while at the same time making sure that the excitement and tension built up gradually as the phases progressed.

I took particular care with phase 3, where Sephiroth shows his wing for the first time and the player’s party all come together, marking the start of the fierce final confrontation.

I felt that this was the point I needed to raise the player’s excitement level to its peak and decided to do that by bringing in the timpani drums from the introduction, the most distinctive phrase from the whole track. I then worked back to create the whole composition.

Nothing will really come of it if I say this, but in the end my personal favourite version of “One Winged Angel” is the original one! (Laughs)

However, I do think I achieved what I set out to do here and created a worthy remake of the track that would not bring shame to my memories of it.

Yasunori Nishiki (Additional Composers)

Sephiroth with his one wing extended standing in front of a wall of flame

Are the attacks Cloud uses on Sephiroth here meant to resemble Omnislash from the original FFVII (and later shown in FFVII Advent Children)? What were the concepts behind the design of this heated battle scene?

I will leave the actual names and background behind the techniques he uses here to players' imaginations.

We did not envisage having a scene where Cloud and Sephiroth face off in a duel when we started the development, so we were very excited while making it.

At the start of the scene we deliberately made the camera movement similar to when the two of them fought in the original FFVII, in order to make it reminiscent of the original game.

Then it moves on to the action part, showing Cloud dauntlessly struggling against the all-powerful Sephiroth.

We consulted with a swordfight choreographer, who offered the opinion that because of the difference in the reach of their weapons, Cloud had little chance of winning if he tried to fight at a distance. Accordingly, we went on to choreograph it to have Sephiroth parrying and evading the attacks while Cloud continuously tries to press in and fight at close quarters.

It may appear to be a fairly evenly matched contest, but Sephiroth is not actually being pressed very hard here.

Hidekazu Miyake (Cutscene Director)

Cloud and Sephiroth face off

Thank you for sharing your memories and thoughts of working on FFVII Remake. Is there anything you would like to say to fans who have been reading this whole blog series?

As it says at the end of the game "The Unknown Journey Will Continue", and Cloud and his friends will be on that journey for a while yet. From here on in the Whispers cannot act to maintain the destined timeline, so fans can look forward to seeing what kind of future awaits the team.

Motomu Toriyama (Co-Director(Scenario Design))


Thank you for sticking with us all the way through the blog series. The development team are currently hard at work on the second game, in which the story moves away from Midgar and expands out onto the world map. And it is not just the story! I will be working day and night to ensure that the game design also offers an even more thrilling ride and is packed with even more surprises than the first game.

I am very grateful for being given this opportunity to send my message out to all the fans.

Naoki Hamaguchi (Co-Director(Game Design / Programming))

Art showing Tifa, Barret, Cloud, Aerith and Red XIII standing on the Midgar Hightway and gazing out towards the horizon.

We hope you’ve enjoyed reading this chapter of Final Fantasy VII Remake Revisited - and the series as a whole! Many thanks to all the devs for sharing their insight with us across all 18 chapters of the game.

Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade is available on PS5, Steam and Epic Games Store while Final Fantasy VII Remake is available on PS4.

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