*Disclaimer:  The information used in the following article is all available to the public using online search engines. We are simply piecing articles and information together and presenting it in tandem with the recast of FF7R and using credits and career listings available publicly to see who worked on what titles to formulate a possible narrative for the FF7R recast. This is our interpretation and opinion of the recast for FF7R based on the information we found readily available online through interviews, podcasts, and news and media articles.

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Activision-Blizzard’s John Heinecke Steps into Office

John Heinecke, Activision-Blizzard’s marketing powerhouse for more than 15 years, was announced as Square Enix’s new Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) October 10, 2018. With this new position came managing and directing the marketing campaigns including influencer relations, community, and PR associated with Square Enix titles including Final Fantasy 7 Remake (FF7R). 

John Heinecke was Senior Global Brand Director and later Vice President of Global Publishing of many notable Blizzard titles such as Hearthstone, the Diablo franchise, the World of Warcraft franchise, as well as the massively popular esports powerhouse, Overwatch.

After John Heinecke took office as Square Enix’s CMO in 2018, the original cast that was hired for FF7R was fired and secret auditions were held at the end of 2018. We know when the auditions took place from an interview from Hollywood Reporter with Cody Christian in which he states he auditioned for Cloud at the end of 2018. 

Using Celebrities from Popular Teen Shows to Market to a Younger Audience

Since the announcement of the recast at E3 in June 2019, Square Enix has been pushing FF7R to be marketed towards a “new, younger audience”. The marketing team, lead by CMO Heinecke, had to figure out what would be the best way to pull a new, younger audience to FF7R to increase sales and the fanbase.

The solution? Hire the young celebrities from ViacomCBS and The CW’s popular teen shows “All-American”, “Teen Wolf”, and “Supergirl”, Cody Christian and Tyler Hoechlin, to headline for rivals Cloud Strife and Sephiroth.

With Cody Christian and Tyler Hoechlin on the roster as leading rivals, the Square Enix marketing team could then advertise FF7R as having celebrity voice actors. Just take a look at some of the news articles below, these don’t even scratch the surface of how many media articles promote celebrities in FF7R.

Check out our video here for the ViacomCBS/Warner Bros benefits of having the Teen Wolf and CW actors in Final Fantasy 7 Remake.

With the recast of Steve Burton and George Newbern, the only way to control fan backlash would be to recast all the characters and create a PR marketing campaign to silence the pushback for the recast while promoting the new cast, which also includes popular Twitch content creator Briana White (The Strange Rebel) and Netflix’s “Glow” actress Britt Baron. 

Twitch is an incredibly popular platform that companies use to market to young gamers. By having popular content creators play games for their own personal communities, this gives exposure to larger fanbases in attempts to sell more products. (1, 2 ). We see an increase of video game developers reaching out to popular streamers and content creators in hopes that they could market their games by either streaming them on their channels or become part of the game itself such as providing voice acting for a character.

Sony’s anime company Funimation recently hired popular content creator Corpse Husband along with three other popular streamers all part of the group Amigops to lend their voices to the anime ‘Tribe Nine’ showing Sony knows the importance of content creators and how their pull in the online community increases a company’s marketing reach to a larger gaming audience.

Esports is another large community ripe for video game marketing. The leading Esports game, Overwatch, was also marketed and launched by John Heinecke and many of the recent ex-Blizzard hires at Square Enix. (3).

With the foundation laid out for the brief explanation of both the marketing concept and leadership behind FF7R, I would like to present another project John Heinecke marketed for Blizzard during his employment: StarCraft II. 

The Celebrity Recast of StarCraft II

StarCraft II was announced at BlizzCon 2008 with a promotional trailer showing the voice actors from the original StarCraft reprising their roles.

Fans were elated to hear Glynnis Talken Campbell return to voice the Queen of Blades, Sarah Kerrigan. Another promotional trailer was released in South Korea on March 2008, months before Blizzcon 2008, called the “Zerg Trailer” which also had Campbell voicing Sarah Kerrigan/Queen of Blades. 

After the two promotional trailers, Blizzard announced that Sarah Kerrigan was to be recast and Campbell would no longer be providing her voice. Fans were confused with the decision and Blizzard revealed the television screen actress Tricia Helfer from the popular sci-fi show “Battlestar Galactica” would be replacing Campbell.

Chris Metzan, the creator of StarCraft and other Blizzard franchises, even stated at the BlizzCon 2009 voice cast panel, they “got pretty stoked” and “hooked up” with the actress. 

Blizzard assumingly told Campbell the trailers she voiced in were actually just her auditions when they told her she had been recast (4). It wasn’t until years later when Campbell came forward in an interview and revealed that she actually was on the project and she voiced the entire game of StarCraft II before the recast. It was even stated at the BlizzCon2008 premier of the promotional trailer that the footage was taken directly from the game. Blizzard never told her, or fans, why she was recast.

After the recast, Blizzard never acknowledged Campbell again and only promoted Tricia Helfer as the voice of Sarah Kerrigan as if Campbell never existed. 

