Did you know this about the FF7 Remake?

Legacy VA’s DID Record Entirety of FF7 Remake

Written by Rinoa Uchiha, 2^nd Class

The Youtuber Maximillian Dood attended a press demo where the team said as such…

When a new trailer for Final Fantasy 7 Remake was revealed during Playstation’s State of Play back in May, many fans noticed that the voices for Cloud, Barret, and Sephiroth sounded different than the voice actors that had been playing them for years. There was speculation as to if it was a change in voice direction or if those voices were just placeholders. It became a topic that was talked about online all the way up to E3. At Square Enix’s E3 conference, Final Fantasy 7 remake was the first to show. The anticipation was to see Tifa for the first time, and when that happened, many noticed that even her voice was different as well.

    It was confirmed later that night that indeed the voices were from different people. Many long time fans were left disappointed at this decision to change the voice cast that had been voicing these characters for well over a decade. Given Square Enix’s track record of consistency, and also the fact that Steve Burton, voice actor for Cloud Strife, and Beau Billingslea, voice actor for Barret Wallace, had appeared in the 2015 trailer voicing these characters, it came as a shock to many.

    It also came to the shock of these voice actors as well. Backtracking a bit to the State of Play trailer, confused fans asked the actors whose characters appeared in the trailer if they would indeed be returning. George Newbern, voice actor for Sephiroth, replied with some “cryptic” tweets, and Beau seemed shocked exclaiming, “That’s not my voice!” Steve however didn’t say anything, but a little while later removed “voice of Cloud Strife” from his Twitter bio.

    When it was finally confirmed, George retweeted someone commenting, “Always ready to assist if @SquareEnixUSA changes their mind. Bummed!”

    The next day, Steve tweeted out a video which I encourage anyone reading this to watch if you haven’t already. In this video, Steve confirmed that he was “no longer voicing Cloud Strife” and offered his support for the “new cast of Final Fantasy”.

Steve Burton’s video message

    It was around this time that Maximillian Dood got on Twitch to talk about the press demonstration with the FF7 Remake team. In this video he made mention of a few things:

1. That they hired a new cast just for FF7 Remake and that the Legacy Voice Actors would continue as these characters for other side projects
2. That for the sake of the Remake they wanted it to be completely original
3. And that the Legacy Voice Actors had voiced the entirety of the game but then it was done all over again with the new cast  

This information seemed almost contradictory in a lot of different ways:

1. If they planned on using the Legacy Voice Actors for other projects, then why did Steve in his video say that he was no longer voicing Cloud?
2. If they changed the voice cast because they wanted the Remake to be original, how come the voice cast in the Japanese version remains the same?
3. And if the Legacy Voice Actors recorded the entire game, is a Legacy Voice Pack DLC, which Operation Reunion is advocating for, really out of the realm of possibility?

    Max has since uploaded a video to Youtube of this conversation entitled Max’s Insane FFVII Remake Story. In this video he is simply talking about the demonstration and what was said in his own words. Because Square Enix hasn’t said much of the topic, Max’s words are really the only thing to go by. I will outline here what he has said and provide counter arguments.

    They actually showed the entire voice cast list and they had some answers about, like, the voices. Specifically the fact that they hired a new cast just for FF7 Remake.

    And they said, that a lot of the existing roles that people have been playing…People that have been playing those roles for the past 15, 16 years, are going to continue playing those roles in things that are not FF7 Remake.

    So, if it’s like Dissidia, or if it’s like another project where Cloud is like a guest appearance or something like that, apparently they said they’re going to continue using the original voice actors.

    While this is a relief to many fans of the Legacy Voice Actors, the question is, did they know that themselves? If you watch Steve’s video, it seemed like he thought he wasn’t going to be voicing Cloud ANYMORE. The replies below it also seem like fans thought the same thing. And if the actors weren’t told that, then it’s most definitely safe to assume that they were also not told that they had been re-casted.

    Crispin Freeman, the voice actor for Rude, replied to a comment under Steve’s video that, “I would love to reprise my role, but I have no choice in the matter. It’s up to the producers to decide to re-hire me. Please let them know that you’d like them to hire me to reprise my role.” While we only have confirmation of Cloud, Barret, Tifa, Aerith, and Sephiroth, it’s also safe to assume that the other characters who previously had voice actors were re-casted as well. About a week later, Quinton Flynn, voice actor for Reno, retweeted an Operation Reunion member who tweeted about Reno being re-casted. He replied to some people saying the same line, “Crispin and I haven’t heard anything yet. We don’t know if we’re returning or not. I hope we are.”

    A question we have is: These actors that have been playing these characters for years, and in some cases have been the only voice of these characters, why are they only good enough for “side projects” but not for the long anticipated Remake from which their characters originated from? A Remake of a game in which the voices of these characters from respective media helped to garner excitement for? Are these voice actors not a reason that people love these characters?

    But for the sake of FF7 Remake, they actually wanted to make it completely original. They wanted it to be a voice cast that you wouldn’t exactly be familiar with. Um. I think they…there’s some…there’s some very specific decisions behind that, and I think it’s down completely to characters. Completely to the fact that, they want Cloud to be depicted a certain way, they want Tifa to be depicted a certain way, they want Barret to be depicted a certain way.

    One thing that many fans have pointed out is that the Japanese voice cast is exactly the same it has always been. So, they wanted a voice cast that only English speaking fans wouldn’t be familiar with?

    In a post-E3 article written by Gematsu entitled, Final Fantasy VII producer Yoshinori Kitase shares post E3 2019 message, “Kitase said the following:

    In Remake we are giving voice to the original Final Fantasy VII for the first time. By bringing in a new generation of actors, we hope to provide the best experience for original fans and new players.

    Again, only for English speaking fans apparently.

    Our question is: Wonder why they’re so willing to give Western fans the “best experience” and not their home audience?

    A bit of the way Barret is interpreted in the original FF7 Remake trailers, which I think actually it’s Beau Billingslea, the guy who does Jet in Cowboy Bepop, an amazing Barret and he’s been Barret in a lot of stuff…uh, he ended up not being Barret in the final version of… and I believe recorded voice lines for FF7R. BUT, someone else got the job, not too sure who the new guy is, I have to go back and check, but the NEW Barret is seemingly a lot more like the original FF7 Barret that we remember. Like this Barret acts a lot more like the Barret that you kinda remember seeing Barret act…the cursing…like bombastic Barret. We were talking about this last night and after, after seeing a lot of Barret talk today I’ve seen all the characters talk to each other a lot…

    Um, they’re going in that direction more. So, the English Barret is a bit different than the Japanese Barret in terms of translation and how that character came out. So they want to keep honest to each region. And I think Barret’s gonna sound a lot different in Japanese version than what he does now. But he curses a lot, he has A LOT to say, and the character is preachy in general because he is super passionate about trying to save the planet. Just like he is in FF7 it’s just that he’s over the top and willing to do anything because obviously the character has had everything taken from him including his family…

    So, there are a few things here to go over. One is how Barret is depicted in the previous FF7 Remake trailer from 2015 and the other is the differences in each region.

    Fans, when that trailer came out, noticed right away that Barret didn’t seem like… well… Barret. At least the one Western fans know. While I couldn’t find any articles talking about it, I do remember seeing many comments about it as well as people speculating that they were going to have Barret in the Remake be more like his Japanese counter-part. I’m sure you all remember comments like, “Barret’s gone from Mr. T to Blade!” Because of this, and since the Remake was still in early development, I’m sure there was the proposal to do just that: make Barret be more like his original, Japanese version. You can even tell that by the way Beau was directed to act. It was not like his performance in the FF7 Compilation, particularly Advent Children. Beau is more than capable of doing “Mr. T” Barret, the Barret we know from the Western version. So why didn’t he work out so to speak? Why does it take a new voice actor altogether to depict Barret as his Western version when Beau already has?

Beau Billingslea as Barret in Advent Children

Beau Billingslea as Barret in FF7 Remake trailer 2015

    Notice that Max said he believed Beau recorded lines for the Remake.

    THEY PRETTY MUCH VOICED OVER THE WHOLE GAME and then… did it all over again. Like at some point I guess they thought it wasn’t working. And they hired completely new voice actors and yeah…

    I’m more than willing to admit that I don’t know a lot about how voice recording and it’s scheduling works for games like this, but it does seem odd that they would bring in the voice cast they have always used, supposedly record the ENTIRE game, and then for some reason decide to scratch everything and spend money and time auditioning and getting well-known T.V. actors to record everything over again, risking outcry from fans. Since a lot of this is Max speaking about the conference in his own words, it’s clear from the video this news even shocked him. What he said about them thinking it wasn’t working out seems to be his speculation of the reason why, not the reason that was given…if one was given.

    Operation Reunion has a petition to bring back the Legacy Voice Actors as DLC for Final Fantasy 7 Remake. Not only is this a more reasonable proposal than replacing the new voice cast, it’s also been suggested by many fans since the night of Square’s presentation, before this petition was even created. One of the opposing arguments to this petition is: why would Square spend the time and resources to re-record the entire game for something many people may not even buy?

    Well, according to this information, it seems that Square Enix has already done something similar. And if it’s true that they did in fact record the whole game with the Legacy Voice Actors, a DLC voice pack would be easy to produce. They should still have the recordings right? Perhaps they could even patch it in instead, similarly to how you can choose between the old soundtrack and the new soundtrack for some games in the options menu.

    There’s a lot of speculation about why Square Enix made this decision in the first place, why they would go through so much trouble to record the game with one cast and then audition and record the game again with another. They must have known that there would be a lot of fans upset with this right? Many, like myself, were looking forward to hearing the Legacy Voice Actors voice iconic scenes in the Remake, especially since it had pretty much been confirmed from the 2015 trailer. I’m also sure the actors were too, and I can’t imagine what finding this out the way they did must have been like for them. It would be even more heart-breaking if they really did record for this entire game.

    But this information should give us hope that a DLC is more possible than some may think, and I’d hope that the voice actors can see how much they are loved.

This Reunion is for you