To add insult to injury, Blizzard also attempted to recast Robert Clotworthy as Jim Raynor along with Campbell, but they reconsidered and decided to keep him as the voice for Jim Raynor after publicly humiliating him, including allowing rumors of alcoholism to run rampant in regards to the recast (5). I guess their potential celebrity “hook-up” with Jim Raynor didn’t work out as planned, which would have made two main leading characters replaced by celebrities for stunt casting.

Remember, Square Enix’s John Heinecke, who now heads the marketing campaign for FF7R, was part of the same marketing team for StarCraft II including the recast of Campbell with Battlestar Galactica’s Tricia Helfer, and was even responsible for marketing plans and strategies for StarCraft II.

Comparing the Recast of Final Fantasy 7 Remake and StarCraft 2

Let’s jump right in and outline the circumstances surrounding the sudden recast for Final Fantasy 7 Remake and see if we can find any similarities between the two.

1. Actors voiced a promotional trailer for Final Fantasy 7 Remake for Playstation Experience in 2015 and continued to voice the characters in other projects until John Heinecke was hired in 2018

2. Was stated in a private press conference held by Yoshinori Kitase that the original cast voiced the whole game 

3. The actors were fired months before E3 without being told why, then replaced with popular television actors Cody Christian and Tyler Hoechlin 

4. Square Enix never acknowledged them voicing the characters ever again and only advertised the new cast as the voices of the characters as if the original compilation cast never existed by creating the “the original didn’t have voice acting” slogan campaign, completely ignoring the following 13 gaming titles that did have voice acting:

Kingdom Hearts (2002), Kingdom Hearts 2 (2005), Advent Children (2005) , Dirge of Cerberus (2006), Crisis Core (2007), Dissidia (2008), Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep (2010), Dissidia 012 (2011), Final Fantasy Explorers (2014), World of Final Fantasy (2016), Mobius (2017), Dissidia NT (2018), Kingdom Hearts 3 ReMind (2019)

The timing of the FF7R recast is impeccable. John Heinecke gets into office as Square Enix’s new CMO, he meets with the marketing team and figures out how to increase hype as well as profits, decides celebrities are the best way, fires the old cast under the same circumstances as StarCraft II, and holds “auditions” and thus FF7R recast is finalized and includes actors from popular teen shows along with Twitch content creator Briana White.

It must be mentioned the amount of Sony actors, specifically Funimation, that show up in FF7R and Intergrade giving the direct connection and possibility that either John Heinecke forced a recast for FF7R on Sony’s demands in exchange for an increase in budget, or, John Heinecke forced a recast on FF7R on his own for marketing and him or his team contacted Sony representatives to assist in the recast and Sony, who already had many business deals in motion with ViacomCBS and WarnerBros, made a deal to get both Tyler Hoechlin and Cody Christian on the roster for a stunt casting. There are many avenues this could have happened but either way, the recast seeminly happened the instant John Heinecke was hired at Square Enix.

The FF7R Compilation actors didn’t get recast because they “didn’t fit the characters” or “they were too old” or “they didn’t want to be a part of the game”, it seems to be because John Heinecke and the marketing team replaced them for celebrities because they think Cody Christian and Tyler Hoechlin’s names will pull in the target audience they want and had the PR team along with agency partners clean up the mess and combat fans and persuade media to ignore the recast in attempts to make it seem like the recast wasn’t a big deal, when in reality, its huge. Deception is a huge theme for the marketing of FF7R.

Check out this video concerning game critics, video game developer’s PR departments putting pressure on media outlets to positively promote their games, and more

Speaking of the PR department…

Former Activision-Blizzard Employees fill the Positions at Square Enix

Glancing at the credits for Final Fantasy 7 Remake, it’s easy to see many employees came over from Activision-Blizzard between 2018-2019 and influenced the corporate makeup of Square Enix, mainly in the Public Relations department, better known as the “Superman is still voicing Sephiroth” department.

Bob Colayo, the Head of Public Relations during FF7R, was hired at Square Enix May 2019 and was the former PR Manager at Blizzard and worked on the titles Diablo, Hearthstone, World of Warcraft, and StarCraft along with John Heinecke including StarCraft II.

Michelle Schroder, the Head of Communications and Influencer Relations, was former Senior PR at Activision for 14 years and was hired June 2019 at Square Enix. She worked at Activision from 1998-2017 crossing paths with John Heinecke who also worked at Activision from 1997-2004.

After 2020, even more ex-Blizzard employees started filling the credits of notable Square Enix games which leaves the question:

Is Square Enix turning into Blizzard?

TL;DR

The treatment of the original compilation cast is so unlike Square Enix, but not unlike Blizzard as we see in this article. It is clear as day that Square Enix originally wanted and was using the Compilation Cast, but an outside hire from Blizzard uprooted the plans and secretly recast FF7R for a stunt cast that catered to the younger audience they wish to market the game to.

The least Square Enix can do is put the voice recordings of the Compilation cast in Final Fantasy 7 Remake as optional, purchasable DLC so fans can play the entire Remake with both the Remake cast and Compilation cast.

They can also add the original voice cast into Crisis Core Reunion as an optional voice choice so players can choose what cast to play with. The Remake cast will still be there voicing the characters as per contract, and the Compilation cast can be added as an additional expansion.

Until next time 🙂